Ah.. finally.. I am here at long last. I have finally reached University of Malaya, Malaysia’s most prestigious and premiere university , the university which was ranked 167th in the QS world ranking just recently , a fact which I was forced to hear repeatedly over a course of 1 week.
*****On the day of arrival , I was down with the eye disease, again. Yes, it was the same eye disease that has haunted me from the past ,the Recurrent Cornea Erosion . They say, if one is infected repeatedly by the same disease over and over again , one would acquire sufficient knowledge about that particular disease that rivals or even exceed that of the medical specialist regarding that disease. How true it is ! After falling victim to this sickness for so many times, I have already acquired enough knowledge about it to even write a book pertaining it. The symptoms , the adverse impacts it had, the medicines required to treat it. I knew it all.
As such , I knew that it would take at least 3 days to allow partial recovery of vision , 4 days to subside the pain , and 5 days to recuperate completely. It was only the second day , and I had to enter K.L in that condition , with my left eye being partially blind , with scorching pain coming up the moment I tried to open It , due to the skin abrasion and laceration of my lower lid that covers my cornea. Either way , it was because of that , I looked like a totally retarded person who have to close my left eye and relying heavily on others for the entire journey to K.L.
Luckily, with the help of my kind friend and my beloved mother, I made it to University of Malaya at last on the 4th of September 2011. Still awed and amazed by how technologically advanced and progressive K.L is compared to Penang,I expect UM to provide an equal amount of surprise and shock as well. And I am glad it did. Being the most premier university in Malaysia, it lives up to its reputation by introducing a very systematic way of categorizing and organizing students. The orientation week was superb, and it does live up to its status of the oldest university of Malaysia with its culture and traditions shown during the orientation week.
I have to say UM’s orientation week is indeed very unique and I dare say it’s one of the kind orientation that can only be found in UM . Let me try to convey what I had experienced earlier in the past week. Though mere words alone cannot do justice to it , but bear with me and lend me your eyes as we journey through this special chapter of my life.
****
First of all , our hostels are known as Residential Colleges ( RC ) and there’s a grand total of 12 RC’s in UM, each having their own cultures and traditions. These RC’s are diverse and unique in the sense that all of them are built in different time period and every facilities in them are different . For example, the latest RC being built is RC 12 , which boasts a modern infrastructures and even an elevator to ease the mobility of the residents in this 12-floor architectural wonder.Then, there’s RC 2 which was situated at the hillside and RC 1 that were meant to house medical and law students only . RC 1 is the first RC to be built , being the oldest and thus having the ancient architectural look of the olden days . Most of the RC’s are in good condition still.
I have the privilege to stay at RC 7 or otherwise known as College Tunku Za’ba. Oh yeah, a point worth mentioning, every RC is named after a certain influential figure in history , e.g RC 3’s alternative name is College Tunku Kurshiah, and so forth. Now,what’s so special about this RC system is that in the orientation week. Each RC is pitted against each other as there will be a lot of inter-college competitions that would span activities such as cheering * which is compulsory for all students to participate in * , sports such as badminton, sepak takraw, netball ,and artistic competitions such as English Songs singing competition , nasyid , sketches and debates * I had the honour to participate in the British style parliamentary English debate , which I find to be a really fulfilling and enjoyable experience. * . So , the competition was fierce, especially when it comes to cheering competition.
Apparently , my college was known to have secured the trophy , the champion trophy for the cheering competitions for 5 years already , so now it was my batch’s turn to guard our college’s reputation and live up to the standard. The orientation week was very tough as in the first few days of orientation , we barely get more than 4 hours of sleep . We were forced to practice the cheers of our college * every RC have their own distinctive and unique cheers * every single day .. and mind you , there are like 5 or 6 different type of cheers . Even after that sleep deprivation , we were treated very badly by the Pembantu Mahasiswas (PM as we would refer to them, they are the facilitators of the orientation week and essentially our senior and the people in charge of us the whole week. Again, every RC have their own PMs . There are 28 PMs in my college ) They were strict, very strict , sometimes to the point where it would be too much for us to handle. Everytime one of the students were late for a particular activity or meeting, the entire residents ( i.e us, the freshies ) will get punished. According to them , it’s to cultivate the spirit of unity. And there were loads of other punishments and actions in which you get virtually get trampled by them and just have to suck up to them. Every single day we would sleep at around 1 , get up around 5 to do exercise , then proceed on to hear long,winding speeches , and then get back to practice cheers. Such were the misery we were subjected to.
Either way , these entire hellish activities continued for 6 days.. until one more day before the entire thing will end. On the last night before the last day, there was something special. The PMs who have been treating us badly turned worst. They were practically fuming at us , no matter what we did. Every single mistake, no matter how tiny or miniscule they were , none of them escapes their eye, and we were scolded and punished like we just did something unforgivable to them . And at the night , at around 12 midnight , we were assembled to watch a big “drama” . All the PMs took turn to scold us , to nag at us, to make us feel like we are the most worthless, useless creatures in the earth ,saying that they already dedicated 4 months of their time prior to this orientation to welcome us, how they sacrificed their time and effort to prepare the best activities for us, how they spent countless sleepless night to anticipate us.. and all their efforts being wasted because we did not commit ourselves fully and to do the cheer.After ranting it off in a fashion similar to how a heartbroken girlfriend would after breaking up, the PMs stormed off into an enclosed room , with their final words being “ I don’t care about you all anymore, do anything you want ! “ and we were left alone… or so we thought. At that exact time, suddenly a senior of our senior suddenly came to the rescue . Dubbing themselves as “super seniors” they questioned us, asking what on earth did we do to make their juniors *i.e our PMs* so heartbroken and angry ? Of course, all of it was just an act. . I know this might sound superficial in words but trust me, if you are there, you would certainly feel the heat too Their acting was very exaggerated and the entire drama would make you feel like you are in a real life , tv scene where we were in the climax of the show and this is the suspenseful part.
Though their scripts were corny and their actings were , at best, mediocre , there are still some that fell for it. There are some , females especially that really was hit by a pang of guilt , and were really convinced that they disappointed their beloved PMs and cried their hearts out. Of course , only a handful of them realized it was a tradtion of the orientation that has been passed down by generations , but that’s beside the point.
I digressed. Anyway, after that incident ended, we were forced to retire to our beds, with most of the students still feeling unease over the entire ruckus . In the end , we slept… for 2 hours , because at the unearthly time of 4 am , we were being awoken by the PMs . The supposedly , emotionally depressed and disappointed PMs, knocked on our doors with enthusiasm of a child getting their first toy . So, we woke up.. and get punished again. And of course.. to do cheers .
But this time it was different , most of the students that had fall prey to the little “sketch “ that those PMs put up the night earlier was burning with enthusiasm , with a newfound spirit to impress their PMs and to gain forgiveness from them , they did the cheer enthusiastically and fiercely.
Finally, the main event arrived . The final cheer showdown at the Dewan Tunku Chancellor . Everyone was tense a few minutes before it began. Fears of losing starts to elude them . But they did not worry,for as soon as the competition started , we literally clinched the title. The atmosphere was electrifying . The whole affair lasted for over an hour . Some were tired, exhausted, and some had lost their voice due to cheering too loud , yet we continued cheering and still raring to go for another round, all but for a reason . A silly reason . Because everyone else was doing the same thing ;).
The event that night truly highlights the spirit of unity and pluralism. As the motto of our RC , “Kita Bersatu” ( United we stand ) implies, we truly live up to it. That night, we were truly united , disregarding the fact that we come from different race ,creed or colour. That amazing feeling that night , those powerful emotions.. I dare say none of us that night would trade it for anything else in the world . That’s how awesome that night was J In the end, we were declared the winner of the cheer competition. As one of our PM mentioned earlier , true to his words , the instant we received that news, our hearts sprang to joy , all the fatigues and pain we felt in the past few days disintegrated instantly , instead filling the void with immense feeling of victory .
