FREE STUFF, PIZZA AND SOME SOCIAL CONCERNS... ME RANT YOU READ

Assalamu'alaikum...

First of all, selamat menyambut Ramadhan to everyone!!! Everyone loves Ramadhan, I think the fasting month is just so rewarding. You're just sooo focused on your work and all the important stuff, and you're more calm and collected and you don't bitch quite.. as.. much...

I'm sorry I haven't been updating my blog, I've been kinda busy. And when I'm not busy I'm just basically glued to the TV watching Gilmore Girls or One Tree Hill or America's Next Top Model. Yes, I do love my TV. My living room still looks like a bomb zone. I think I'm gonna have to concede to getting rid some of my furniture, so if anyone in Umich is reading this and they want a sofa, a coffee table or this wheely thingy that you put microwave on, lemme know. I can't get in to Wolverine Malaya from my room, so that rules out advertising there.

I've managed to become a connoisseur of pizza and free stuff lately. My room is peppered with things I got from recruiting talks: Microsoft t-shirts, Google boy and girl t-shirt, Captal One's phone card and pen holder, guitar picks (that's not from a talk, but still, I got them last week), Goldman Sach's jelly beans case (I ate all the jellybeans, they were yummy), Google pens, Capital One pens, some other stuff from goodness knows where..... I have a lot of stuff. And I ate a lotta pizza during those talks. Great way to save money, even though you feel yucky afterward for hours because of all the grease and cheese.

Last Friday, the first day of Ramadhan, Prof. Soloway brought pizza to class. From Cottage Inn. In every single flavor imaginable. The first pizza I ran for (I was gonna keep it for berbuka, don't worry mummy, I'm still fasting and I haven't turned into a complete mala'un yet) was the Tomato Pesto pizza. I love pesto, and I love tomatoes, ergo.... And it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. Who cares it's not meat or it doesn't have a lot of toppings, that is officially the best pizza in the world for me. Domino's Doublemelt comes in second, probably because I've always preferred thin crusts over the normal ones.

Kak Fiza and Abang Amir have been selling food lately due to Ramadhan, so I've been stuffing myself with some really good stuff, like cendol, and today, I had biryani. Yum... biryani. Yum... cendol. Gourmet pizza, good Malaysian food... life has been good to my tummy lately, but lousy to my waistline. Dang it, I'll never get my girlish figure from sophomore year back, hahahaha. Oh goodness, that sounds so ridiculous I almost peed my pants. Oh well.

Prof. Soloway is gonna let me get involved in a project next semester. I'm excited. Talking to recruiters made me realize that I need more than what they're teaching us in the classroom. Besides, since I'm prbably gonna end up working in an office for the rest of my life, I might as well do something meaningful and something I can be proud of right now. If I can do something that would mean anything to at least one person, big or small, I would be the happiest person ever.

Sometimes I wish Malaysia would address the imporatant things instead of sweeping them under the rug. People keep concentrating on the killings or the purse snatching or the rape... no one really focused much on the smaller stuff that are the cause of the bigger stuff. Take drugs for example. People are doing Ecstasy and weed everywhere, in public places.... but the issue is never really addressed. Sure, they have raids, but there's nothing much in the media. No public service message that encourages people to not do drugs, no matter how cool everyone else say it is. There used to be this really graphic commercial about drinking and driving... that went away, I'm not sure why. Nothing about how you're not supposed to have pre-marital sex, or sex without protection. Everything is taboo subject. People are embarrassed to talk about it. Nobody wants to address the issue of condoms because nobody really wants to acknowledge the fact that in a world that is getting more Westernized day by day, pre-marital sex is a common occurance, regardless of where your income bracket is.

But is it really worth it to have all of these social problems just because we're embarrassed, or because some things are taboo? Think about it. What happens when your kid has AIDS from unprotected sex? Or your daughter became pregnant while she's still a teen because one night, she took Ecstasy with alcohol and wound up... preganant? What if you know that you could've prevented it just by talking, but you were too embarrassed to do so? Where would taboo and tradition and embarrassment land you then?

Wassalam...