behold! in fair E.C. (name of dorm building), where we lay our scene — t’is a tour of the refrigerator that came with our suite, its compartments divided and ruled to observe excellent property law and refrigeratory peace among the five suitemates, all alike in dignity:

this is the boys’ compartment. as you can tell, the three of them are all growing up to be big, fine, strapping men

my section :D

…… and my roommate’s section. hahaha.

and here is my very first dorm-cooked meal:

super fuss-free bacon n eggs! which, i was delighted to discover, taste just the same here as they do back home.

and of course, being very aZn, i just had to eat my bacon and eggs with not just rice, but also kimchi and soy sauce. yes, that is the by-now infamous lee kum kee soy sauce bottle with the metal cap which i had a lot of trouble removing — the attempts are all documented on my twitter and facebook, according to advice kindly dispensed by my lovely friends on both twitter and fbook.

advice #1: ask macho guys. tried and failed — this was actually the first thing i did, but the big burly manly men in our suite could not open the bottle either, and in fact told me to just go and buy a bottle opener.

advice #2: use a wet cloth. failed — it resulted in a broken fingernail.

advice #3: TALK TO THE BOTTLE NICELY in a corner to ‘loosen it up’, as suggested by the sagely @kennysia. tried and failed because the bottle got more uptight instead. -_-;;;;; /super layan face

haha i look so young in this photo of my layan face. i was only 17…!

advice #4: dip cap in hot water. CANNOT believe i didn’t think of this earlier! but it didnt work either.

advice #5: wrap a rubber band around the cap and twist. this sounds terribly inventive and clever, but for some reason it did not work. the rubber band is now stuck in between the glass bottle and the metal bottle cap.

advice #6: hit against counter. i did and it failed — resulted in chipped counter surface. oops.

then i tried #4, #5 #2, and #6 successively in order, but the bottle cap STILL WOULD NOT OPEN. aku dah pasrahhhhhh. the bottle is still unopened. some advice i have yet to try:

advice #7: use teeth. i mean, really.

advice #8: hit the middle of the cap with something hard so that the edges spring up, or a hole is created in the cap. actually, in my earlier trials i did do this with a fork, but the bottle cap ended up bending the fork’s tines…

advice #9: open using the top of my fist. i have no idea what this means — it sounds like bartender jargon — but it seems as painful as using my teeth. i shall avoid.

advice #10: smash the bottle while holding on the bottom; apparently this will result in me holding on to the bottom of the bottle which should still be carrying a substantial amount of sauce. just like ‘what they do in the movies with beer bottles, except the opposite’, according to Ron.

advice #11: “throw at the wall”, is songjun’s inspired advice. did i really once date this guy?

advice #12: put bottle in gap of ajar door and then pry the bottle cap open by closing the door. this also sounds very innovative and clever, but i know it’s going to result in my apartment smelling of soy sauce for a month.

SIGH.

I REALLY LIKE MY EGGS WITH SOY SAUCE.

am currently trapped in the glass building at college cos of rain. the downpour is just not letting up — i’ve been in the computer lab for the past 4 hours, idling time away and resisting the call of the bubble tea shop that’s in the same building. i’ve just printed out the first of my Calculus 3 problem sets (yes, i know, Calculus again. what could i possibly be thinking?), and am currently comparing prices of shoe racks online. i dont often take to shopping online cos i like being able to look at my potential purchases — to hold them, compare them with other products side-by-side, to feel them — but i guess this is one of many ways that i’m slowly getting acclimatized to America and their e-commerce ways.

and now i’m trying to convince The Kimonster that we should go watch a romantic comedy (The Ugly Truth!) tonight instead of some boring boy’s flick. it’s a formidable mission and i am sufficiently engaged. i guess being rained-in is kind of fun.

i’m trying my best to blog frequently, but it just seems so impossible. this usually is the best time to blog, before things get hectic and the terrifying tetris blocks of papers/assignments/exams begin falling … but even now there’s so much to think about. i just went to see my advisor yesterday to iron out some administrative stuff that should have been tackled when i first got here. now i’m a year late and scrambling. also, now that i’ve decided to pick up my old major again (after a frightened and jaded semester of dropping it for newer and safer pursuits), i’m a semester behind everyone else and i have to double my pace. ah i can already smell the morning musk of the library reading rooms. the saddest part is that i had to give up intermediate italian classes in place of my major requisites, which pretty much means i don’t get to go to italy for study abroad next year. sigh.

anyway i’ve figured out one of my blogger’s block problems. i cant blog because i keep wanting to blog about certain topics, and some of those topics need a certain mojo. but until i blog about those mojo-requiring issues, i refuse to blog about anything else — which results in a stagnating index of nothingness on quaintly.net. how now brown cow? i should just, like, blog about anything. like what i do in when i get rained in.

i’m back at school and on campus!

classes officially start tomorrow, i still have to get my schedule sorted out (please let me into that sociology class even though it’s full, pleeeease), i have yet to fully unpack and shop for necessities, or buy textbooks, AND it’s my roommate’s birthday today, so there’s going to be a party in our suite tonight. plus lunches and dinners with all the people i’ve missed, yay :) i was so caught up in the melancholy of leaving KL again (it was definitely harder the second time around) that i forgot to feel excited about going back to school.

i have a roommate this year, which is going to be interesting. i know it doesnt seem like it sometimes, but i’m so much of a private person, and have become more so over the past few years. for so many reasons, the one thing i felt i did right for my freshman year was getting a single room. its tougher for second year students to get a single room in the housing lottery, so this year i had to either- a) apply for a single and run the risk of failing to get one, and then randomly getting assigned to a roommate i didnt know, or b) pair up with someone i knew, and form a double room together.

my roommate’s really fun and cool, and she’s actually a LOT like me — the similarities are endless, but we have yet to find out about any startling differences; hopefully there will be none :P — so i had no qualms rooming with her. we agreed last year to room together for sophomore year, and randomly formed a group with three other senior guys to form a suite. so this year we get a fully-equipped kitchen, a bathroom and a living room! :D yay, no more fighting for the TV with 40 other people, or having to trundle down an entire corridor to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. and of course, time to whip out all the baking utensils :) SPACE CAKES!!!! PINKPAU’S FAMOUS CHOCOLATE BROWNIES!!!!

yoon (roomie) and i havent fully unpacked, so no photos of the room or the suite just yet. more another time.

but for now, pictures of my last night in KL, cos that’s the only night i remembered to take pictures of –

met up with andrew, emily, joe and zhiwei at the Apartment, which is exactly where i spent my last night in KL last year before i left for college. in fact, my Last Day Circuit was exactly the same as it was last year — no sleep, pack a little bit, go to see grandma in the morning, meet Stewie, KY and the Nuffies (doesnt Stewie and the Nuffies sound like a really cool rock band name) for lunch, panic shopping, meet friends at the Apartment, banana leaf rice dinner, hokkien mee late at night, pack frantically in the wee hours of the morning, bak kut teh breakfast, pack pack pack, leave for airport, forgetting at least two things. this year i forgot my US mailbox key and my pencil case :( asian stationery > american stationery.

banana leaf rice with Arthur at Nirwana! my last dinner. boss tambah benda ‘ni (fried bittergourd), nandri nandriiii!

after dinner, we went to Bangsar Village II to get the car. while at the parking lot, we saw one of those buggies that they use to ferry people from the exits to the parking lots, UNATTENDED!!!!! so i really wanted to drive it!!! Arthur took pictures of me hijacking the buggy, haha –

i didnt know how to turn the buggy on, and Arthur was very worried that i would eventually figure it out, because i kept flooring the accelerator while trying to operate the buggy. apparently i’m not supposed to do that, and i’m supposed to step on it slowly, and “build it up into a crescendo, like sex”, IN ARTHUR’S WORDS.

but before i could figure out how to operate the buggy (they hide the switch under the seat, so smart), the parking lot attendant came back! oh no! :O

when i saw the attendant, i started laughing really hard. then he started laughing too, and instead of kicking me off the buggy, he taught me how to use it!! see, this is why i love Bangsar Village. their staff are always so kind and cool, and there’s none of this no photos policy rubbish. remember this? timtam and i ran around the Bangsar Village supermarket taking stupid photographs and posing with all the different products, and the staff just smiled at us as they walked past. when the manager came over to see what was going on, he even posed for a picture with me!

away i go!

i think i drove the buggy for, like, 20 centimeters before i dissolved into giggles once again and was rendered incapable of driving. so arthur hopped on and the attendant drove us —

whee! :D haha cheap entertainment. i highly recommend it.

i love you arthur! you’re my favorite person in the world :)

found two pictures of my second last night in KL, together with albert and nazrul, who are also two of my favorite people in the world –

that’s me and nazrul doing the bollywood thing with our scarves.

i miss everyone already!

one of the things I miss most about being home is being back in the thick of the vibrant blogger community and the events that we get invited to. with all the movie screenings, dinners, theme parties, concerts and food outings that we see each other at so frequently in addition to our online palaver, it’s a wonder we’re not all sick of each other by now :P

Ogawa had a dinner party and product trial for about 40 bloggers last week at TGIFridays Pavilion. i was looking forward to the event because some of my favorite people were going to be there — it’s always nice to disturb Shaolin Tiger and Horng, gossip with Spinzer, talk about substantial matters (hehe) with Sixthseal, and of course, ogle the gorgeous Cindy!! plus if Ogawa wants to sit me down on comfy leather chairs that are going to massage away my working world woes, I’m all for it :)

dinner was buffet-style at TGIFridays, where sadly my favorite Jack Daniels steak wasn’t served, but happily the Caesar salad was! photo is courtesy of Sixthseal, because i arrived too late to take any pictures of dinner, not that anyone was very surprised –

after our appetites were satiated and much was talked about, we were then brought to go play with the big bad Ogawa toys.

this is the very cute Redmummy testing out the red Ogawa Smart Mate. the Smart Mate applies kneading, tapping and rolling motions on the main reflex points of the upper body, and combines that with light vibrations on the lower body to provide an all-around delicious body massage.

the legs are not left out either – 12 air bags are placed in the leg massager unit to gently squeeze away soreness and tire. i normally can’t stand these leg massager things cos my calves are super sensitive to pressure and i always end up in a half-screaming, half-laughing fit while struggling to break free from the confinement – but the Smart Mate was an absolutely delightful experience :) soothing but firm grips rumbling across my fatigued body = feels so good. it was a very welcome product trial especially after the long day at work.

on the other side of the room, the boys were having a lot of fun with the Ogawa Smart Aire massage chairs.

that is Sixthseal reclining on the Smart Aire. the back of the Smart Aire is S-shaped to snugly fit into the natural curvature of our back so that it covers and massages all the right fatigue zones, which is evident from the obscene ‘stim’ faces that Sixthseal is making -_-

i’ve actually never seen a massage chair that tilts backwards like the Smart Aire does. the idea is to put the user in a higher state of relaxation by reclining him/her and thus relieving the burden of gravity on the spine. pressure is taken off the back, muscle tension is reduced, and the S-curve assists in correcting spinal alignment.

the rollers on this chair also simulate human thumbs, and i really appreciate this because it’s so much like a real massage, except i don’t have to lie on my stomach — a position that often makes me feel nauseous cos of some superficial pulse points that i have in my abdomen.

an act-cute picture of Wingz before he promptly started snoozing during the product trial :P

we were all also very fascinated by the handheld massaging contraptions that Ogawa has. for instance, the Eyetune – an eye massager that can be linked to an MP3 player — that we all took to camwhoring with:

and also these very suspicious-looking handheld devices…

they vibrate! and i look perhaps a little too gleeful to be holding them.

so does Sixthseal for that matter :P

the night drew to a close when they asked us to participate in a two-phase game, one of which involved a rhyme about a waiter that had to be passed down about 10 people per group, and the group with the closest match of the rhyme could advance to the next level.

my group won!

the last two men/women left standing (literally) at the end of the second level would then win the coveted mystery prize. i was feeling pretty confident until Robb revealed that the game involved MATH. nooooooooo. did you know that in college, some of my friends call me Asian Fail cos I can’t speak Chinese well, cant play poker, and most importantly, i suck at math? but apparently i’m not that bad at math cos i ended up winning!!! muahaha. ShaolinTiger was the other winner.

we both got EyeTunes!!!

now I can camwhore to my heart’s content :D

all products mentioned in this post are currently on 50% discount at Ogawa for their Mega Raya sales. the Smart Mate is going for something like RM 4.6k from its original RM9k+ price tag O_O if i had the money, i would buy the Smart Aire for my parents… :|

TIP: the Eyetouch is a great gift for stressed-out dads and the Enviro vacuum is excellent for the moms, especially with the additional discount vouchers from the folks at Nuffnang :)