"Universiti Malaya... Kebanggaan Kita Semua" Yes I have been in uni for 2+ weeks now, right now I have a lot of free time and spending it in the library. Wanna know what happened in the first week? Yeah I know u wanna know. That week was called Minggu Haluansiswa (Not Halusinasi as I first read, translates as Orientation week) I thought they were gonna show us around and stuff, but they pretty much treated us like military cadets. They confiscated all our electrical items for that week, including mobile phones. First there was all the yelling and shouting = military style commands. Everyone was quite scared except me. I think I became immune to that during National Service. They (they referring to the Pembantu Mahasiswa = Assistants of undergraduates, called PM for short) gave a lot of threats and one of them was to kick us out of UM if we didn't do as they say. So we were running here and there trying hard not to be late for anything. Those who didn't make it suffered physically tiring punishment. I did get punished the first morning, not for being late but for not greeting the one PM. Didn't happen again... Why I didn't greet? They only let us sleep about 2 hours a night for that week. The first day was a complete blur. Just do the punishment, cause you can't think anyway. Then they imposed on us a lot of homework. To do cheers and sing the songs perfectly or face even more punishment. Sounds very tribal, and we became tribal indeed. We also had to get signatures and their info (course of study, what year etc) from the PMs. They'd make us do stuff before we got the signature. Mealtimes were not the ordinary as we had to go group by group and they called us as they like, not acccording to order. I once got gastric due to the waiting. And I ate by hand cause I didn't know they weren't providing cutlery, which was fine with me. What I didn't like was that the PMs didn't like the ahemChineseahem using cutlery, cause they said we were not accepting their culture. They were basically saying that if you use a fork and spoon to eat in this country, you are rejecting another culture. Lame? You decide. So fine back to eating with hand. Everyone (mostly) ate with their hand. The rest tried to hide their cutlery and nobody cared. In the middle of the week we vistited our respective faculties. I visited the Faculty of Language and Linguistics. They briefed us on our subjects, the extra courses and hours we need to fill and so on. As pooped as we were we still had to walk all the way, and the PMs didn't let us use our umbrellas in the hot sun. Tribal indeed. (if you've seen those documentaries showing the youngsters being tortured to be accepted into adulthood...) Besides that they asked us to participate in competitions. I joined the choir. We didn't do well anyway, didn't practice enough. But we laughed over it. We even laughed at the other better choirs! It's called syok sendiri (enjoying yourself and looking crazy) There was one day we went to the field. We were at competition with other residential colleges with better cheers than ours. We did alright, due to the tribal spirit we developed. The most chilling controversy was when someone wrote an email to the UM staff that ragging was going on in our college. Ragging is a serious offence here in UM. The head PM was angry and so were the rest of the PMs. They said they didn't want to help us anymore with our forms, applications, etc. So one undergraduate took charge and suggested we get together to apologise. Got a bit of a rift there with a few people cause they felt that they didn't do anything wrong and needn't apologise. We did anyway. The PMs expresseed their disgust with us but eventually forgave us. If you ask me anyone could have sent that email, including those from outside the college. But that's over and done with. Then there was the final night, we were supposed to meet in the Great Hall. We all positioned ourselves in the Foyer and guess what happened? They asked us to leave! Crazy @#$% hall administrative people asked our residential college to leave the great hall! Apparently there wasn't enough space. So our Head PM thought of a way; he told us to just squeeze in whatever space we can find in the hall. Some of us went upstairs, some squeezed down, and they still asked us to leave; accusing us of causing trouble. One girl from our college reported that she got hit by someone's walkie talkie. Dunno why but they were very mean to us. So our Head PM told us to shout and cheer outside the hall to show that we will not be ignored, or something like that. We sang the college song while running in a huge circle for God knows how long before we went back. Can't get more tribal than that. After that the PMs revealed to us that they gave us incorrect info about themselves, just for the heck of it. If I was a senior I'd probably do the same thing. They also said they sorta kinda didn't mean to treat us bad, were just er dunno, training us?? I don't have any ill feelings about that week, just feel a bit pissed that they didn't let us rest when we were sick. I still feel tired, maybe due to brain damage (harhar) but fortunately we got some sleep in the 2nd week. As every freshie does, myself and my classmates walked to class everyday. Pooped, but we had the freedom to use our umbrella :) There was once we took a bus to Mid Valley to look for our books. It was sold out so we just walked around. Don't worry, the stock came at our own bookshop here in UM, called Pekan Buku (Book Village. Sounds weird I know) Yesterday my friend brought her car. So we went out to Tesco! Yay, and also the Curve which are not too far. UM students have so many ways to unwind. If they can go out :P | 
