Mami and Dadi, maafkanlah anak anda yang memboros ini :'(

Okay I'm upset.

These past few weeks in America made me realise a startling fact about myself: I am so damn talentless. I'm mediocre in every single aspect of my life.

Ok la, I know that its not a very legit reason to be as upset as I am right now, but after 2 decades to hone some sort of skill, you'd think I am able to do something amazingly. And yet here I am, just drifting by life and only getting by.

In Malaysia, I guess what stood out about me was that I spoke English really well but here, everyone speaks English so much better than I do. WHO AM I ANYMORE?!

I now also realize how boring I am. I never explore. I never have anything interesting to say. I'm not opinionated. I don't even have a good life story to tell. Kill me now. T.T Its like my life is just a gray space occasionally embellished with a few good moments.

Sigh, I don't even know why I care so much. I guess theres more to this upsetness than just being talentless and boring. Its also about me being in a perpetual slump.

I don't want to be an engineer. Its not me. Its not what I'm interested in. I get jealous every time someone says they have an interesting class and they love the lectures and its awesome for them, because I will probably never feel that way about what I'm doing. Waking up in the morning is never fun, and I am almost never happy going to class. Studying is always a chore and I want to just choke myself every time I have to do a calculus question.

 At the same time, I want to continue being an engineering student and I want to someday become an engineer purely by the fact that I have invested too much time and money into this curse. And I am afraid to back out because what if I choose to major in something else and it turns out I hate that the same and it turns out that its just my perangai yang pemalas, and I just generally don't like studying. What if?

And what if I can't pick myself up after backing out from this. I'd have to go through all this from the beginning and get left behind and while everyone is working, I'd be doing my first year of degree hahaha fml.

And I'm scared that the whole 'Follow Your Dreams' thing is a scam and that actually, we shouldn't follow our dreams because the dream doesn't make money.

But then if I make a lot of money pun... so what? I don't really care about that. But that's easy for me to say cause I get money handed to me every month by a scholarship and I have never been in lack of money before. My family has never struggled financially (at least, I don't see it) and money is always a phone call away in case of emergencies.

But worst of all, the dream doesn't actually bring happiness.

But I hate it... and it sucks that I can't do anything about it. Someone asked me what I wanted to be if not an engineer, and I though... Housewife lol.

Anyway, I shouldn't be ranting about such a first world problem. "I hate having a free education boohoo!"

I should count my blessings before it gets taken away. Next post will be a more positive one, I promise. :)

America Thus Far

I did it! I have arrived in America and I feel...

SO OVERWHELMED!

I mean, that should be a very predictable feeling but I feel so clueless. But I'll take one thing at a time and put one foot in front of the other very slowly.

So today I shall write about... the plane ride!

I left Malaysia on the 12th of August 2016, and arrived in Columbus, Ohio on the 13th of August, So I saw this on my ticket and was like, "Oh okay, I'll travel 24 hours."

I TRAVELLED 2 DAYS. Somehow, it didn't occur to me to think about the time difference and think about the transits stops in between. It was:

14 hours to London, Heathrow.
5 hours stop and rest.
9 hours-ish to Chicago.
5 hours rest.
1.5 hour to Ohio.

It was an experience I do not wish to re-experience. *shudders

I think through this experience, I have discovered a critical aspect of myself which is that I hate travelling. I see now why my dad never brought my family overseas. Its a nightmare. Sitting in a cramped space for 14 hours is not fun, especially when you have to wake your the person in the seat next to you every time you have to use the toilet. And! It was even more awkward when said neighbor is sleeping.

Landing in London, I thought wow, everything is pretty. The sky is bluer and the clouds are fluffier. It was 14 degrees celcius and they air was crisp. But even that I can't enjoy because there was the whole security check to go through.

Which reminds me. There are so many security checks to go through and each one is even more thorough than the ones before. I was prepared for them to open my bags but I didn't get any inspection at all. I did see some other people get their bags opened because they had spices in their carry on luggage and I even saw some people kena tahan for no reason.

But I got through just fine!

So after all the travelling and transitting, I landed in Columbus and.... my bag didn't come out. I was waiting up until the moving belt thing stopped. Huhuhuhu that was stressful.

Our seniors were waiting there for us and their president told me to report it missing and have them deliver it to my doorstep.

Sure enough, I got my bag the next day yay! The seniors who picked us up were VERY NICE although they seemed a bit stressed out. But that's understandable because it was midnight and they had to pick up 70 students over the course of 2 days.

Then I stepped foot on American soil for the first time. :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

The Stupidest Lie I Have Ever Believed

When I was 8 years old, I had this friend. Let's call her Ursula cause she was manipulative and evil.

She was mean but she was my friend wtf.


There was this one time, she didn't approve of me being friends with this other girl, and she turned our whole gang against me.

Anyways, here's the story.

We were in class, and she asked me, "Can you give me RM2?"

My dad only gives me RM3 a day and I needed the money to buy food during recess so I said, "Go ask someone else."

Then she begins to tell me this whole elaborate story about how her mother died, and her father married a woman who had two daughters. Her stepsisters were mean to her and they would always steal her shoes and the mother was ugly with a lazy eye.

Sometimes, her stepsisters won't even let her inside the house. And I remember that I was so moved by her predicament that I LENT her RM2.

What.The.Hell.

And she never gave me back the money.

Letter to myself

I feel like my days are just an endless stream of being worried. I'm worried about my vaccinations. I'm worried about my class registration. I'm worried how I will be handling my money in the U.S. I'm worried about packing.

How do you stop being worried???

In the back of my head, I know that I don't need to be worried. That my worries will sort themselves out. But there's an eviler voice saying, "What if it doesn't?".

WHAT IF IT DOESN'T?!

I am consoled though, by the fact that I felt the exact same thing before I went to study at INTEC.

"This is so complicated."

"I wanna stay home."

"I don't know what I'm doing."

And all those nasty thoughts you get before embarking on a new adventure away from home. So I'm going to write a letter to my 17 year old self.

Dear Crystal,

You're only 17. So young and naive and still a fan of EXO. Well this is (almost) 20 year old you so listen up because I have so much wisdom to impart.

Right now, you're probably struggling to matikan the stamps on your perjanjian, and filling out a billion forms and getting your certificates certified and doing the complicated and expensive medical check up.

For University Malaya.

And all your efforts will be for naught because the night before you're registering in UM, you get an offer to go to America!!

Yay! And after an hour of deciding in the hotel, you decide to take it.

Good choice! But so begins more endless forms and procedures. While doing all that, you will feel like shit.

You're gonna feel insecure and helpless and worried. So worried. Mostly worried about how people are going to treat you there because you think that everyone out of that island of yours is mean and scary. Well, they're not. Some of them will get under your skin, but 99% of then will be kind to you. In fact, its the people from this little island la yang hurt you.

Don't worry about everything being so foreign because soon, that place will be like home to you. You meet these really awesome people and you make some really lasting memories. Some of these people, you call family. After half a year, you don't even want to go back to Sabah.

You will love. Maybe, not in the way you want, but looking back, you loved in all the right ways. Don't think about boys and relationships too much cause it wasted SO MUCH of your time. But you will anyway.

Well, my point is, don't worry because everything will be fine. Even some of the documents that you so painstakingly prepared will be rejected by your sponsor and you will prepare new ones by 2 hours in Shah Alam wtf.

PS : You won't need to buy a pail.
PPS : Don't lock yourself out of your room on your first night there.

Love, almost 20 yr old Crystal.

Yesterday, I had been to 8 different hospitals and clinics to get my vaccinations for OSU done and NONE of them could do it which I think is the most ridiculous thing in the world!

Isn't healthcare supposed to be available to everyone?

I mean, why why whyyyyy? I guess they wanna wait till people really get sick to treat them. Come on la just give me my tetanus, MMR, Varicella, and Hep B vaccines. Takkan la mau tunggu mau Mari baru mau masuk hospital.

Ughhh!!