the clog

Of beginnings and sore bottoms...

I registered for my college classes today. To say that it was a pain and a hassle would be a gross understatement. It is now my personal belief that every educational administration seems to want to make my life a living hell and give me the time honoured "run-around" whenever possible. Take today, for example: I plan to register for my classes, I arrange everything very nicely so that none of my classes clash and then...boom! The system seems to think that I do not exist. Wha-? Exactly. So I go and POLITELY ask the administration officer what happened to my records. Apparently, politeness seems to equate to "please-step-on-me-and-treat-me-like-slime" in Admin-Speak, as the officer berates me for not knowing the proper procedures in how to register for classes. I calmly tell her that I did, in fact, follow all the procedures properly and that for some reason I am now listed as a persona non grata in the system. She scowls at me and quickly flips through a little booklet. My name is circled in red on the fourth page. That can't be good.

"You haven't paid your fees," she tells me plainly.
"Wha- that can't be right. I paid them before I left for the holidays," I whine pathetically.
"You haven't paid your fees," she repeats (in an uncanny, automaton-like way).
"Erm...I'll just go check with the finance department then..."

After waiting in line for a good twenty minutes I finally get a clerk to check for any outstanding fees. He looks at me with a raised eyebrow and tells me that I had already paid all me fees. I told him that I knew that and that he knew that but for some reason the system doesn't seem to get that. He promptly sent me to his boss. *Sigh*. After repeating my case for the umpteenth time, The Finance Boss looks over the records again and she double checks everything. She was rather nice about it...but a bit slow. She notices that I am a bit edgy.

"Why so antsy? Do you need to be somewhere?" she asks
"Yeah, anywhere but here," I tell her, smiling to take any sting out of the words.
She chuckles...and writes a note informing the admin that I had paid all my fees.
"Now run along and give this to admin," she says
"Can't I just...you know...shoot myself in the head and get it over with?"

So I'm back to the beginning of my journey. And all the admin person does is takes the note, look at me and then says "Okay, you can go now" as if I were insignificant. Bah. With that out of the way I quickly made my way to Sunway Pyramid to catch Puteri Gunung Ledang (The Princess of Mount Ledang).

I had been meaning to watch the movie for some time now, but I kept having to put it off. Even Teddy had given up on trying to watch the movie with me. Ah well. Now my time was at hand! Mwahahahahaha.

For those of you not in the know, Puteri Gunung Ledang (PGL) is a movie based on a Malay legend of the very same name. Not to give too much away, the movie was good. Excellent by most Malaysian movie standards. The cinematography was fantastic, the sets breath-taking and the attention to detail in the costumes and cultural practices of the different peoples portrayed was commendable. It was everything that I had long wanted to see in a contemporary Malaysian movie. I often lamented that our neighbours Thailand and Singapore were churning out much better movies than we were of late, but this movie assuages my fears a bit. But it was long. Maybe a bit too long. I could have sworn that my bum had no more blood running through it (it was that numb). And that maybe the casting of M. Nasir as Hang Tuah was not a good idea (the man can look the part, but he can't really act). But all in all, I liked PGL and I hope that it is a sign of better things to come. Am I hoping too much that it may be the beginning of a new era of Malaysian cinematography? We can only hope. Do watch it if you have the time and opportunity. And with that note, this post is over! You can go now. Sorry it was so long. I blame Lanata (she's been posting insanely long posts of late...maybe it's rubbing off on me ^_^).

Rumoku out!