Bad Luck

Meeting you was totally a big loss and becoming friend with you was certainly my whole life mistake. Whatever shit that happened, it happened and it's indeed unavoidable. I'll move on and I know I'm so done with all these people. 39 more days to home 🏡

Chicago '16

My mission to update my blog every week has failed when I did not have any update during the past weeks. If you followed my social platforms, you would have known that I went to Chicago during the past weekend. I don’t think I should bring my MacBook along; hence, no update for the past week. On this week’s post, I will then share with you everything that happened in the Windy City, Chicago.

As it was a long weekend, we actually made a very last minute plan to travel to Chicago. We booked our flight and hotel on Tuesday and flew to Chicago on Saturday morning. It was 3 days 2 nights of trip, but it was a really short gateway as our flight to Chicago was about 7 hours and the time difference between San Francisco and Chicago is 2-hour, so we touched down Chicago airport around 5pm. We then requested for Uber to send us back to hotel before heading to the nearest restaurant to have our dinner. After having our dinner, we loitered around to explore some tourist attractions, which were a stone threw away from our hotel.

We first dropped by Grant Park to enjoy the night view of Chicago. Grant Park is basically the principal downtown park of Chicago, which is situated between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan. While we were walking around the park, we came across plenty of monuments, fountains and statues. The main attraction in Grant Park especially during the nighttime is the captivating Clarence Buckingham Fountain. This fountain was specially built by Kate Buckingham to honor her late brother, Clarence. During the night, the fountain is animated with computerized choreography of colorful spotlights and spouting water.

After spending about an hour at there, we were totally exhausted and we decided to return back to our hotel and rest earlier. When I was really tired and needed sleep so badly, somebody was being so inconsiderate and snored like how a pig snores! It was really annoyed and pissed but I just could not do anything. At the end, I could only sleep for 2 hours before the alarm even rang. It was totally a nightmare and I swear it would be the last time to encounter this situation.

The next day, it was a tourist kind of day. We woke up before the sun even rise. We prepared ourselves and walked to the trademark of Chicago, Willis Tower. Before reaching our first destination, we also passed by the famous art museum, The Art Institute of Chicago. We did not drop by the museum because we were not interested with any museum related destinations. Due to the Labor Day weekend, Skydeck Chicago was opened an hour earlier than normal days. We were lucky enough that we did not have to queue up to enjoy the picturesque view of Chicago. With its signature black aluminum and bronze-tinted glare-reducing glass, it was once nominated as the world tallest building. The innovative design and graceful styling are indeed a perfect treat for my eyes to start off my day in Chicago.

We spent about 2-hour at Willis Tower before heading to another main tourist destinations of Chicago, Millennium Park. Millennium Park becomes an iconic draw for visitors and locals to enjoy the magnificent view of natures, landscapes and architectures. The unique habitats, picturesque architectures, and awe-inspiring landscapes indeed offer great opportunities for recreation and relaxation.

A highlight and main destination of Millennium Park is undoubtedly the so-called “Cloud Gate,” which has become a tourist hot spot and is the perfect place to take vacation snapshots. This 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates that capable to reflect Chicago’s famous skyline. This bean shape sculpture allowed visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from different perspectives. Due to the scorching hot weather, we spent less than an hour at there before grabbing our brunch at one of the famous brunch spots, Yolk.

After having our brunch, we paid a visit to Trump Tower. This lofty building is situated across the Chicago River from the city’s business district, Chicago Loop. It is just a block away from the southern end of the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue.

We continued our journey to Chinatown of Chicago by taking water taxi at Michigan Avenue. The tickets cost us $10 each. There was nothing much to do in Chinatown besides exploring some of the Chinese cultures. After Chinatown, we dropped by Navy Pier because many people always say that you wouldn’t truly experience Chicago without a trip to Navy Pier. Personally, Navy Pier is kind of boring because this is a place, which is more appropriate for children. It’s a playground of entertainment, museums, activities, restaurants and shops that is more suitable for families to spend some bonding times.

Before ending our Chicago trip, we had our last meals in Chicago at one of the well-known Chinese Restaurant, Minghin Cuisine. This restaurant served variety of Chinese foods that included the mandatory Dim Sum. The foods were really sumptuous and mouthwatering. I will surely pay a visit to this restaurant if I happened to visit Chicago for the next time. While walking back to our hotel after dinner, we also stopped by several shops to grab some souvenirs because our flights back to San Francisco on the next day were early in the morning.

Overall, Chicago is a nice city that is almost similar to New York City in terms of architectural and landscape. While New York is always in hustle and bustle phenomena, Chicago is slightly less busy but it is still a swarming city. I will definitely recommend you to visit Chicago at least once in your lifetime.

Job Interview Experiences

Exactly a week since Rio Olympics ended. In other words, it means exactly a week where I have nothing to do beside sleeping, eating and rotting at home. However, since I promised myself that I will update my blog once a week to maintain my writing skills, I must then be on my blog right now and crack my mind with something that happened on me during the past week. I am not going to say that it is a totally lifeless week, but there are days when I really had nothing to do.

First worth-remembered thing that happened on me last few days was the moment when I received a message from the creator of Badzine, Raphael Sachetat. I was indeed surprised to receive his message. He told me that he came through my previous blog post (link at here) and thought that I have good writing skills, which allowed me to join their voluntary company in writing articles. It took me for about two days to consider committing myself in this career. I eventually accept this offer even though it is just becoming a volunteer. From a brighter side, I can also take this opportunity to force myself to write more than just a post once a week. Hence, I submitted the applications and now it is time for them to send me any features and I will work on it. With that, I hope one day my article would be publicly publish, which allowed many more people to better understand this field.

Second thing that happened to me was my first ever job interview in the United States. I tried applying some jobs that related to my major and also some that are not related to my major in order for me to gain some insights of the work life in the United States. Nevertheless, I did not really give much hope on every job that I applied as I only planned to work for a short term. One day, when I was chilling with dramas, I received a call from a company. He asked me the reasons of me applying to this job and the reasons of working with autism children. I explained to him and got a great feedback from him to proceed to the next interview, which was happened on the next day. It was a Skype version of interview as I couldn’t be at the main office. So, we scheduled a time and set up everything. I would say that the interview went beyond my expectations. As I did not have any formal interview before this, I assumed that it would be a challenging one. However, I realized that the interview actually went pretty well. I mean every thing that he questioned me; I was able to confidently answer it. After the interview, he also sent me some applications and videos to watch in order to better understand this company and the therapies that they provide in this company. At this moment, I am still waiting for their answer. Whether it is a good or a bad news, I accept it with an openhearted. I know nothing goes smoothly, and only with every failure and experience, I am capable to learn and grow.

I guess that basically sums up this week beside all those tiny things that happened on me. I have no idea what I should do for the next few weeks, but I have one thing that’s on my mind right now. I shall keep it until everything is confirmed. Till then.

Thank You, Lee Chong Wei

As Rio Olympics 2016 has come to the end, many of us including myself are still feeling sympathize for our contingent Malaysia in missing to clinch the first gold medal. Nevertheless, we have achieved the best results, which are 4 silvers and 1 bronze throughout the history of Malaysia. During this Olympics season, I had been waking up as early as 4.30am (almost every day) just to show my support towards Team Malaysia. I never want to miss out any matches that they played as Olympic is the biggest and highest prestige tournament in the world and it only happens once in every four years. Overall, I am very satisfied with the results. I am truly proud that they did not disappoint any one of us. Their hard work and determination are praiseworthy. On this post, I will mainly focus on Chong Wei as he influences me a lot in my career.

A message that I received from Chong Wei after his final match simply made me tear again after London Olympics 2012 Final. I know how disappointed he really is at this moment, but everything is over now. I just got to admit that we did not have the luck in this prestigious competition. He indeed had a stronger mindset, better condition and greater ability in competing this final match; nevertheless, Chen Long was a step ahead of him and he did better than Chong Wei. I accept the fact that Chong Wei is once again a Silver Medalist of Olympics, but I really feel deeply sorry and sad to him that he had no chance to achieve his dream as an Olympic champion.

Becoming a gold medalist has always been Chong Wei’s ultimate goal all these while. He continues to train harder from day to night just to ensure that the piece of gold medal belongs to him during this Rio Olympic. Unfortunately, fortune smiles belong to Chen Long this time. Just when I thought he failed two times in finals against Lin Dan and successfully overcame Lin Dan in semi final this year, he would have better chance to clinch his first gold medal as proverb always says ‘third time’s the charm,’ I really never thought Chen Long would become the ‘spoiler’ this time. When the last match point belonged to Chen Long, every Malaysian’s heart sank. We felt sad not because he lost his games, but he could not achieve his ultimate goal no matter how much he had given out. The world seriously owes him an Olympic gold medal. I see nothing that he does not deserve at least a gold medal in Olympic after uncountable times of failures.

I have been supporting Chong Wei ever since I came across the achievements of team Malaysia in the arena of badminton. I could honestly tell that, as much as I support any other Malaysia players, Chong Wei is still the one I have been endlessly supporting by sacrificing my time to watch every single match he plays and continuously update myself with his latest news. Starting from collecting newspapers of his news, watching him plays in live to now purchasing every collection of his magazines and autobiographies, he is indeed a role model I am always looking up for. As a hardcore fans of Chong Wei, I understand how much struggles and pains he had to go through, how much stress he had to bear with, and how much bad luck he had been to. I really respect and salute him a lot as his determination, hard work and perseverance to contribute the gold medal to the country are so strong. He is fighting so hard to achieve the best of what he is wishing for all these while albeit failing for numerous times in both big and small tournaments. Having to accept the failure of 3 times in Olympics Finals and 4 times in World Championship Finals, who else will still be giving out themselves and continue standing on the court to keep on trying? I am sure many of us still remember the hardest time when Chong Wei failed his doping test, and was banned by Badminton World Federation. That was a period where he lost his status of World No.1 and ended up at ranking 180. Nonetheless, he remained his daily training and never gave up until today. Thus far, he is the only one who bears this stressful life, not for himself and his family, but for the whole Malaysians.

Thank you, Chong Wei. You have nothing to say sorry. If you were disappointing us with three silver medals, I would say three silver medals are far better than a gold and getting all 3 silver medals isn’t an easy job. Head up and be proud of these achievements, as I believe that it will take some times for the next representatives to achieve these outstanding results. Don’t cry because it’s a silver, smile because it’s an honor. I hope to see you back on court again soon.

While I am having a totally different career from Chong Wei, I still take Chong Wei as the most respectful and influential role model. Every time when I feel like giving up, I re-watch back some interviews from him. I ask myself, “ Is Chong Wei’s life tougher or my life is tougher? When Chong Wei has not given up himself, am I allowed to?” His indomitable fighting spirit is indeed my source of inspiration that leads me to who I am today. I was not born naturally with outstanding skills and broad knowledge, but Chong Wei’s spirit of not easily giving up transform me to who I am today. From primary school to secondary school to first year of college, my results were just above average. Nevertheless, I changed my mindset, set a goal and made Chong Wei as my inspirational person. Today, I successfully graduated my college life with distinctions. I wish to share this proud moment to Chong Wei because of his determination; I had successfully encountered every barrier and failure of my college life.

Thoughts of Attending My Last Undergraduate Class

As I encouraged myself to blog more often, I will try to update at least once a week to compile the last few months of me staying in the United States. Although I did not have a truly exciting life as compared to others, but I doubt that I will have a totally bored and dull life to the point that I have no idea what to blog about. Even if I did nothing at all during any upcoming weeks, I must think of something to blog about in order to stay active in writing.

Today (11/8/2016) I finally submitted my final paper and attended the last undergraduate class. I had always spent my time doing my own things without really paying any attention to the lecture because I always thought that the lectures were boring and uninteresting. I mean my professor always talked something that was out of our class syllabus. To be frank, I attended the class just for the sake of attendances. If it wasn't because of attendances, I doubt myself would be concerned about attending the class. Nevertheless, I forced myself to stay until the end of today's class. While I was waiting for the time to pass, I was also feeling terribly emotional because it's really my very last time attending class in SFSU. I'm uncertain about the possibility of returning back to the America and study again; hence, I really feel so sad that I've no chance to step in all these classrooms, lecture halls and even school libraries as a student. I will definitely miss every single moment that happened to me. 

Well, I understand that's a part of my life. Life moves on and it's time for me to move on to the next step of my life. To work or to continue study? I'm really confused and clueless now. At this moment, it's definitely the hardest question to be answered. However, I allowed myself to rest for a while until I return home with decisions that will bring me to the best of all. I am fine with both if opportunities are allowed, but definitely favor more on gaining work experiences. 

I really wish to at least gain some work experiences before continuing my master program, but it seems like in today's society, the minimum requirements for a person to work in this firm is a person who holds a Master degree and has at least few years of related experiences. I understand how realistic this world can be, but I feel that most of these companies should be understanding that, if every company has this mindset and not willing to teach or guide the fresh graduates, how are the fresh graduates are able to even have their first work experience? Experiences are not something you would gain while you are studying; it's something practical that needed to be gained while you are working with your clients. I could not comment much on this issue as this has became a culture in work life, but I seriously hope that majority of the companies would change their mindsets especially in hiring the fresh graduates.   

With that, I end this post by crossing my fingers that I will fully utilize these few months. I had some plans that I always wish to do while I was still studying. Since I am freer now, I wish to accomplish some of the bucket lists, which include solo travel to somewhere in the US, try working in the US and etc.

Till then.