Blogging is SUCH a chore, you know?!

But it’s good to be back to share sometimes.

So for those who have wondered where I have disappeared off to, I’m currently in my second year of my compulsory service with the government. When my FYDOship ended, I was supposed to report for duty at Batu Pahat!! After many tearful phone calls to the headquarters and a very fortunate switch with a colleague in JB, I’m still in JB, living with Chee Kiang who is still working in Singapore.

We’ve been doing this for over 7 months now and living together has been amazing. We cook almost every week night, sometimes I dump him here and drive home to Subang Shah Alam myself. Yeah, my family has moved away from Subang too. It still hurts when I think about my childhood house in SS18.  Going into Singapore whenever friends want to meet up, exploring JB together, watching downloaded movies together on our landlord’s flatscreen and sleeping in the living room every single night because the entire apartment is literally our bedroom.

Oh! I’ve started baking and cooking more too!

Butter cookies fresh from the oven! I wanted to decorate it with royal icing but the icing i made was way too sweet and runny, so I gave up. I’ll need to head out to buy lemons and meringue powder to try again. Don’t think I’ll use raw egg whites again as it is not hygienic. And I have no idea where I can get pasteurized egg whites.

Spinach pan mee with the necessary yums

Tried roasting a chicken. Tasted okay, couldn’t get it to be a dark crispy brown.

Herbal chicken, not too bad!

And my favourite and my best dish (ahem), chicken+broccoli+carrots+french beans dimsum style. <3

I think I drifted off again.

Yes, so throughout university I knew that I had to, needed to, MUST end up in Johor in order to put an end to the nonsense that was a long distance relationship. I was sent to Kluang first when I first entered the workforce and after making it through 6 months, I am finally in JB. When my first year training ended, I managed to secure myself to be permanently based in JB.

It’s all going to plan, isn’t it?

But deep down in my heart, I wanted.. or thought that it was to be this way: That the both of us complete our respective three years with the government and move back home to finally start our lives somewhere permanent.

But it’s not fair to uproot him from Singapore when he has put in so much effort building up his career here. Not only that, if I go back, I will have to start networking all over again. It’s okay if we start off immediately after the end of our compulsory service because we are still relatively young then and can slug it out. But I’m afraid that won’t be the case and we’ll probably have more…well, changes in our lives if we wait it out a few years and head back in our very late 20s or early 30s.

I do want to open my clinic one day and I want to open it somewhere where I will grow old.

I am confused about plans to work in Johor, KL or Singapore.

The reason why I want to go home is so that my children can grow up around their grandparents and I can be there for my family. It’s just horrible to have to grow up and old without your parents around. But most people don’t have a choice because of their careers and I am afraid that we might just be one of those people.

For an AIMST graduate, it might be a little tricky because the degree is not listed in the list that the Singapore Dental Council has come up with. Most of the Malaysian public dental schools aren’t even on the list too. We have to sit for an exam which, IF you can qualify for it with the suitable requirements, has a waiting list of 2 years. I hear that it’s the final paper for the Year 5 NUS students. I will of course try for it if I have the chance to. I would need to study really really really hard for it and cross all possible fingers and toes.

Singapore would be nice. But I really need some guidance if Johor is just as good, if not better. Or even better than KL for that matter, which I hear is pretty saturated now.

It gives me hope that there is so much development going on in the city and there is a buzz of excitement about the endless possibilities. Healthcare facilities, residential areas, educational institutions (though I’ll probably still send my kids to a government school to let them see the real Malaysia and save the money for their overseas education) etc.

The whole Johor-Singapore thing works very well for us now. I know a big chunk of Johor roads now, made a horde of new friends from work and more contacts from helping out with the southern zone’s dental association….

I just hope that it is the right choice to be based here.

Apparently all future induction courses will be held here. It’s a really beautiful health allied sciences college and the hostels are really new and comfortable too. All officers in the peninsular will have their induction here which is carried out in batches. ALSO, good news to all government servants who will have to have their induction courses one day, the birotatanegara (BTN) has been cancelled forever since Jan 2011!! YAY!!!

The view from the sixth floor.

More hostels nearby.

The top of some of the faculty buildings.

Neighbouring hostels.

The carpark just outside our hostel block!

In a way, it is sort of like a camp as everyone is about the same age. There are only six of us from AIMST but we are trying our best to make as many new friends as possible.

Had dinner with Ee Chia, Steven and Cze-Yin on Monday night!

Pretty awesome to be able to pop out if you think the food’s gonna suck.

For me it feels really surreal to be called by the government to congregate at a place for four days because it just feels like national service all over again. I mean technically we are serving the nation but I couldn’t help feeling this overwhelming sense of nostalgia, walking back to dorms, i really felt like I was back in national service.

My schedule and my name tag.

I am always up for making new acquaintances and this is how it usually is when you go for a camp, you do not expect to see any familiar faces. The strange but awesome part is that I get to choose my room mate. It doesn’t even happen this way at a normal camp! So of course I would choose someone whom I have known for years, someone whom I have lived with for years and someone whom I have plenty of catching up to do with. So glad Cze-Yin is my room mate!

And this is a new friend I have made, Dhanya!

Lie Yuen, she’s pretty much your replacement.

Because AIMST people band together.

But we did make some new friends.

Just a fraction of the 110 participants at the camp.

I was initially worried that I might have to share a dorm with six other girls or something. While it was fun, I don’t think I want to repeat what I went through during national service – sharing a dorm with 24 girls. But to my delight, our room is HUGE! Two to a room and so much floor space! There’s a conjoining toilet with our neighbour but it’s cool.. we made friends, we won’t steal each other’s shampoo. Albeit a little dusty, the bed is really solid and the ceiling fan is cold enough for us as we’re on the 6th floor plus it has been raining quite a bit. The lovely weather does remind me of national service where it was mostly cloudy as I went during the rainy season.

A lovely wardrobe for my so called ironed clothes.

Our two beds and the awesome floor space.

Cze-Yin chillaxing with my laptop.

On our way out to the first lecture this morning.

Another strange thing was that there’s no curfew for us. Most of us are probably still coming to terms with the fact that we are no longer students but real, proper, working adults. The security guards would wave us through and we’d be stunned while still in “Defence Against Security Guards” mode – a skill many of us have acquired as students who had to deal with fussy guards.

I remember in National Service, we would still have talks after dinner and we would walk to the cafeteria after a cool evening bath and settle in for an evening of superstitious or motivational rambling by some trainer.

I’m feeling particularly nostalgic about how I would whip out my notepad and pen to record every single moment that happened in national service while trying to deal with home sickness, making new friends and eating strange food.

In National Service, we were served five meals a day and it is no different here. Two hours of talk is followed by half an hour or one and a half hour of makan, another two hours of talk, another round of makan. We makan SIX times here.

In national service, if we skipped any makans, we were required to be in the cafeteria. But here we can adjourn back to our rooms and come out again when there was another lecture to go to. The room is in a perpetual state of coolness.

In national service, I arrived in a bus, without a single soul who could speak to me in English. I thought it was the most important trait to have back then. Fast forward 6 years and here I am, less of a banana and arrived in my car. Drove here straight after work and the feeling was …for lack of a better word…awesome. I just felt this vast amount of freedom to just up and leave anytime. Back in the day, camps meant a month of planning, liasing with friends, getting your mum to do some shopping for you. But now, I can just pack a few necessities, shop for some stuff and throw everything into my car boot and sing loudly to Fly FM for one hour plus before arriving at the campus where my induction is held.

When I went for camps, surely I would forget to pack something or I would realize that I really really could use with something. And I would never get it. I would then have to suffer in silence. But last night, we needed floor mats because the room was dusty and it flooded on my side of the room as we forgot to close the window. Out we went to a grocery store about 2km away, without feeling even the slightest bit of tiredness to stock up on some floor mats, toilet rolls and snacks. All because I had a car. I am in CAMP and I have my car here with me. I can say that over and over again.

I think the best part is that I have my favourite soft toy pillow here with me, my P1wimax modem here with me and my kettle as well. As I am quite high up, the speed is mad crazy. When I download movies, it’s like way faster than the speeds I get back home in Kluang.  I have never even been this well equipped at a camp.

While my colleagues have been very supportive of me for the past 5 months, I have never had the chance to meet so many FYDOS at once. I don’t feel like I’m in a working environment, it seems like university all over again because no one here is your senior (or in some cases, no one here is very much your senior).

I have three more days to go. And then it’s Singapore for the weekend. Singapore’s like, 20 minutes away. How awesome does my camp get?!? Internet + Boyfriend Who Is 20 Minutes Away + Car + Cold Weather + Comfy Bed….I’m one happy cookie.

It’s so long ago that my graduation ceremony photo albums pops up on Facebook’s Photo Memories every now and then. But it is my graduation day, and no matter how long it has been, it will be up here. My europe trip too. Even though it happened in mid-2009, one day I shall post all if not some of my pictures taken in Amsterdam, Paris etc.

Some shots from the morning, Chee Kiang in his outfit that garnered many compliments from my friends.

Old news but…CHEE KIANG GOT ME AN IPAD FOR MY GRADUATION!!!

With graduation bouquets that I ordered for myself on behalf of my loved ones T_T

Got Chee Kiang to go trigger happy with my DSLR while I was down at the basement getting ready with my classmates.

Came up to show them my attire! (and to make my parents sniffle..wahahah)

This was when I still did not know how to wear the robes properly. ;|

Getting my attire lovingly adjusted by mum and Chee Kiang.

At the basement with Brenda. This was our day!!

Dinner mates!! <3

With Poh Yee! Side note: We held each others’ hands when opening our letters regarding the places we were posted to.

l-r: Wuan Phing, Jaya, Fiza and Yan Rui! Wuan Phing is in Pahang now, Jaya is in Kota Tinggi, which is Johor as well, Fiza Selangor and Yan Rui is somewhere in Perak.

I’m definitely going to miss moments like this. :’)

Myself and Bala, one of the most capable and independent guys in my class.

Obligatory 5.3 group photo. I miss my group mates so much despite being the only girl there. Yes I am the only girl. *runs away from Cze-Yin’s evil glare*

With a very unfriendly Jimmy.

We were lining up, like in primary school, waiting to go up on stage!

Yup that’s how I looked like in my gown. Uh-huh.

Narjit won the Best Dental Student award! Since Year 1 we have already known that the award would go to her. Just wish that the school would have come up with a better name than that.

Terrible right this Jimmy. Take photo with Narjit so happy pulak.

Doing a favour for Group 5.4. Here’s your group photo if you haven’t already saved it from my facebook album from centuries ago.

Group 5.1!

Group 5.3.

Another one with group 5.3!

And lastly, group 5.5

With my darling Lie Yuen. I sometimes I forget that I am living alone and when there’s something I want to tell someone, anyone, I instantly look for Lie Yuen, then I remember, oh yeah. We are not living together anymore.

With Jamie who got posted back to her hometown in Sarawak!

If you can see, my family members are waving in the background of this picture. Heh. They somehow managed to find seats along my row in the graduates’ area.

More photos while we waited patiently for all the inspiring speeches to end.

After getting our certs! And yup, no nice photos of me on stage by my dad/Chee Kiang. There’s one professionally taken by the gown rental/photography people which I have collected but have yet to scan it… it’ll just get hung up somewhere at home. There’s gonna be a little shrine on one of the walls dedicated to my graduation.

Not a scroll!

With Dr. Manikandan and Dr. Karthik. Dr. Karthik is like a super teacher. He was there with us from (almost) the beginning till the end of our studies. He thought us the super basic stuff like dental materials and cavity designs all the way to complex things like post and core, crowns and bridge, cast partial dentures.. we can’t thank him enough. He is extremely dedicated to the students and helped us in any way he could. We were initially afraid of him because he put on the bad cop persona but over the years, he became a dear friend and mentor to all of us.

Dr. Manikandan is one of the dental officers who sees patients before deciding if they are suitable for the students. He also played a major role during our Clinical Management Report and credits to him for the beautiful before and after photos taken with the clinic’s camera. He also earns many brownie points among the students here by being one of the hottest staff members around! That being said, Dr. George is still a favourite among most female students. HEHEHE. Sorry everybody, the secret is out.

Sneaking a solo photo in amidst the chaos.

Found Dr. Brindha and Dr. Niekla!!

These are the two most motherly lecturers I have here.

Dr. Brindha is Dr. Karthik’s wife and the both of them arrive at AIMST at the end of 2006, early in our second year. She was the good cop to Dr. Karthik’s initial bad cop. Dr. Brindha is usually the one to reassure us when we are faced with “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT” situations. She takes her time to clear our doubts for us and is super super super patient.

Dr. Niekla.. probably the most popular lecturer at the dental faculty. She has recently left AIMST so it’s quite unfortunate that the juniors will not get to know her . You people at IMU better appreciate her! She’s probably the most animated, adorable, caring and understanding lecturer ever! She has no qualms about letting her hair down when joking with students and swings back into professional mode when it comes to our paediatric sessions. Yes, she’s our paediatric dentistry lecturer. With her good PR skills, she’s excellent with the kids and she’s the one who taught us about the importance of a reassuring touch to improve our communication with the kids.

A bear, Jimmy and Magesh.

Praveena and me!!

With juniors Serene and Rachel.

With my patient, Mr. Phoon! Mr. Phoon is probably one of my most caring patients ever… I only met him during the final leg of my final year, a time when stress levels were sky high, tears were held back by fanning ourselves frantically. When my clinical management report (CMR) patient told me that she probably could not come for anymore treatment, I really didn’t know what to do. Mr. Phoon, whom I had a session with that day, saw my crumbling face and offered to become my CMR patient. He said he could come anytime I needed him to. I was so so so touched by his sincerity but I had to persevere to convince my first patient as I had already started with her case and there was not much time left. Thank you so much, Mr. Phoon. My junior who took on your case is very lucky to have you as a patient.

Finding a good patient back in uni was seriously rare. I can only name like… a handful of patients who were nice to me. Most were nightmares. I had one infamous nightmare. Hahaha. No names please!

With Lie Yuen and Brenda and our graduation presents!

A bouquet of Ferrero Roucher!! Who so lucky?!

Mum and I before I scrambled away to go on stage for a group photo. Sorry mum!

With Maxis’ famous Doraemon soft toy. The soft toy even made it into the papers! More on that further down.

Me, detecting a camera.

Can hardly make out our faces but yeah, that’s all 37 of us. The first batch of dental graduates from AIMST University! Our class photo is hung in the dental students’ common room to be remembered for ages to come.

With Prof. Smales, a man who loves us as much as we love him. He still has his british humour about him which is not quite registered among my classmates most of the time but we do love him so much. He is the one who build up the entire aimst dental programme with the help of Datuk Dr. Rohani, Dr. Robinson and Prof. Comfort. But this AIMST BDS programme is his baby.

In the initial years, he would come in every other month to tell us about the developments of the programme. He would tell us about the construction of the simulation lab, the technology lab, what we were to expect in our new dental building at the new campus (which we only saw for the first time in our third year) and later on, the successful accreditation of our course. It was a long journey and he was with us all the way. I believe that this is a privilege that the first batch of dental students have managed to enjoy. People in the fourth batch and so on would probably never get to know Prof. Smales the way we did. I’m sorry that you guys did not get to see the school transform to become what it is today but please appreciate all the facilities that you have here at AIMST because it wasn’t always like that.

Cze-Yin, her aunt and her cousins.

When we came out from the great hall, THIS was awaiting us. We were stunned into silence. It didn’t quite register at first.. but we eventually calmed down and were overwhelmed with such gratefulness towards our dental juniors. you guys are the best. Always always always so creative.

With Batch 4′s famous dental probe (made from a roller brush) and mouth mirror (mirror made from a milo tin cover..lol).

Extremely supportive juniors. We felt like real celebritites…:) We felt so loved.

This is my politician smile. lol

They called themselves the mobile backdrop. ;D

Lie Yuen’s red carpet smile.

Poh Yee gets mobbed too. LOL

Some quiet time with my dear Brenda and Lie Yuen.

Was getting a little bit tired from all the activity.

With Yen Yen Cheh Cheh who came all the way from Singapore to see me get my certificate. Thank you YYCC!!

With Chee Kiang and all my presents. <3 Oh, the iPad was in the car.

Paiseh to take the flowers.

Ok, a more loving photo.

Family photo!! yup, this is my entire entourage.

The girls!

One of my few solo pictures.

MUST TAKE. Housemates photo. MUST.

As planned on Facebook, we gathered at the grassy patch next to do the administration building for our mortar board throwing picture.

Unbeknownst to us, there was a chinese newspaper journalist among the crowd of proud parents looking on. So yeah, there’s a photo of my classmates and I in one of the chinese newspapers a few days after that.

A few more jumps. Someone kicked Doraemon to the floor by accident. Haha.

Ready for the next round!

Whee!!

Don’t know who’s mortar board is whose.

To this day, I still don’t know how they managed to get the mortar boards to form a circle in mid-air.

We looked more like lawyers!

Group photo with as many as we could find.

With Batch 2 juniors, Melvin, Samuel, CY, Sook Mei and June.

With Ada (second from right) and her pharmacy coursemates.

<3 Sabrina and Aimee!! Batch 4 juniors.

Some quality time with the family. Koo Cheong and Koo Ma!!

With dad and mum.

Chee Kiang and the bear, taken against his will.

Like in a movie, but it would be better if my hair was not so haywire and maybe more make-up for me please.

One more round for Brenda who missed the mortar board throwing photo session.

Whee!!

With Aik Munn, one of my favourite Batch 3 juniors.

I think this was when my dad teased Chin Kai about being the new owner of most of my furnitures.. haha. Take good care of my grandfather’s old cathode tv, Chin Kai!

With Yii Ping and Jen! Jen is the proud owner of one of my book shelves and my weighing scale. LOL

With Philip and Deniece!

Kaixuan!

Stephanie and Charis!

Felicia and Ei Leng!!

Us seniors feeling so loved with all the juniors coming to see us on this special day.

With Janice, Samantha, Sook Mei and Shing Yin

With Janice, Kimra, Agnes, Soo Huan and Wai Yan!

Awww my favourite sibling of a friend, Lie Peh! <3 <3 <3 <3 No prizes for guessing who’s sister. Hahha.

With Siva!

And GERVIENE!! Our current ADSA president, resident funny woman of AIMST Dentistry. Thanks for always making the cutest jokes, Gerv!!

With Ananth and Dhanya.

With Jimmy from Pharmacy Batch 2! Poor guy got posted to Terengganu.

More solo hiaupor photos. Much thanks to Chee Kiang for layaning. <3

With Lily!

With Prof. Ferguson!! My oral biochemistry lecturer. He said if he didn’t make use of his camera (to take pictures with his students), his wife would question him. LOL.

He looks so cute here!

With Jickson, Cynthia and Sheena.

And Victor!

When you leave a boyfriend waiting in the car with your camera, this happens.

Oooh..ooh.. so right, after like 3-4 months of my convo ceremony, the family and I decided to go get proper shots done at a studio. Here’s the results:

*punches fist in air* YESSSSs… done with my convocation ceremony post.

*During the second week of April 2010, my faculty held their annual games which we have so aptly named ADSALympics. ADSALympics is a monster of a sporting events. I like how my junior Shing Hui put it: ADSALympics = Cheer 2000 + NBA + Olympics + Thomas CUP + FIFI World Cup + Reality Show Event (plenty of drama). I’ll probably blog more about the other events, but by now most of you should be well acquainted with my blogging style, so don’t set your hopes too high.

At the ripe old age of 23 (*dodges tomatoes and banana skins from the rest of the classmates*), I took part in my first ever cheerleading event!

A pre performance photo of some of the team members. We were praying that no accidents would happen that day.


Poh Yee recaptures her lost youth.

Thankfully Brenda was there to capture our moment of glory!

Ee Chean found his initials twin among the Year 2 students. Ee Chean’s surname is Tan so I can see why this was a pleasant surprise to him. Thanks for posing Eng Cheong!

And this is what Ee Chean chose as the name on his journey. So cute right?!

This picture trumps all – it is by far the cutest! It also generated a whole lot of comments on facebook, becoming one of the more loved photos among all the ADSALympic photos.

So nice of the Year 2 boys to comply to a senior’s request for a photo.

Myself and Chwan Horng before everyone got a little more stressed out.

L-r: Ee Chia, Steven, Angela and Narjit.
Ee Chia worked really hard on the banners for our team. The job was delegated to her as she is the most artistic one in class. Alongside a few others lah, don’t emo.

This is Batch 2 practicing for their performance. Everyone was trying to do some last minute fine tuning. It was almost impossible for all batches to practice constantly due to our overbearing schedule.

Doing some last minute dance routines at the squash court. Yes, we have a squash court. Let it out, it is okay to be envious, shh, it is okay.. *rubs*

This is how Jimmy deals with stage fright.

Our class is seriously so small that our entire cheerleading team could practice in a single squash court.

Not exactly ideal but we only had minutes before the performance and were nervous like hell!

Damn hot in there with everyone sweating due to nervousness and also the lack of any sort of ventilation. Still smiling though!

As I was about to caption this picture, Lie Yuen walked in to my room to moan about our day/discuss dinner/weekend plans so…. which movie you want to watch ah woman? Robinhood or Kidnappers?

Everyone look so cute in their headgear!

Trust batch 4 to come up with a creative name!

The eventual champions. Sorry I gave it away.

Batch 5 made sure we knew they were there with their super glowing jerseys!

Our dear lecturers who sat in as judges for the cheerleading event!
L-r: Dr. Nanditha, Dr. Niekla, Dr. Kalyan and Dr. Senthil.

Presenting Batch 4!

I love it that the boys held pompoms too!

Wonder if the ones at the bottom felt any pain.

Batch 4′s Diazepom’s cheerleading routine.

Some team spirit thingie we did at the beginning of our act.

Being in the front line, it was our job to lay down the banners.

GO GO SHOCKERS!

Too bad Wuan Phing didn’t manage to capture our fan formation! See the video for the full formation:)

We have this formation called The Bridge where Sock Nee runs across the boys’ backs. I was supposed to be an extra boy but after being all drama queen and squealing and screaming everytime Sock Nee stepped on me, they kicked me back out to join the girls shaking the pompoms. So happy to be back as a girl.

Everyone feared for Lie Yuen’s life with this formation. It was a three layer pyramid with the second layer’s boys’ hands extended all the way up, holding on to her feet. She then falls straight down from the top to the waiting hands below.

One of our prettiest formations!

Lie Yuen and Steven with their synchronized cartwheels.

See us being worried for Lie Yuen!

Poh Yee and Sock Nee’s mouths are the cutest here!! <3

See the video okay! The first video is shot in HD by our lecturer Dr. Kalyan and the second one was with my camera by Brenda. The second video is of course not as pro as the first but at least you can see Jimmy’s super high jump!

Batch 1′s Shockers Cheerleading routine

From the side. heh.

Batch 3 performed after us and gave it their all. They have been practicing for more than a month prior to the competition and with Deniece as their squad leader, they pretty much dropped all the jaws in the badminton court that day.

Gerviene as the damsel in distress during the siren call at the beginning (just watch the video!). Oh yeah, the Batch 3′s team name is Sirens (or was it Sirenz?).

Check out the hairography!

The Batch 3 can seriously seriously dance. There’s one part where their tummies tuck in and their chest stick out and back in in quick succession…that was awesome. I tried that in front of the mirror and failed embarrassingly.

With squad leader Deniece taking the lead.

More hairography from the ladies.

For amateurs (well, the most professionals among all the amateurs that day) they can really really bend!

Gorgeous pompoms from Batch 3 as souvenirs for the judges.

Batch 3′s Sirens Cheerleading routine

Thunder from Batch 2 had a great mix of songs which included Ice Ice Baby!!!

I thought the T formation was a nice touch!!

They all look really cute together. Like tiny mushrooms. Hahaha.

And then peeking out from under their mushroom pompoms!

CY YOU DAMN SEXY LAaa. Especially when you walked out to the front with that super intense look in your eyes, sending electricity to all the judges (Dr. Kalyan and Dr. Senthil also ng fong kor..haha) to the Sorry Sorry song.

<3 I wish to see you boys performing the entire dance number. Too bad it was so short.

Always the best at designing banners.

Batch 2′s Thunder cheerleading routine part 1.

And here’s part 2!

The last to perform were the dentistry babies, our super juniors from Year 1.

There is one particular move that I liked a lot! The girls had this puppet move where they have their arms sticking out robot style and then they turn their heads to us in puppetry fashion. Nice touch!

I must apologize though as I don’t have Batch 5′s video up on youtube and I must not procrastinate any longer with these posts so I won’t be showing Batch 5′s video here. It’s on facebook though…I think.

It was certainly a rewarding experience coming in at 2nd place after the few but intense cheerleading practice which was done military style by Maxis. This is probably the last time that I’ll ever get to be part of a cheerleading team.

For those who are not from my university or my course, ADSALympics is an annual sporting event held by the AIMST Dental Students’ Association. It is basically a crazy week of non stop sports, reducing us to soggy tissues at the end of it all.

On Day 1 we had the long awaited Cheerleading event followed by the Basketball game on that very same day. Swimming, Dodgeball, Ping Pong, Badminton, Futsal, Amazing Race..all within the span of one week. On Monday would be track and javelin and on Tuesday, we hope to be done with the rest of the Dodgeball matches.

I never knew one human being could do much in such a short span of time. Ask any dental student (who contributed ahem ahem ahem clears throat) and they would raise one finger with the help of the other finger, supported by raising their knees slightly for a larger force…..just to show you that they are still alive.

Body Evolution (our local massage center located at our usual dinner spots) would be filled with BDS people over the next few days. I had my full body massage there a few days ago and if any of you saw ugly red spots on my right and left arm (bilateral ugly red spots), that’s because the china masseuse talked me into getting the hot cup treatment. Don’t know what is it lah, I thought she wanted to use the cow bone on me to ‘kuat sah’ and before I knew it, my flesh was being sucked into tiny bowls. I had a very turtle moment and it hurt like a mofo bitch. That’s why it is very important to send your children to chinese schools.

SO! Here’s a summary of our cheerleading preparations over the past few weeks. All these photos were up on facebook weeks ago but privatised to only my classmates as we did not want to show any of the juniors or lecturers what we had in store for them come ADSALympics Day 1! Our hard work really paid off with all the awesome comments we have been getting. For eight days of practice, I think we did pretty good. We got second place though Maxis wanted us to be number one! We are complacent people and it was more than we could have asked for! Full coverage on the Cheerleading event will be after this post. PROMISE.

Photos are below but do watch the video of Batch 1′s entire cheerleading journey thus far. PLEASE WATCH AH. I took such a long time to put it together.

Our first ever practice was held at the jetty in our housing area, BLM. Trivia: The jetty is rumoured to be haunted after 7pm.

The happy faces of the eager participants.

Ee Chean with our squad leader, Maxis. The girls from the other batches had a good laugh when they found out that our squad captain was a guy. I tell you, he is the best squad leader EVER. So determined, so focused.

HAHAHA my favourite photo of Chwan Horng which he hates. It’s like he was fantasizing about something.

Me loving Nien who was protecting my baby. My baby MBP contributed to the group’s cheearleading lessons. Then the monster behind us is negligible. No need to care about him.

Monster scared of paparazzi.

Touristy photo with the Merbok river which runs through our housing area, runs under the bridge which we take to uni everyday, runs all the way to the sea and bypasses the foothills of Gunung Jerai. I’m like studying at a fucking resort place. Ahhhhh.. but why don’t I appreciate it and hire some boat and explore?

Plenty of photo taking during our first practice because the sun was lovely.

Monster dribbles water from his chin seductively.

Got warm up session somemore..hahaha.

Showing you how it is done wtf

Sett abit lost the plot.

One of our first few attempts at hoisting up the flyers.

Zhu Zen has a fear of heights.

Maxis just climbs on top of anybody forgetting that he and whoever who was kesian enough to be the base weighed about the same.

Just trying a few positions to see which fits.

The humble beginnings of our female star. GO LIE YUEN!

Should see the video of Poh Yee screeching and screaming when she was climbing on top of Andy.

Ee Chean’s attempt at being a flyer.

Cze-Yin’s turn.

The boy bridge. Initially, Lie Yuen and Sock Nee were supposed to run across it together. I was also supposed to be on one end of the bridge as an extra boy, since there weren’t enough boys in the team and the only girl who had the physique (body mass) of a guy was me, so fml. Nothing has changed since kindergarten, as Lie Yuen reminded me. Sad flashbacks of wearing a tuxedo and twirling my classmate who was wearing a yellow dress, dancing to the song “Happy Together” at our kindergarten concert played in my head. Not enough boys back then too.

I love boys’ backsides.

The original fan members. Only remaining members towards the end was me and Narjit.

LMAO at Cze-Yin. Why is she always so funny..*wipes tears from eyes*. It’s like her world has a totally different gravity pull.

Our mad squad leader trying out the vision in his head.

One of our star flyers too!

The two lightest ones in the group with the two strongest bases.

Everybody tried to give their own ideas.

As Andy said in cantonese, “Ngo dei Batch 1 mou mat yeh geh, hai cheh tor jek” (Us Batch 1 people don’t have much one, only got damn a lot of cars.) 37 students in my class, I think we have 33 cars.

For our second cheerleading practice, Maxis found a shady area near the first guard house at uni. It was a spot that most of us did not even know existed. Another reason to give my hat off to him.

L-r: Xin Yi, Poh Yee, Pei Zhi, Angela amidst the brown leaves.

Sock Nee so cute <3

Narjit and Socknee so cute <3

That’s right Joe, cheerleading in your formal clothes.

Housemates photo!!

Ah Thong trying out some moves.

Obligatory photo with the grass.

While I’m at it..

Monster Jimmy actually gives a very nice commentary in the Batch 1′s Cheerleading Journey video! He explains how he does his now famous jump that wowed the whole school. SO PROUD OF YOU MONSTA.

For the past few years as Lie Yuen’s sister, best friend, classmate, housemate, ex college classmate, KL kaki lang… I have always had a feeling that she used to cheerlead in high school but would always get scolded from her for getting my facts wrong. Seems that I was right all along. She does have natural cheerleading talents! Climbing up to the third layer..etc.. she can do it all lah.

Both hands have to raise at the same time so that the flyer will feel more stable.

Pure look of terror on Sock Nee’s face!

Narjit giving Cze-Yin a kiss.

Xin Yi the goddess with her humble followers bowing at her feet.

Chwan Horng tried to run away from me in case I snap another photo of him to frame him.

Zhu Zen’s japanese emoticon eyes. <3

Must teach Cze-Yin to stand like a woman.

Auditioning for flyers.

Looking for cheerleading videos to inspire the group.

Looking back at the photos, we really had a lot of fun practicing as a team.

It’s almost like I’m in some huge campus in a foreign country where the ground is always clean and never muddy.

I love this picture of Sock Nee and me!

This would make an awesome Maxis Broadband advertisement. We were gathering around to watch the youtube video which we replicated with a few modifications.

Can see everyone’s shock expression. This is the part where the japanese boys did that crazy high jump which Jimmy successfully pulled off.

Practicing some cheerleading steps.

An accident happened.

CSI came to investigate.

Hopefully the dead leaves can help with the decomposing process.

At our third practice, we had it at Gemilang the futsal court. Maxis was taking this so seriously, he even printed out instructions for everyone. We were so proud of Maxis for taking so much initiative that we scolded each other if any of us forgot to take the paper home. LOL.

Practicing the dance for the first time.

Dinner after that third practice was at a rather high class chinese restaurant. But shared among so many people, it was only RM10 per person.

Sock Nee and her monster. I had to  force him to open his eyes because he was spoiling all the previous photos.

Maxis and Yi Ting who is practically our classmate now.

L-r: Thong, Me, Zhu Zen and Nien.

L-r: Nien, Lie Yuen and Ee Chean.

After class, we gathered to start on the pompom making process. It was a futile session as the material used was not ideal.

I did ask them to smile properly!

We felt like a china factory.

Wah, Wuan Phing and Jaya dressed for the occasion.

Long story short, most of the pompoms were done by my grandmother, mum and me as I thought it would be better that I finish the pompoms since if a few people took it back to their respective hometowns during the holidays to complete, there would not be any form of standardization. So, I took one for the team!

George Washingthong.

The science student who is also a cheerleader. It is possible.

Ba di ya…dancing in september..~

Here comes the bride..

Trying out our skinny pompoms.

Wig test passed.

Bra test passed.

Warming up again. Very fake one la.

This was our second run through with the music. It was already our second last practice. Hahaha.

Trying to get the dance moves perfect.

Ah Thong poses for a squashed like a fly photo.

After our one week holiday, we rented a badminton court somewhere in town for our final rehearsal. It was also the first time we attempted that super dangerous three layer formation where Lie Yuen falls backwards to the waiting arms of the boys.

Lie Yuen falling. Sorry my camera sucks.

This formation was also thought of super last minute. I think the actual performance was our second or third time going through the whole routine. *bows*

Pompoms are good to go!

The banner was done creatively by Ee Chia, Nien, Chwan Horng and a few others. I loved the glittery gold paint! We have a banner that rolls down from the top of the three layer formation. You can see that in the video!

———-

With my current one week holiday in NUS enjoying the super fast internet connection here, I’ve been putting in a lot of backlogged photos into drafts so yeah, my blog is catching up quite a bit with my life!

The dental dinner was very much anticipated by the first batch of dental students here at AIMST.

Read about the 2008 and 2007 dental dinner here!

It being our last, most of us were having a hard time trying to decide what to wear. For myself, I knew that I needed something long. Of course must be something with a plunging neckline too, hehe. That’s just the way I roll contrary to what my mother thinks. It’s a nice present.

I just wanted opposite of everything that I’ve ever had. No more letting my hair down or even dresses that ends above the knees. I don’t know if I made any fashion boo boos lah, but oh wells, variety in life bla bla bla. Clutch a little bit unavoidable since most clutches looks the same. Sometimes it gets a little bit annoying because formal wear fashion has only so many varieties but still, definitely much better than being a guy.

I did contemplate on treating myself to a mani and padi but Jolene The Nail Artist from 2003 finally emerged from the depths of my many personas and said, “For fucks meh pay so much,” so I decided to do it myself. Since Jolene The Sticker Monster (another one of my many personas) has quite a lot of nail bling blings, I, Jolene The Poor Dental Student (obligatory persona to provide for a better future for my family – current and future. Current because I must maintain poor dental student status so that my dad doesn’t kill me when I tell him that my bank account is high and dry before the month is up and future because dentists usually can put their kids through university) shall make use of this fact. I think most of you might be lost at this point. It’s okay, read again.

Oh before I go on to the pictures, here are full length photos of me from all three years:

2007:

Don’t have full length=( but it ends around the knees, and yes, this is the same dress I wore to the Nuffnang Blog Awards.

2008:

I like my hair the most here.

2009:

Most favourite neckline. Hair, hmm.

Faster say nice!

I think you should look at it again.

This is also a promotional gimmick to get my customers to have faith in Preciosa crystals which is just as shiny, if not more shiny than Swarovski crystals. It’s like an equally good crystal brand lah, that I got duped into selling. I thought I was buying Swarovski. But it’s okay, turns out that some customers are quite pro when it comes to crystals and some of them love Preciosa! Yay!

Tiny gold beads usually used in nail art. I’m selling also! RM3.50! Go see this link for my nail bling blings!

Cze-Yin and I went to get our hair done without Lie Yuen because she was at home with one of her many personas too. To name a few, she has Lie Yuen The Self Hair Stylist Persona (whom she was at home with), Lie Yuen The Comic Doodler Persona, Lie Yuen the Otaku persona, Lie Yuen the Dog Lover persona, Lie Yuen the Lomo Crazy Photographer and so on. There are many people living in our house. Multiples of three.

Sorry yeah, I worked quite long on it so must show you again. I stuck each bead on one by one!

Sick of seeing me photographing my nails, Cze-Yin wanted in on it as well.

Wahh..so sparkly! Preciosa crystals FTW!

She didn’t like her curls though and came home to get Lie Yuen to rectify it for her.

Ee Chean and Chwan Horng were there with us getting their hair done as well. We booked the slots a whole month in advance, damn kiasu right?

This is what they were doing before they put everything up. What I wanted was a high bun but they didn’t quite give me that. Don’t know why the bun didn’t hold up well.

Housemates in Lie Yuen’s room with her purple mirror that has been with her since Year 1.

As you can see, her purple mirror is rather portable. She also has very good taste when it comes to decorating.

Outside our house were two handsome boys and one beautiful girl who eventually won best dressed for her exquisite qipao.

Getting a bit emotional. We wanted a picture in our dresses as housemates right outside our house. Something to look back on in the years to come, don’t you think? The rusty gate, the tiny patch of vegetables planted by the next door popo and the brochure-strewn porch, sigh. Only 5 more months now before we say byebye. If I don’t study hard, maybe I will have to stay there alone for another year. Boo.

Designated driver for the night. But Lie Yuen took over after clubbing that night because you know why lah hah.

As Poh Yee was one of the earliest to arrive, with her standing around the reception area, many people taught that it was a wedding and that they were at the wrong place!
L-r: Poh Yee in her white gown, Pei Zhi, Brenda, Xin Yi, Myself, Sock Nee, Cze-Yin, Narjit, Lie Yuen and Angela.

Brenda in a black halter dress that swept the floor together with me.

L-r: Chwan Horng, Ee Chean, Chee Wen and Joe. I’m not sure if Joe was nominated, but Chee Wen took home best dressed for that night. I know everyone was in a suit *rolls eyes* but Chee Wen’s one had a really good cut!

Poh Yee and Cze-Yin posing together since they both wore white.

Poh Yee with the beige Zhu Zen.

As you can see, we could not stop taking photos. Pretty soon I am going to run out of captions already.

L-r: Magesh, Praveena and Bala. The two boys have rather good taste when it comes to clothings! I think they should have been nominated for Best Dressed Male.

L-r: Samuel, Charis, Ghayatri, Myself.

I love Charis’ dress!! All that bling bling on the boobs! <3 Classy!

Batch 1 girls SS-ing again. Different angles mah, sorry la.

We wanted to take colour coded photos but I think we got distracted half way. So here are a few anyway.

With Professor Comfort and Dr. Robinson, who have been with us through thick and thin since the beginning of the BDS course!

Chwan Horng ambil kesempatan.

L-r: Charis, Shing Hui, Gillian (who was nominated for Best Dressed Female), Ei Leng, Gabriel, Phebe and …um, someone help me! Sorry I forgot your name..:((( though I see you in the locker room everyday (((((((((

I love Phebe’s dress!! It is so different!

Myself and the handsome CY!

Ahhh…my two lovely juniors Sabrina and Gerviene who made the exam season more bearable by responding to my crap on facebook. Thanks babes! <3

L-r: Aimee, Sabrina, Myself and Gerviene. Had to have one with the reception counter!

I thought the Batch 3 boys looked rather dashing so I positioned myself right in the middle.
L-r: Navin, Phillip, Kenneth, Me, Aik Munn, Chew Weng (whom I always mix up with Wah Seng) and Chin Kai. Chin Kai was the emcee for that night and I think he did a fantastic job playing the Ah Beng stereotype. It’s not like he overdid it, you can see that plenty of his own personality was up there on stage with him!

One of the few solo photos of myself. It was a sad night for me as my second SD card fucked up on me. It made weird lines across the photos, with grey areas etc etc. Some photos were lost and some of the more kooky ones were the affected ones. So much sadness in this world.

One more with the entire reception area.

Just realized that Pei Zhi and I have similar clutches. Eh actually almost all of us had white-silver clutches! LOL. Batch 1 dentistry girls and their similar tastes, tsk tsk.

Josiah and myself.

Xin Yi was nominated for Best Dressed Female too! Love the slightly bondage style but in such a happy colour.

Jamie and Brenda – The GIrls in Black.

I love Sock Nee’s choice! The blue really stands out and also adds to the many colours when we stand together. Thank you for bringing a piece of rainbow to our class photos, Sock Nee.:)

Zhu Zen and myself. Who was the photographer? So lousy wan!

A few of the girls with Dr. Niekla (in black) and her daughter (in white).

Nien and I before entering the hall. Nien bought her toga dress from UK when she was there for her year end holidays! You have to touch the material.. so beautifully thick!

Props to Ei Leng for her gorgeous style. Firstly, love the design as it really shows off her curves, love the colour and the fascinator? WIN! Why? The black dots were garnished with blings from The Sticker Monster. <3 Totally adds to the glamour.

It’s people like Sock Nee and Ei Leng who brighten up an otherwise sea of blacks. Not that most of the girl wore blacks, but dare to go against convention!

See how awesome Sock Nee’s blue goes with Gerviene’s red as well?

One with Gerviene.

Batch 2 girls posing and I pull a paparazzi at the side. Don’t you just adore Carmen’s dress? (far left) I have one of her posing for me but as fate would have it, it HAD to be one of the spoiled photos. BAH.

L-r: Me, Narjit, Janice, Kaixuan.

Myself and my other damn funny junior, Jennifer! I thought your outfit was so Princess Jasmine. The slinky cloth, the hair, the make-up, the bustier (?), the sash, the works! And apparently people said I looked like The Queen as my choice of outfit was rather regal. So…we were royalties that night!

The folks at my table. For three years in a row now.
Up l-r: Cze-Yin, Nien, Ah Thong, Myself, Ee Chean
Bottom l-r: Brenda, Poh Yee, Lie Yuen, Zhu Zen, Chwan Horng.

Half the class with our beloved dean, Prof. Smales.

The other table.
top l-r: Xin Yi, Pei Zhi, Zhu Zen, Brenda, Lie Yuen, Pih Yee, Nien, Sock Nee, Myself
bottom l-r: Angela, Sett, Joe, Maxis, Chwan Horng (why close eyes!), Ah Thong and Jimmy.

All of us were fussing over Dr. Brindha and Dr. Karthik’s baby boy, Darshan! And don’t you just love Dr. Brindha’s blue sari??? I could lose myself staring forever into this shade of blue.

L-r: Brenda, Nien, Dr. Karthik, Narjit with Darshan, Dr. Brindha, Cze-Yin and Jamie.

So so so so so cute!!!!!! He has so much wisdom in his little baby face.

So the opening act was by a bunch of hot chicks from Batch 5. I don’t know their names. I hardly know anybody from Batch 5. It is always the case for any Year 1 dental student.

Playing with Sett’s brother-in-law’s DSLR.

The VIP table looks on intently.

The hot chicks at my table.

Like how they say it in the magazines and newspapers when they photograph celebrities and politicians: Jolene and Nien share a light moment.

The dinner was also to introduce the new AIMST Dental Students’ Association Committee 09/10. I’m finally done with secretarial work. *dusts hands*

The committee strikes a post for the camera.

Oh cute little ballot holders for the Dental King and Queen and best dressed candidates.

Deniece wows the entire school with her sizzling belly dance moves. She jiggles in sections!! Too amazing.

Myself and Janice.

Steven and I! Steven’s one of the few international students we have in dentistry. He is from Seychelles Island! So cool right! He was telling me that the people in his country speak French.

This is our other international student, Nadia who is from Kenya and is now in the third batch! I think we have another one or two international students. There’s even one international student from China in the first year.

This is Ke Ke, my Batch 4 junior.

Yii Ping is one of the few girls on campus who can work the electric guitar.

The three person band doing their thang.

SEI KAM MOU. Here’s Jimmy practicing his skills with a DSLR. He would soon get a DSLR a week after dental dinner.

The clever system they derived for the voting process. Each label comes with a slit, so you pretty much can understand, I don’t have to come up with words to describe the process.

Melvin the ADSA president squatting and digging some food from his buccal sulcus with his tongue. Hehehe. This photo made many laugh on Facebook.

The ever hyper Batch 4 girls did a dance that brought many of us back to the 90s, early noughties. N’Sync’s Bye Bye Bye and Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time to name a few.

Old ladies like me appreciate songs from the 90s.

Dr. Niekla belts out Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love Of All. Dr. Niekla can SING! Not only is she a brilliant pediatric dentist, she had an album and everything when she was in high school and quit the singing business to pursue her dentistry studies. My lecturer was a pop star back in Indonesia!! I can’t get over it, it’s just too awesome.

It has been a tradition for the Batch 1 to put up a video and this year, Jimmy came up with the idea to make a parody of this funny Thai commercial about exaggeration over the simplest things.

Here’s the video:

Ah Thong laughs at himself on the screen. I’m getting some Oscar/Golden Globes vibes here. Heh, like they are all dressed to the nines like how they are in the awards as they watch snippets of their award winning performances.

After the video was the part where a couple of students from each batch were sent up on stage to compete for the Dental King and Dental Queen title. The winner was Khim Yik from Batch 3 and Stephanie who is from Batch 2! This is Khim Yik’s second win! He first won the title when he was in Year 1!

The two reps from my class are Narjit and Joe.

This is Khim Yik!

This is Xin Le and Shanmugam from Batch 4. The couples were asked to act out a situation on the spot and I think these two did quite a good job!

A dance by Batch 2!

Batch 2′s drama was damn cute lah. The red cloth is the gingiva and those white stuff are of course teeth. It’s a story about a few teeth in the mouth of a boy. Whoever who was doing the voiceover (I think Carmen was one of them) did such an amazing job!

Then you have the bad guys, who are none other than evil S. Mutans. Streptococcus Mutans is the commonest bacteria which contributes to tooth decay, so of course all the dental students roared with laughter. So geeky of us!

Myself and Melvin while I was on the way to the toilet.

Wouldn’t be able to forgive myself I didn’t get one with the mirror.

Sigh, the sadness starts here. I have a few nice pictures on my own with awesome poses on the stairs, at the table etc. But it was all damaged by some stupid fucked up glitch with my SD card. I have digital camera phobia now. I never want to lose photos again, ever. And it had to happen with the pictures of my last dental dinner ever.

At least this one is still here. I’m going to have to ask you to excuse the chunk of an arm.

Crowning Dr. George as the best dressed lecturer.

And for the last time….Zephyr.

Zephyr is a band formed by my classmates and in their heydays (a time when they were less occupied with clinics and the likes) they actually played in places like Halo Cafe and were quite well known around campus.

If our schedule doesn’t free up and what with us finishing the course soon, this was their last performance.

Ah Thong and me! His tie quite different right!

Carmen and myself! Carmen was Chee Kiang’s senior (by one semester only) at IMU when he was there doing pharmacy for 6 months. And then she too left IMU to become my junior here. Hehe. Another transferred coursemate of Chee Kiang’s is Philip who used to be Chee Kiang’s junior when they did A-levels together in Singapore. He then pursued dentistry here as my Batch 3 junior.

Soo Huan, who won best dressed with her beautiful qipao.

l-r: Vivian, Me, Zhu Zen, Poh yee, Kaixuan, Soo Huan and Sylvia.

Brenda and I with Dr. Sonu, our pediatric dentistry lecturer.

Yii Ping and I. She’s got such a gorgeous smile!

Zephyr’s adoring fans.

Chwan Horng and I.

Narjit and me.

Oooh sexiness. (not me lah)
l-r: Deniece, Jeanette, Me

San leong.

Jamie and Me. Nice lace!!

Me and my darling housemate! Nice right the swirly thing she did to her eyes?

A more decent one of Lie Yuen and I.

By far the sweetest couple in BDS (the rest also very sweet..but the guys must take a leaf out of David’s book okay!) This is Kimra and David who have been together since their first year. They are now in third year already. Like most couples here in dentistry, they are always together. A particular sweet moment was during the futsal ADSALympics event. Someone kicked the ball and it hit Kimra on the head with a loud smack. David left the court and immediately rushed to her side and rubbed her head. SO SWEET RIGHT. It was by far the most exciting part of the game for me. *guy sports bore me*

Eh, another photo with Bala and Praveena!

Wilander and me!

Wah Seng and me!

Wah smexxy Peta and me. So onz your dress! I love it!

Oooh, this was a spoilt photo as well. But luckily the important parts of the photo was still good. So here it is, looking like some sidebar image link! Jacqueline and I were excited that we both had bling bling eyelashes.

The sides of myself and Jacqueline.

L-r: Encik Mansor, Encik Yahya, Myself, Lishen and Encik Abdullah. They are our dental technology lecturers.

Ei Leng and her gorgeous fascinator again! Courtesy of The Sticker Monster! (tak habis-habis promoting) ;P

L-r: Jeeva, Venga and me.

Sett and me. What’s with the thumbs up?

Jimmy and Brenda. I had one with Jimmy too but it was one of the spoilt photos, sigh.

I like this one of Andy and Lie Yuen!

And this one of Poh Yee with our guy classmates!! Regret that I didn’t have one like that!!! Why didn’t I think of it!

Before everyone made their way home, we tried to gather all the classmates for a photo together. However, Cze-Yin and Andy were missing from the photo.

So I made this! Jimmy and I have an on-going bet that anyone who can make the most realistic complete class photo will be able to laugh at the loser who will have to eat a ball of ZOE. (ZOE is the material used to fill the tooth temporarily and the material is dough-like) I’m still procrastinating my entry as he did a pretty damn good job. LOL. Let him wait lah till he forgets about it.

Room service!

Was driving out of the carpark when I saw Jimmy lying on the stairs. Somehow he looks like a dwarf with the optical illusion.

After the dental dinner and it being our last, many of us made our way over to Mois. It was fun because people from different batches came along. The crowd was huge! About a quarter of the club were taken up by dentistry students and some of us called our friends from other courses along. So basically Mois was filled with AIMST students that night.

Sock Nee looking so adorable here.

A few drinks before everybody warmed up.

Me and my sweaty face and my chewing gum.

If you think Chee Wen looks red here, this is nothing.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY CAMWHORING SKILLS!

This looks like a really nice movie poster. With Bala smiling in orange and Sett smiling knowingly at him! It’s another one of my distorted photos.

A clearer one of the two of them.

The girls looking happy.

Wah Adrian is SO feeling it.

L-r: Adrian (needs a tissue!), Aimee and Aik Munn.

l-r: Stephanie, Charis and CY.

SCARY RIGHT!! It’s like he used red paint on his face.

Poh Yee and her bling bling dress.

Andy declines a drink.

l-r: Pei Zhi, Xin Yi and Poh Yee.

Here’s a clearer view of Poh Yee’s super bling red dress.

Whatever is in the jar looks kind of gross. It’s not a mixture of puke, don’t worry.

Like every other outing to Mois, we ended at the night at the nearby mamak.

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So I decided to travel back to my standard one academic memories to see if I can get a better response from her.

I asked, “So sudah belajar banyak benda di Standard one hor! What have you learned? Bola? Buku?” 

Then she started saying, “One, two…”

“Oh! You’ve learned how to count! Okay, One, Two…?”

“Three…four…five…six………” she went on.

I cheered her on until seventy before I decided that if I didn’t get started with our treatment, we’d be one of the last to leave the clinic.

Malay words were rather limited but strangely, she responds when I say the words out in bahasa baku. Especially when I sing it the way we were taught how to do in standard one.

If I wanted to ask if she felt any pain, I said, “Sakit tak? S-A SA, K-I-T KIT! SAKIT!”

She shakes her head.

“G-I GI G-I-T GIT. GIGIT!” and she bites!

Awesome.

Since she was such a good little girl, it was a practice to reward them with little stickers after their treatments so I let her choose a sticker from the sticker box (not mine, they didn’t ask me to be a supplier, boo.) She didn’t understand what I was doing. 

So I said, “Choose one! S A SA, T-U TU! SATU!”

She took one and left the clinic to find her daddy. 

So glad I found a solution. S-O So L-U- LU T-I TI O-N ON. SOLUTION. 

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As time goes by, we have started working on real patients and haven’t had much time to breathe, let alone to update about what has been going on in the school of dentistry. As a final year dental student with almost 8 more months to go, I think I am fit to write in further detail. My last detailed write up was in Year 1. I wanted to write one after I completed every year but I just didn’t find the energy to.

This is not a very good write up as it was actually a reply to someone who was asking some questions at the lowyat forums. So here we go:

Getting Into AIMST’s Bachelor of Dental Surgery Programme

I remember I was asked to use my actual pre-u results to apply for the course and the process was super stressful because I was away at National Service and had to rely on my parents to do everything. What I can remember is that your forecast results will not be of any use. As for min. requirements, please check the AIMST’s Faculty of Dentistry website for updated information. Old ladies like me might not really remember exactly what the requirements were.

In recent times, AIMST Dentistry has opened their doors to JPA scholarship holders. Back when it was still new, there were many more seats available and there’s only about five foundation students in my class. Most of us are from STPM, A-levels, SAM and various other foundation programmes ie. CIMP, Uni of Otago Foundation… etc.

But no harm trying if you meet the min. requirements on the website! But keep in mind that priorities are given to AIMST foundation students. So if you are fresh out of form5, it’s best if you take the foundation course at AIMST if you are definitely sure about studying dentistry at AIMST.  As it is, there are plenty of students in the foundation course itself fighting for spots in the degree programmes at AIMST. The hottest course is obviously the MBBS course.

The recent addition of JPA scholarships for AIMST’s dentistry course might be good news to some of you but to those of you, who are like me, not very smart, might be happy to know that up to RM100k in PTPTN loans can be available for you as long as you meet the requirements. (poor enough, results okay enough. Can you get into college with your SPM qualifications? Then should be good enough to get PTPTN.) It’s a loan that allows you up to 20 years to repay and has a 3% interest rate.

From the time I first entered, AIMST now allocate more seats to their foundation students and don’t forget that you’ll have to contend with JPA scholars as well. We first started off with about 50 seats but back then, only 41 seats were filled up. With some quitting midway to study medicine and some having to repeat a year or two, we were left with 37 students who thankfully have been together for the last four years.

Academic wise, we have mostly foreign lecturers who conduct the lessons and most of these lecturers have travelled across the globe to various universities. We have a physiology lecturer who wrote our textbook and has been to plenty of countries working as a lecturer. Local lecturers are few though. That’s for the medical faculty who used to conduct our medical subjects even though we were in the school of dentistry.

As for the school of dentistry, we also have plenty of foreign lecturers who are mostly specialists and have been extremely patient in imparting their wisdom to us noobs in the dental clinics. *suck up suck up* We have had visiting lecturers from the UK for the dentistry subjects in Year 1 and Year2 and our hospital director (who also doubles up as our Dental Public Health lecturer) who was once the director of the ministry of oral health division. She has helped a lot with assimilating our syllabus, making sure we are inline with the requirements of the accreditation board and the malaysian dental council.

Facilities At The School of Dentistry

If you are a new student at AIMST, then chances are you’ll be stuck staying in the hostels. Most of the seniors have left and gone to stay in nearby housing areas where the rent is so much cheaper.

But this bit of my post is about the facilities that we have at the school of dentistry.

I can’t find a clearer photo but this is the most recent picture I have of the entire dental building. It was taken from the admin building on the AIMST 2009 Convocation Day which explains the canopies below.

We have a simulation lab, dental technology lab, radiology department, one main polyclinic, another polyclinic for padiatric dentistry and orthodontic patients, various briefing rooms, two lecture halls that can accommodate roughly two hundred students each, oral surgery department, a reception polyclinic, locker rooms for the clinical students and a common room for the clinical students to faster faster go chup sofa to take afternoon nap.(I can usually be found fast asleep at 12-1.15pm everyday in the common room with my own blanket on one of the sofas. Don’t disturb me or I will bite.) My biggest competitors are Maxis and Poh Yee or any of the boys from 5.3.

Trying to kick CY out of my favourite sofa.

In the simulation lab, we have simulators for us to practice various procedures on. Year 2 students will spend most of their time there during practical sessions. It comes equipped with LCD screens for every seat as most procedures are explained using audiovisual equipments.

As for the dental technology lab, it is divided into a bigger one and a smaller one.

For the bigger dental tech lab, the students learn the basics of denture making, orthodontic wire bending and the likes there.

In the smaller dental tech lab, alongside a couple of permanent dental technicians, clinical students spend their free time completing dentures for their patients. We have come a long way now compared to almost four years ago where we didn’t even have our own centralized gas supply. Back in the good old days, the pioneer students shared a stove among themselves to melt wax for our denture making lessons.

In the radiology department, new patients are sent there to get diagnostic x-rays taken.

As for the polyclinics, there are 36 bays there and each bay is fully equipped with a dental chair and its supporting equipments. So at any given time of the week, groups of clinical students (Year 3 to Year 5) can be found working on their patients under the supervision of the clinical lecturers.

Here’s a photo I managed when I sneaked into the unfinished dental hospital late 2007:

A far cry from the skeletal version I saw! Each bay is occupied by an operator and a dental surgery assistant (could be a student, could be a DSA hired by the school as well.) and instruments are taken from a dispensary within the polyclinic. After each patient, the entire area is cleaned up and disinfected by the DSA.

For the orthodontic and paediatric dentistry polyclinic, the bays are fewer but it is appropriately decorated to make the paediatric patients feel at ease when they come in for their treatments.

The equipments are exactly the same as the ones found in the polyclinics.

We even have an oral hygiene instruction room where we educate the children about proper toothbrushing techniques.

In the oral surgery department, extractions and minor oral surgery procedures are done there. Most of the time our oral surgeon is there doing the more complicated procedures but he will supervise students who are carrying out normal extractions and other minor oral surgery procedures.

The locker rooms for the clinical students are for us to stash our scrubs overnight and our bags when we go into the clinics during the day. It was also an unwritten rule among us that all umbrellas are to be placed at the top of our lockers. Very pretty too!

As you can see, I wasted no time in personalizing mine. It was also a marketing gimmick for The Sticker Monster. Not to my own dental coursemates lah, but to be used as something to entice my customers on the sticker blog. I’ll remove the stickers when I graduate, or if any junior wants to take over my locker because of the stickers, LET ME KNOW! I’ll even throw a few stickers into the locker so you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

As for the common room, it is fully utilized by the dental students. Actually it reminds me a little bit of my ant farm when I was young. You know the kind that you purchase from Toys ‘R Us. You put some sand inside, a bit of sugar, and wait for the ants to come in and build their home? Same thing happened with the common room.

The school made a room specially for us to chill out in between clinics/classes, and we’ve gone in and studied/munched on snacks/slept/gossiped and so much more!

Kelvin, one of my juniors from Batch 2, had this hilarious idea to do up the entire place. He even drew an artist’s impression of it. Kelvin, if you want me to remove this pic, let me know alright?

The temperature in the common room is by far the most comfortable. The most uncomfortable aircondition temperature is the corridor between the dental technology lab and the simulation lab. I’m pretty sure I once saw icicles formed on the glass panels along that corridor.

The main function of the reception polyclinic is to assess new patients and to assign them to Year 3, Year 4 or Year 5 clinical students appropriately.

What you can expect in Year 1:

The basic sciences like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and very very basic dentistry. You’ll learn the anatomy of each and every tooth and you’ll be dealing with cadavers, focusing more on the head and neck region.

We have 10 cadavers the last time I checked (this was about 2 years ago?) in 2 tubs of formalin, fished out anytime an anatomy class was conducted. We even have names for the cadavers whom we affectionately call Stinky, Smelly and Yucky. With all due respect.

As for dentistry, you will have a group project somewhere in the middle of the first year on the public oral health services in Malaysia. We had to gather information regarding all the dental services around the country – army sector, dental clinics at schools etc etc. We made posters and they were up in the library as an exhibition. Our group walked away with second best poster I remember. Special mention, apparently. Till this day, I don’t know what my deputy dean meant by special mention.

For the practical aspect, we were started off with simple lessons in tooth carving and dental plaster manipulation. This was actually done early in the second year. As the first batch, plenty of kinks were still being ironed out (ie. some equipments were not ready yet). These practical classes are now carried out in year 1.

In your second year:

This is when things get heated up. Your subjects built up and you’ll get deeper into dentistry as we are then introduced to conservative dentistry (where you learn about dental caries, restorations and the likes), prosthodontics (learning how to make complete and partial dentures), dental materials, periodontology (the tartar/calculus between your teeth, scaling etc) ..and other more detailed stuff like oral anatomy (learn about the microstructure of the tooth and its surrounding tissues) and oral biochemistry (How your teeth functions, how your mouth functions…. functions and processes in the oral cavity, basically).

It’s also a very exciting year because you are finally able to enter the simulation labs and you will be learning how to make cavity preparations and do restorations on fake teeth or even real teeth (which we have to set in a plaster of paris jaw) which you have collected from dental clinics. You can finally touch the metal instruments which used to look really scary at any dental clinic. You will also learn how to make a complete denture and a partial denture.

You will learn all the basic clinical skills like restorations and scalings. Because of your denture lessons, you will be spending almost two afternoons a week in the dental tech lab. It is fun because the dental technology lecturers are really nice and the environment is really relaxed unlike a classroom or a simulation lab where you will get chided if your cavity is too big.

Second year is known to be a an extremely tedious year because there are plenty of medical and dental subjects to study. Most scary is pharmacology. You’ll feel angry because you didn’t want to be a doctor and feel like throwing away all the bloody medical subjects (pathology, microbiology, pharmacology) notes. I had like notes that reached up to my thighs okay. Studying for the final exam in second year was pure torture. Possibly the worst exams I ever had to sit for. SPM comes a close second. Throughout A-levels I was like, “wats happening..”. So was quite numb towards exams. Just surprised I didn’t fail. To this day I don’t know how I got through A-levels maths.

Aside from the medical and dentistry subjects, some humanities subjects are thrown in such as Communications and Social and Behavioural Sciences. If I’m not mistaken I had to study something to do with religion. This was not the stupid university papers we had to sit for (philosophy, psychology, critical thinking and three classes of english for general, specific and academic purposes) but actual subjects to pass dentistry. I absolutely loathed having to study for those subjects. Humanities were never my forte. They were all so vague!

in third year:

Your hours slow down a little. I would say it is almost a drastic change from year 2. At first my batch and the batch below me thought that the relaxed year was only for my batch since the dental hospital has yet to be ready at that time but it seems that the hours were almost as short for the second batch, and as we have recently heard, for the third batch as well.

In the first half of the year, you still have those dreaded medical subjects (medicine and surgery), but these will cease towards the second term. We get posted to nearby hospitals to observe how to clerk patients, learn to use the sphygmomanometer (take blood pressure) and basically do ward rounds. Super sien. I didn’t want to be a doctor! *struggles*

In third year, you will enter the clinics and start having patients of your own. You will start to formulate treatment plans and make diagnosis. You will then be treating these patients and it is up to you to arrange them according to your allocated sessions. (we started off with 2 sessions a week).

Your dental subjects will still be on-going. Second year subjects are studied in further detail and on top of that you now have dental public health (super dreaded subject), endodontics (root canal treatments), oral radiology, pain control and more. You will still have sessions in the simulation lab where you will start learning more detailed clinical techniques such as root canal treatments on the various teeth.

We were slowly weaned off the simulators and began taking each others’ medical and dental history in the clinics. This was before we were assigned patients. We also had to inject local anesthesia into each other during our local anesthesia practical classes. One of my classmates left the needle hanging at the back of my mouth next to my lower wisdom tooth (this was for an inferior alvenolar nerve block) because he panicked half way and returned it to my teacher. Oh my days. But thank god I was thoroughly numbed. Good times.

I just remember it was a damn relaxing year. Also because we were the first batch, so our dental hospital was not ready yet. Yes, we have our very own dental hospital which is also our dental school.

In fourth year:

Classes become so few that sometimes you even forget to go for class. Just kidding. This is because clinics will take up most of our time. At our peak, we had up to four sessions a week. Each session is from 9am to 12pm or 2pm to 5pm. The faster ones among us can fit in two patients. We also have four other sessions where we function as dental surgery assistants to our classmates whose groups have a session during that particular time frame.

But in the last couple of months, AIMST have started a training course for dental surgery assistants so we will have less to do and have more time and energy to focus on treating patients.

It is in this year that we are finally free of all medical subjects. We are introduced to oral surgery (extractions etc etc), paediatric dentistry, advanced cons (veneers, crowns etc). Classes are almost once or twice a week.

Somewhere in the middle of the year, under the oral public health subject, we were divided into nine groups of four to learn about the dental public sector at various parts of the country.

We travelled to Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu (i managed to visit Tasik Kenyir!), Kelantan, Johor and Perak. The more modern states were left out.

We had to do a presentation and report on what we learned etc.

In fifth and final year:

As for now, we have completed a compulsory oral health education visit to various kindergartens around the Sungai Petani district.

We went to these kindergartens to have some fun and to teach the kids there about good oral hygiene and at the same time, to woo them into the clinics for our paedo sessions.

We also completed a week in the oral surgery department (which is also located within our dental hospital) and there will be many more to come according to our new timetable.

We will also be going into hospitals in Sungai Petani and Alor Setar to observe their oral surgery departments and see actual procedures in operating theaters.

In year 5, we still have lectures on orthodontics, oral medicine, advanced conservative dentistry, oral surgery, dental public health, periodontology and almost all the important subjects relating to dentistry.

As for every other week, clinical sessions are going on as usual.

Since I’m only in the first half of my final year, I’ll continue to post it up here when new developments take place.

Assignments and Exams

I would say that the course is more exams orientated in your first two years with three module exams and a final exam at the end of your academic year. One year is divided into four modules with each module being approximately 3 months long.

If you fail a portion of your final exams, you will be given a chance to resit the papers sometime in August. But if you fail that as well, you would have to repeat your academic year. You are only allowed to repeat twice. This means if you fail Year 1, repeat Year 1, and say you pass it the consequent year, go on to year 2, fail it that year, then repeating year 2 is your final chance to repeat any academic year.

As for assignments, they may be few but they do contribute to your final exam results. As for those of us who are already in the clinics, our work in the clinics are being taken into consideration as well for the final results.

In the first two years, Problem Based Learning sessions are held at the end of every module. In PBL sessions, some materials such as a scenario, some diagnostic records and etc are given to the students to analyze the patients’ problems.

We were so happy when there were no more PBL sessions in the third year and fourth year. We spoke too soon because in the fifth year, we started having Orthodontic, Oral Medicine and Paediatric Dentistry seminars where it was basically PBL sessions all over again. This time subject specific too.

AIMST Dental Hospital

At AIMST, we have our very own dental hospital which is opened to anyone and everyone. Expectedly, most of our patients come from the surrounding villages. We have some who come from as far as Penang and Alor Star but these patients find it difficult to fit into our schedule as well. Treatment is free. We are extremely grateful to all the patients who have come so far to the AIMST Dental Hospital as we have been provided with opportunities to learn about a large variety of cases and also to fulfill our quota.

New patients would usually register at the reception and will be brought up to the reception polyclinic where one of our dental officers will do a thorough examination and decide which cases are appropriate for Year 3, Year 4 or Year 5 patients. The patients are placed on a waiting list and when the students need new patients, they will go down to the reception and deal with the admin there to get a new case.

The student will then personally make phone calls to these patients and slot them into their schedules. From here on, the patient is assigned to a particular student and the student needs to be responsible for the patient’s treatments and scheduling.

This is what we wear in the clinics.

We even have a write-up in The Star! Link!

AIMST Dental Students’ Association

In 2007, the AIMST Dental Students’ Association was founded and the first event we had was the Annual AIMST Dental Dinner. The third one is taking place on the 12th of December this year and so far, it has been a grand event that all dental students look forward to. Who wouldn’t like the chance to just go all out and dress up?

Dressed to the nines at the 2nd Annual AIMST Dental Dinner in 2008.

ADSALympics is also another event established by the association and the first ADSALympics was in 2008 where dental students from all the batches congregated together to battle it out at the sports arena in various sporting events.

Cheerleaders from the third batch who stayed enthusiastic throughout the entire week of games.

We even have our own t-shirt too! But I think a new one will be coming up soon enough.

Another two aimst dental traditions are the Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations and the Juniors’ Orientation.

The juniors’ orientation was initially done by the first batch of medical students who conducted it when the pioneer batch first entered dentistry in 2005. We then took on the task when the second intake came in! Now, the ADSA committee have taken charge of it entirely but it is usually the second and third years who are in charge of the games.

As for the Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations, it was the initiative of the third batch though the seniors have had their own mid autumn festival gatherings before that. Because of the third batch, all dental students come together every year at the clock tower-cafeteria area to play with lanterns.

This year, thanks to the efforts of the ADSA committee, a bazaar was held in conjunction with the celebrations and like every year, Kong Ming lanterns are released and it was a grand success this year as other students from the university were invited to partake in the celebrations as well!

Taken during our AGM where we elect the new committee.

The 08/09 ADSA committee during one of our weekly meetings. But seeing how tense everyone looked, this was probably near one of the events.

I think I covered almost all aspects of the school. Should anybody have anymore questions, feel free to ask me. (Sorry I cannot help you with admissions.)

For the lecturers who are worried about the pictures or information here, please feel free to let me know if there is anything I should amend!

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The AIMST Dental Students’ Association has really outdone themselves this time! We’ve only ever had internal events such as the ADSALympics (an annual sporting event among all batches… which i’ve never ever blogged about but hope I will someday) and the dental dinner. When I was in the committee, we’ve toyed with the idea of having a bazaar but with everyone’s irregular schedule (welcome to dentistry) it was difficult to come up with something.

So I have to say that I am very proud of the committee for pulling this off! The Mid Autumn Festival celebrations was never an official thing but they have successfully made it one this year. They even opened it up to the entire university and throngs of people came to take part in the festivities. Truly an AIMST event.

I took the opportunity to sell my stickers though it had absolutely nothing to do with mooncakes and full moons. That’s Jennifer and Deniece checking out my collection.

Swee Quin and Felicia were very sweet to layan as well!

I tell you ah, every class should have a Maxis. He can come up with the simplest money making ideas for zero cost. LOL. First there was that styrofoam platform with satay sticks sticking out of it, something like what you would find in a fun fair where you throw rubber bands at. Then there’s the lucky draw idea where he collected RM1 from everyone and if your name gets chosen, you’ll win half of the entire pool! Ingenious. 

L-r: Josiah, Andy and Phillip.

Jeanette who couldn’t win anything from that satay sticks-rubber bands game.

Batch 4 – They were selling sparklers and eyebrows grooming. Quite clever also, you don’t need much capital for eyebrows grooming. Sabrina, I think you can start offering your services around campus.

As for Batch 3, I didn’t see what else they were selling but I know there’s this thing called Sexy Potion. It’s Sarsi plus cincau. Interesting combination which tasted pretty good actually.

Batch 3 trying to promote their sexy potion. 

This was by Batch 2 and guys are the ones who always know the easy way out. The girls spent the whole afternoon making meehoon and stuff where else the guys just headed out to nearest coffee shop and came back with Satay. Which finished super fast too. -_-

L-r: Sook Mei, Gabrielle, Phebe, Gillian and Alice. 
Quite a nice variety they had there. 

Gorgeous handmade hairclips – props to Sook Mei.

L-r: Phebe, Gillian, Alice, Stephanie. 
They were the ones who came up with the meehoon. There was Tom Yum style and Tomato style! Not too bad for a bazaar food stall. 

Awww Jennifer, I love you for buying my stickers.  

Sorry, I can’t remember your names.. I think you girls are from foundation right? Thanks for dropping by the booth!!

Samuel, Adrian and Tee Luun try their luck at our super hard satay stick game. 

Tee Luun has got some long hands going on so he won quite a bit from us. Boo.

Soft toys for decoration.

The girls from batch 3. The one in the Yukata is Sylvia who I would say, deserves most credit for initiating the Mid Autumn Festival celebration among the AIMST dental students. She was the one who introduced us to Kong Ming lanterns two years ago and she has made it a point to gather her classmates to conduct the event for the past few years.

Some of the other drinks available that night.  What the HELL is Ball Soda?!

And I finally had my mooncake fix!! Though I’m still craving for some Lotus ones though.

Ling Hui and Yi ting with my mooncake. Damn cute.

The star of the night – Cheow Poh Yee with her fairy godmother Lie Yuen. 

Trying to be Fairy like.

So did what I do best – be disgusting.

The tailor had to get in on it as well.

Meanwhile, my old bed frame was used to hold up the backdrop. From the curvature of it, you can totally tell that I have serious weight issues.

Business!!!!

Zhu Zen and Poh Yee the Chang Er.

Chee Wen and Xin Yi with Chang Er as well. Initially the plan was to charge anyone who wanted to have their pics taken with Chang Er and Wu Gang (the tree chopper in the moon).

Poh Yee was just finding an excuse to wear those elaborate lashes she bought from Lie Yuen’s sis, Lie Peh. Go toilovelash.blogspot.com if you want some eyelashes too! The bling blings are from me. You know where to get them.

Here’s Sabrina working her magic with the tweezers. 

Thank you Swee Quin for buying so many stickers!!! <3 <3 <3 many hearts for you.

As with every event, our dean, Prof. Smales will make it a point to spend some time with us. He must be really happy that his pet project (The Faculty of Dentistry) has flourished into what it is today. 

The sticker sellers (Brenda was such a good sales assistant. I paid for two of her dinners.) took some time off to have a picture with their dean.

Prof. Smales joined the lucky draw as well.

Our “moon”. Could’ve been better. As in the choice of materials.

The moon is supposed to be yellow…come to think of it. Sorry guys. I gave a bad suggestion.

Propping my bed frame up needed four strong arms. This means…….:( Four strong arms need to prop me up as well.

Angela’s included.

Yi Chin actually bought stickers from me! Ng koi sai ah Leng chai, tai pai yau lei pong chan ah!

Having a go at that satay stick-rubber band game.

Oh yeah, we were also selling lanterns.

Prof. Luke checks out my sticker and rejected me when I tried to get him to buy some. Boo hoo hoo.

Me and my moon bitch.

Don’t know what he was doing with my sticker la.

Sett was forced to take on the role as Wu Gang. Too bad Chee Wen didn’t have his bunny costume.

With the axe in the shot.

Nien with the two main actors and the tailor.

l-r: The designer/tailor, Chang Er, Producer (I forked out over RM50 for materials, but don’t worry I have since claimed back from the class fund.), Designer/director, Wu Gang.

Oh wells, the more the merrier.

Sock Nee promoting our Lucky Draw.

This is Shao Chang! One of my very rare friends from another faculty. If you don’t stay on campus and don’t play in a band or go to Christian Fellowship sessions, the only people you’ll know at uni are your coursemates and lecturers. So quite happy that I have a MBBS friend. Must collect more!

Here’s my dear Praveena who moved down the road from me.

See the smile on Maxis’ face. Clearly a smile of someone duping his lecturers to part with their cash.

Can see him eyeballing the note. Hahaha.

Angela and one of the choki-choki that the rest of my classmates were holding. Nobody offered any to me!

Wu Gang and Chang Er opened for business.

Sales were pretty slow at the beginning but when it was time to make the pilgrimage to the sports complex to release the Kong Ming lanterns, our lanterns were selling like hot cakes! Totally sold out by the end of the night!

Gillian and her mee hoon.

Bought glow sticks from Ei Leng and Charis.

The one where Peta and Aimee tried to take pics with the backdrop for free! *hands on hips*

Myself and Aimee.

Aw Wish I had a nicer pic of my stall.

Batch 4 had this service to send out messages to people (reminds me of high school!) and I had one from a not so mysterious person with the message, “LIE > LAI” scrawled on it with a vengeance. I always look forward to the times when Lie < Lai. Usually when I do something better than Jimmy, then that’s when I’m allowed to use that. I sent one note to Poh Yee with a drawing of her sexy body, boobs and all.

OH LOOK! I can fit into the yukata.

Ah~~~ Sin Sang, mou ah…! Hou sui ge nei.. 

Hm, not demure enough.

A couple of students from the foundation course were sporting enough to don the opposite gender’s costume. This girl put on Wu Gang’s costume.

And her guy friend put on Chang Er’s costume!

Our walking sandwich board.

Brenda’s artwork.

When it was time for the Kong Ming lanterns to be set up, our class found out in dismay that we didn’t manage to get a lantern. It was our final year and we were really looking forward to the whole Kong Ming lanterns thing. 

I thought it was a clever idea to sell the lanterns so that it enticed non-bds students to participate in the procession.

Sigh, my photo taking skills have been sucking as of late. Don’t know what’s wrong with my camera. 

Again, too bad I don’t have a wide angled lens but if I did, you’d be able to see how beautiful the sky above AIMST looked that night. 

The white thing in the middle is the moon.

Chee Wen and Xin Yi with the sparklers they bought from Batch 4.

A clearer photo.

With Angela as well. Amazing how those sparklers can last so long.

Ah Thong trying to be scary.

l-r: Zhu Zen, Ee Chean, Psychosis

One of our many group pics.

Without flash.

I think Chee Wen took this picture. Good job!

Haih, wish I brought my tripod.

We were trying to emulate what we did to Jimmy back in Year 1.

Jimmy in Year1. 

Attempt no.2

L-r: Lie Yuen, Nien and Praveena

Why can’t we have a good picture? Why?!

At some point, Andy called out, “All the old people, come gather. Those above 23 years old one….come now. Take photo.” I looked at him and he changed, “Sorry! All above 22 years old one..”

Chee Wen the cyborg.

And like any responsible university student, it was time to clean up the mess.

This is a good attempt but I do wonder when will we ever take a proper class photo. Graduation day?!

Myself and Victor. Another friend from the MBBS course.

Sett destroys the moon.

I’m gonna miss all these big ass yumcha sessions which is quite normal for us already.

Here are some photos from the past four years worth of mid-autumn festival celebrations: 

This was in Year 4 and it was the second time they had the Kong Ming lanterns!

I actually prefer those metal frame ones with the glass paper.

Don’t mind him.

Some of the batch 4 juniors having their orientation at that time.

One of the very few interbatch group photo. I don’t think there’s any batch 3 junior here though.

That’s Lesley on the right! She’s Denise Tan’s (those from SMKSU would remember her!) younger sister! And in Batch 5, there’s Hsu Yin’s sister, Hsu Wern. The little sisters of my high school mate. As for Hsu Wern, we have more of a history. Her mum and my mum were classmates in Malacca, Hsu Yin and myself were primary and secondary schoolmates and my mum was Hsu Wern’s piano teacher!

That was when we had the Kong Ming lantern.

The quality of the pics nicer right.

Our group photo a year ago. You’ll be seeing more of this.

Back then i was solely a dentistry celebration.

The yearly pilgrimage to the sports complex to release the Kong Ming lantern. If you had better camera gear, you’d be able to take a gorgeous shot of the entire procession.

Melvin and myself.

Before sending our Kong Ming lantern up.

This was when Ah Thong managed to recuse our lantern which came crashing down to Earth.

Year 3 (2007). That was when the Kong Ming lanterns were first introduced to the dental students. Read about it here.  

Wow Zhu Zen actually looks different here! 

This was the first year where it was a dentistry event.

Group photo of the then third year students (us!).

When Prof. Smales and Prof. Luke pose for pictures, all dental students will flock there.

And we had fun with the sparklers. In Year 2, Lie Yuen and I went to the park near our house and whiled the night away creating pictures with sparklers! Here’s the link to that post.

ooh! and glow sticks back then as well!

As you can see, the lantern parade was quite small that first year.

Hmmm…I think when my canon dies (my camera turn over rate is worrying high) I’ll go back to Lumix.

All Kong Ming lantern noobs.

Expelliarmus!

Avada kedavra!

The Batch 1 and Batch 2 students who were already staying out of campus adjourned to one of the playgrounds for some games. We were like kids running around the playground! I think I play more in university than I did in high school.

Quite a crowd eh for some playground fun?

As for Year 2, we did it on a smaller scale. Only a few of us gathered to walk around Lagenda Heights (where most of my classmates were staying since back then we were still in the old campus.) This is like really ancient times, the days before the Semeling Campus is ‘finally ready’. 

I was still rather excited at that time as the only time I played lanterns was when I was a little girl. Coming to AIMST allowed me to relive my childhood.

Gotta love group lantern photos.

The girls when we were 19 (me, heh) -21 years old. 

Hahahahaha…this is a memorable photo. Yes, and I *had* to be in the middle. Thanks guys for not kicking me one side.

Octo-lantern boy!

Let’s go back further in time! Read my Year 1 blog post here. 

Meet the 19 years old Jimmy and 18 years old me. Like very skinny right both of us. I was just fresh out of National Service at that time.

The 20 years old Maxis.

It was only two weeks into dentistry at that time so what you see in this pictures are typical camp friendships (short lived but super friendly) compared to the familial bond we now share. I see these people more than I’ve ever seen any of my cousins. (except Shevie whom I saw everyday when I was a kid).

The girl in the grey shirt is Xiong Khee who left to do medicine. Two other classmates, Lydia and Carol, also left half way through Year 1 to do medicine. 

Lol, weird formation.

Maxis and Ah Thong back then. Why all the boys so skinny back then?

That’s Brenda!

AIMST students now have real hostels to stay in. Back then, they rented terrace houses for us as hostels.  7 students to a house so obviously there was plenty of drama. Screaming at each other, check. Bitching, check. Sweeping dust out of your room and leaving it on the staircase landing, check. Only one of it was done by me, you gotta guess which.

The houses they rented for us were so pathetic! Almost every house had a leaking problem and the stench from the sewage system around that area was so bad that the smell can waft up through a manhole situated IN the house itself. Ughh. We dumped stacks of newspaper on the hole to absorb the stench. 

l-r: Harveen, Jimmy, Myself, Brenda and Narjit.

More happy Year 1 photos.

And this was how our house looked like. 

Those were the days.  

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