Trippin' KL: College Reunion

"No man is an island."

An old proverb

I arrived in Midvalley Megamall at about 1 pm with minimal fuss (I'm starting to get this driving in KL thing) to attend a reunion with my old college classmates from my Taylor's days - which incidentally was scheduled to happen at 7 pm.

I'm a really punctual sort of person.

Actually, the reason for my very-early arrival was so I can finally get down to do some clothes shopping that have slipped my mind entirely the last time I came up to the shopping capital of Malaysia.

Guess what...

I forgot again.

Better than clothes.

Instead, I spend a good bit of my time browsing in the MPH there and made four more purchases;

• A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Prachett. I didn't really plan to get this one but since I've already read the first book of the series...
• Spartan by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. This author's historical trilogy on Alexander the Great is probably the only non-fiction work of literature that I didn't scoff at (seriously, give these a read!). I can only hope that his other works would be equally good.
• The Sum of All Men by David Farland. On one of my Wiki-link-hopping sprees, I discovered this baby which many hailed as a 'classic of the fanstasy genre'. The synopsis sounded really cool, so here it is, bound for India to accompany me on some of my lonely nights.
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. No, I'm not a nerd that digest classics in my free time - it's just that a couple of my favourite books were set in the Napoleonic War era and I'm just interested in reading more about it.

While systematically scanning the whole store like I usually do, I came across this;

The indispensable guide to having no life.

I didn't buy it (though I'd love to learn how to really "set up, publish, and maintain a blog that draws readers"). I won't forgive myself if I should ever sink to that earth-eating low.

The rest of the time between MPH and my 7 pm reunion was filled by Just Follow Law (which was crap) and Pursuit of Happyness (which was the best darn flick I've watched this year). I'll review these later - after I've done reviewing the tons of books I've read in the past 2 weeks.

The only thing I've got to show for my 'clothes shopping day' is this;

White crew-neck from Tropicana Life.

And I actually bought it while I was in Sunway Pyramid to drop off a pal of mine prior to coming to Midvalley.

Old 04/05 PM10'ers.

The reunion itself filled with a strange mixture of emotions that usually leave me well alone. The chief of these feelings was a sense of inadequacy and awkwardness. Every word I said sounded rehearsed (at least to my ears) - and I have this unpleasant sensation that my facial expressions were stony and fake.

I wonder, did India do this to me?

When I was in Manipal, I spent most of my free time indoors on my own and fill them by either reading (medical books or otherwise) or watching some movie on my laptop. In the course of a typical day there, I would need only to speak to no more than 4 persons, and spend a little more than 10 words on each of them. Had a year there completely demolished my communication abilities? Am I no longer even able to even carry a short friendly conversation with my old college mates with whom I had the best times of my life with?

I felt robbed, and of what, I can't say for sure - but I know something was robbed from me.

Anyway, most of the old PM10'ers were acting exactly like how I remembered them. I was pleasantly surprised that half the class actually made it despite that many of us are currently studying in different countries all over the world. We were suppose to hold the meet at Chili's but due to a vote called for by Keat Seong, we changed the venue to Kim Gary (which I prefer anyway).

I left the reunion at 10 pm with a raining cloud hovering over my head. Good times, I realised, are as precious as those cheesy Kodak and digital camera commercials show them to be. I had everything back then.

I have nothing now.

Just gotten a new phone, by the way (my old one took a suicide leap from the fourth floor of Nehru, my old hostel).


... and 120 gigabytes worth of storage space.

It's exactly what I need - more space to store my movies, TV shows and music to fuel my increasingly empty and meaningless life.


I am no man,
k0k s3n w4i