Danial Jaafar 🇲🇾

Usai solat, dia meneguk air mineral di sebelah katilnya. Lagaknya seperti orang yang mahu betul-betul mabuk, biar lupa segala hal isu masalah duniawi. Diteguknya air itu laju-laju hingga bunyi deguk itu semakin kuat dengan setiap tegukan. Mungkin juga deguk itu diharapnya untuk menenggelamkan suaranya sendiri yang sedang meratap pilu. "Woii! Ingat kau turun bawah, tadi. Lama aku tunggu kat surau!" Wang, budak Muar memekik, dan sambil-sambil itu mengetuk pintu bilknya dengan kuat. "Sorry bro. Rasa lemau sikit badan ni." balas Lukman, perlahan. Wang sekadar mengangguk lemak, mengkontradiksi perlakuannya sebelum ini. Mungkin dia memahami apa Lukman lalui. Mungkin juga dia buntu. Atau boleh jadi dia sudah malas dan jelek dengan perangai teman rumahnya itu. Masakan tidak, cerita sudah dua bulan berlalu dan Lukman masih lagi di situ, harfiahnya. Tidak keluar rumah bersosial sekalipun. "Haa, ni aku ada bungkus tosai telur ko. Mana tau pagi ni ko nak cheat meal...

Plague of Happiness with their sickness to bring happiness Tunku Tun Aminah kat atas tu. First time la aku pergi gig sebenarnya. Kalau yang konsert Gigi kat Singapore yang aku pergi dekat Suntec Mall tu eh ke mana entah, tu bukan gig. Sebab semua audience duduk atas kerusi! Serius potong stim hahaaha! Umur dah lanjut baru dapat merasa. Okay lah. Aku pun pelik kenapa masa aku kat Melbourne dulu aku tak pernah nak pergi ke event macam ni. Ada je The Killers la, Green Day, Pink. Even Russell Peters datang pun aku tak pergi.  Mungkin sebab:- 1) Aku study kat Churchill Terpencil, 2 jam naik V-Line baru sampai Melbourne dari Morwell station V-Line naik yang Traralgon line. Morwell Station is the penultimate stop. Imagine how far it is la guys. Aku suka Southern Cross Station ni. Sebab ada tempat nak solat. hahaha Pemandangan biasa. Too many cows hence the name, Moomooland given to Monash University Gippsland Campus (now Federation Uni) Aku suka ...

Malam ni dah kali ke berapa entah, Danny pergi ke McD, atau nama popular di Australia, Maccas, dalam semester ni. Semenjak Dickson menjadi tuan punya kereta Honda naik semester baru-baru ni, dia makin menjadi-jadi ajak Danny dan Thomas lepak malam-malam di Maccas. "This is the only place opens for 24 hours la guys. Where else can we go at this hour, in this god-forsaken place. Correct not?" hujah Dickson setiap kali Bahvan seorang lagi member mereka memperlekehkan pilihan Dickson untuk mengeteh di Maccas. Satu sifat terpuji Dickson, tiap-tiap kali nak keluar, dia wajib tanya "Who wants to join me go Maccas?" walaupun pada orang macam Bahvan yang setiap kali diajak, akan menolak dengan hinanya pelawaan Dickson. Pada Bahvan, daripada dibuang masa mengeteh di Maccas, ada baiknya Dickson beli bir VB dekat Monacellars punya drive thru di Morwell. Sama sahaja Maccas di Australia dan di Malaysia...dari luar. Apa ada di Maccas, sama sahaja seperti Mekdi (nam...

(Tajuk tak boleh tahan...) Kiranya hampir sejam aku menghabiskan masa untuk spring cleaning tadi. Bersihkan blog list aku. Kalau kalian perasan, di sebelah bawah kanan blog aku, ada satu ruangan "The List". Dulu-dulu masa aku punya semangat tinggi untuk blogging, dan ramai rakyat Malaysia juga terikut sekali ombak blogging masa tu, aku buat "The List", senarai blog-blog yang aku follow. Ya, dulu pon sudah ada budaya follow-follow back ni. Aku kira tak salah kalau aku kata perkara ni lagi awal dari twitter. Seingat aku, Twitter pada 2008-2010 di Malaysia tidak begitu meluas lagi penggunaannya. Jadi, awal spring cleaning ada 160 blog lebih kurang dalam The List. Berjaya aku cantas sehingga 79. Aku rasa walaupun ada daripada 79 blog yang aku simpan ini juga tidak beberapa aktif, sekurang-kurangnya aku boleh juga menjenguk untuk blogwalking. Ya, blogwalking. Sudah lama tak kulihat ayat ini di ruangan komen. Dulu-dulu, begitu juga. Pasti ada komen-komen serupa ini...

My failed attempt to write in Malay. I believe our writing style is heavily influenced by our reading materials...and I just finished Anwar Hadi's "Whatever You Say I Am, I Am Ok". Good God!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------ Seperti biasa malam tu Selasa malam Rabu. But in English everyone will say that "it's a Tuesday night" instead of Wednesday night. Danny persetankan saja semua tu dan akan cakap, "This is all semantic." To which his friends would all retaliate, inside, that Danny is not using the word "semantic" in the right context but what do they know. Anyway, it's been a weekly ritual for Danny to go to binishell, a dome like building at campus, a symbol long associated with the small town of Churchill. You see in Binishell, there are badminton and basketball courts. And as the president of the Badminton club he has been running the weekly badminton session at Binishell ever since he...

"Hey guys, what I'm about to tell you may be a bit shocking but, it's about time.." "What is it?" "I think it is time for me to break up with Orange" "Hell to the NO!!!!" Thomas bukan main bangkang lagi bila Dickson cakap macam tu. Aku dah agak dah...Sejak malam Dickson balik dari diorang punya date night...dalam 4 minggu lepas camtu la. Aku steady, mencari bawang goreng yang Sugit tinggalkan kat rumah kitorang. Dia bilang hari tu ada dalam lokernya si Dickson tapi... "Relax Tom, iya kalau udah bukan jodoh. Buat apa dipaksain. Benar ngak,Dan?" Ah, sudah. Alih-alih aku jugak yang kena jadi the 10th man..biarpun cuma ada 3 orang je dalam rumah ni sekarang. "Yeahh..I don't know, Dick, I mean Dickson. It's your life, you do what you gotta do, man." "But Danny, the free dinner, every night. We haven't cooked our own dinner ever since Orange is around." "Well, Tom, we were just fine...

Mata aku tertumpu dekat si dia dari tadi. "Welcome to the badminton club!" Macam biasa, aku punya welcome greeting kepada ahli-ahli kelab badminton universiti aku. Sejujurnya, aku berharapkan ada ahli-ahli baru berkulit putih, kononnya supaya dapat aku tunjukkan kepada Kingsley yang kelab badminton ini bukannya semata-mata eksklusif untuk pelajar-pelajar antarabangsa. Semacam ada satu stigma baru-baru ini, yang menyebabkan tiada keahlian baru dari kalangan pelajar tempatan. Aku kira, secara peribadi aku gagal untuk membuatkan kelab ini menarik perhatian mereka. Berbalik kepada yang mencuri perhatian aku awal cerita tadi.... Biasa je dia ni. Aku kenal tahun lepas, sem 2. Jenis perwatakan selamba dan boleh "carry herself on her own just fine on her own~"  Macam tu. Yang bestnya, dia layan J-drama, seorang yang sporty sebab main banyak sukan. Lasak ah! 1 up dari aku sebab dia layan J-rock, yang mana aku memang have no idea. Aku tau pasal Gackt, Glay, itu sahaja...

Agak buntu di situ. Mana mau mula tak tahu. Why not we start with the end that we all hope for? By the way, pretty sure in any English writing examination it is not acceptable, grammatically speaking to write "we all". So, adik-adik silalah tulis "all of us". If memory serves me right, lah kan? Sekarang cuaca makin panas. Aku kira ini memang tidak dapat dielakkan lagi. Global warming is real. Aku seriously tak paham kenapa ada politicans kat Australia cakap benda ni cuma hoax dan urban myth. Ni back when I was in Gippyland. Aku follow gak political scene kat sana. Sana menarik sikit sebab orang sana takdelah nak resort to violence kalau kau tak sekepala politik dengan diorang. Kiranya life goes on la. Teringat housemate aku fondly known as Brownie (dia mengingatkan aku kepada Marshall HIMYM) dia ni macam penyokong tegar kerajaan John Howard (predecessor si Tony Abbott tu) dan dia berapi gak time cakap pasal ni dengan housemates yang lain. Dan keberapian dia tu k...

Tried to attempt something like this earlier today. Fail at heartbeat. Reverted to my normal style - flat. LOL   I was at the karaoke with the usual company when I go karaoke. Yeaaah, so I couldn't pull it off like The One, big deal. I just enjoyed myself and didn't give a hoot about it =P Anyway, as I get older and wiser (hopefully) I feel and think that there are not really that many songs I can sing. I don't listen to hitz.fm or any mainstream radio station to know the latest music trend so I end up singing almost the same songs every time. It's like I have my own 'karaoke playlist' which perhaps could be a close relative to my "Thumbed Ups" playlist on my phone, because I sing mostly songs in that playlist. If only most karaoke places got  karaoke for oldies man. I really wanna sing Air Supply, Alphaville, Bryan Adams, Lionel Ritchie, Billy Joel's "Honesty" and some other 70s, 80s, 90s songs. Mmm, I guess listening to lite.fm...

Hari ini Hari Guru. Tadi aku terbilang "Hari Cikgu" dan bunyinya janggal sekali. Kata orang Kerteh, awkward. Pabila disebut guru-guru, cikgu-cikgu di sekolah-sekolah lama, macam-macam terlintas. Walaupun zaman sekolah rendah aku boleh tahan seronok, aku lagi suka zaman sekolah menengah daripada sekolah rendah. Tapi nak dibandingkan dengan zaman universiti, memang tak dapat la. Aku gauge  aku punya kesedapan pengalaman aku berdasarkan faktor-faktor life lessons learned, kawan-kawan dan rejection, failures. Kalau aku guna faktor populariti, tentulah zaman aku montel comel tak nampak leher lagi best. Ramai peminat kata-kata gosip murahan yang sempat aku dengar. Oh, dan kalau siapa-siapa percaya dua ayat terakhir tadi sila ketawakan diri sendiri sebab anda amat naive dan gullible. Tadi cakap pasal cikgu, ni tiba-tiba cakap pasal zaman belajar. Anyway. We'll get there, my friend. Kalau sebut zaman sekolah, aku ni biasa-biasa orangnya. Did not stand out much if not for my...

Ke hadapan kamu yang dikenang, Apa khabar kamu sekarang? Sudah lama tidak ku dengar khabar dari mu. Apa, mungkin sudah hampir 5 tahun? Bukan apa, kamu perlahan-lahan menghilangkan diri pada tahun itu. Aku fikir mungkin kamu sibuk. Ya, aku mampu memujuk diriku dengan mengatakan kamu sibuk barangkali. Dengarnya, pada ketika itu kamu punya teman. Walaupun begitu, kamu masih cuba meluangkan masa bersama aku dan sahabat-sahabat yang lain. Cuma kesempatan kamu terbatas. Pilihan kamu juga tidak banyak. Jadi aku faham sekiranya pada ketika itu kamu mungkin memilih teman kamu daripada kami. Aku tiba-tiba teringatkan kamu. Ini kelakar, bagaimana aku teringatkan kamu secara tiba-tiba. Aku sedang cuba menonton rancangan permainan tv realiti Korea yang menjadi kegilaan ramai "Running Man". Terus aku teringatkan kamu. Mungkin kerana kamu dahulu seorang peminat tegar drama korea. Hasil "hasutan" Semun, (kalau kamu masih ingat sama dia) Aku tertanya, apakah kamu masih menonto...

"Blearghhh..." "Uweeekkkkkss" "Blueeerrkwekk...kofff kofff...." Danny menepuk-nepuk belakang badan kawannya itu. Seperti seorang bayi bila muntah. Cuma yang muntah ni bukan bayi, tapi bapak bayi! "Damn son, didn't know a woman can do this kind of damage"bisik hati Danny, kasihan melihatkan keadaan Dickson. ............................................................................................................................................................... Dia baru saja siap memasak makanan untuk sahurnya pabila dia ternampak Dickson melangkah keluar dari biliknya ke ruang tamu. Dari gayanya,memang nampak lain. Bila tengok bawah, baru nampak apa yang tak kena. Di tangan satu botol wiski yang seingat Danny dibeli Dickson untuk dibawa pulang cuti musim panas nanti. Belum sampai seminggu dia bilang itu kepada Danny sudah tinggal separuh isinya. Aduhhh... Sempat Danny menjamah sedikit makanan sebelum menahan Dickson "...

So, here I am still in my baju tidoq or as the mat sallehs call it PJ, listening to the best of Air Supply. Don't know what's gotten into me, suddenly feeling all 80s, 90s. By the way while I'm at it, that "what's" is not short form for "what is" but "what has". It can have two short forms, and I am telling you this because some of my friends didn't know about the "what has" you know. So, there you have it. Anyway, I must be feeling like this after watching Adam Sandler's "That's My Boy". They got Andy Samberg from The Lonely Island in that movie. Really funny, with all those slapsticks, as expected of Mr.Sandler here. Highly recommended especially if you are his fan. But not for family. That's My Boy. I don't know how watching this makes me feeling all 80s. Pelik. Where I was, yeah, 80s and 90s. I don't know when but somehow I always have this longing to live in those time. You see I was...

Ramadhan nak sampai dah~ bersedia, please? Time2 camni teringat keluarga Churchill terpencil. Rindu pulak.. hehehehe

Sounds kinda like Sex And The City, yeah? Hahaha. Well, it's been almost 4 months here, and I think I'm pretty much used to the life here. Though I keep on comparing this place with Kerteh, then, with Melbourne, Gippsland. Yeah, it's always been the case of the grass is greener on the other side. Last time when I was still in Gippy, the gf was like, "I miss playing badminton at Kurnai Hall, I miss cooking, I miss this and that" and I told her to be grateful that she got to be with her family back, at home. Now I'm the one that keeps looking at my old photos back when I was in uni and keep saying "Oh man, I wanna do that, this, get thinner like last time and all that stuffs". My very first encounter with a wallaby in the wild. Jungle trekking at the Morwell National Park in 2007 with Zoon and the Bricks. Like I said just now, the grass is always greener on the other side. Cross that, the grass was, is and will always be greener on the other si...

"Oh and yeah, that's the hardest part, that's the hardest part" To me, the hardest part would be to start doing things. It could be a totally new thing. It could be things that we used to enjoy doing all the time. Now, the hardest thing to do is to start blogging again. I have the craving to blog but I didn't blog for almost a month, and that really in a way has dampened my momentum to blog. No thanks to the mobile broadband I'm using. It was beyond slow last time. Now a bit better, but not as good as the first two months I moved in here. Still, I thought what the heck, let's blog again. I miss my blog. I miss being here, in the online world. Where people, strangers mostly, are surprisingly supportive, and kind, and friendly. But I no longer have a place to let out all of my emotions. Hahaha, worry not, not being emo just missing the good old blog I once made private, which I deleted last year  =____= Kali pertamaku ke sekolah asrama. Nak menangis ...

I mean, the bosses already decided to interview two out of 4 applications they received for the Contract Research Scientist. The weird thing is, it will be this Saturday. Hmmm... =P Oh, and congrats to all Monash students who passed all subjects, and those who are going to graduate later in December, or probably next April in Gippsland? You guys did great, studied hard, played and partied even harder! XD This Spot-the-Differences picture was made by my man Calvin Ang, also my housemate at the time. This pic was taken during Tina's birthday party, early 2009. That sem I played hard, but didn't study hard =P hehehehe

I remembered the time I did my enrollment for the coming semester's subjects. It was pretty much easy, I know what I should take to ensure that I completed my degree in time (it's a different thing if you keep failing your core subjects =P). I only met the course advisor once, and from then on I knew which subjects are the core ones, and electives. And I don't really remember having any difficulty registering the subjects I want to take. I wasn't really worried about not being able to take any subject I want because too many students already, since my campus is not as big as the main campus, Clayton. I remember there were only 12 first year biotech students then. Then in second year, few of my friends changed their majors mostly because they didn't want to do the killer subject - Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, affectionately =P known as MBB, which is a core unit for third year, final year student. The prerequisite subject for MBB is another low level molecul...

No, I'm not gonna sing P.O.D's Alive. Though every time the song comes to my head I would smile, reminiscing the good old days in SESMA, when I was first introduced to P.O.D by my double-decker mate, Nazirul Azam. Speaking of Nazirul (as I affectionately call him LOL everyone else calls him Aje) I ran into him last month at Mesra Mall. Was a pleasant surprise to see him after SPM. I didn't see him when I went to get my SPM result. P.O.D. I wonder how did we the high school students get to listen to this kind of songs last time..=P Oh, looks like I got off topic again. Typical Danial. Work has been so good. Everyday I learn new stuff. All the things I learned in uni just came back to me as I work through the experiments, protocols. Man, how I wish I had done summer project in Monash Gippsland last time. Hahah =P And today this colleague sent me back home. LOL funny considering my house is just 3 minutes walking distance from the workplace. At first I politely decline...

Thanks to Z@ck Insan Tinggi, I got quite high traffic to my blog that day. When was it again, Monday? My mom asked me what competition that I won, because my dad told her about it. Yeah, my parents read my blog, and they check my facebook too, so mind your language people. Unless you don't give a damn about manners and all because you're too stupidly arrogant you just don't care =P I'm going back for Deepavali. Well, not that I am going to celebrate, I mean I am going back to Kerteh since this Friday is a public holiday. This one intern from UTAR at my workplace already got her day off today hahaha lucky girl. I haven't bought the ticket back yet. Hope still got ticket tomorrow night to Kerteh or Kuantan. If not I have to take the Friday morning bus. =/ My convocation will be held next Saturday, and no, I didn't attend the one in Gippsland. My visa already expired in September and to attend the graduation in Australia I had to apply for a new visa. Visa + T...