Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Journey to the US (Intro)


Bismillah..

Salam and hello everyone!

Thanks for reading my blog. I was quite surprised that until today there are still people like YOU who read my blog though I have abandoned it for quite a longgggg time!! So, I do appreciate your willingness to visit my page. ^_^


Well, alhamdulillah I am currently working in a bank somewhere in this hectic KL. Some of you who works in a bank would know how stressful to live in KL and to be a banker. it is like a great combo! HA HA. oh well~ stress aside....

I actually wanted to share with you my journey as a student in the US. I have always dreamt of publishing a book like Sis Zabrina (Life is an Open Secret), Mat Luthfi (Catatan Matluthfi), Aiman Azlan (The Other Side of the Coin), Hilal Asyraf to name a few.. but dreams will always be dreams without action. So let's start with writing a blog first because writing is also a journey, where I bring YOU as my audience to experience the path taken in my life. :D

So instead of complaining about my stressful life, I would like to share with YOU the wonderfulness of being a student by reminiscing the good ol' days in INTEC and Purdue. Inshallah, hope everyone can benefit from my story of life :)

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It all started when I decided to go for a MARA interview in UNIKL building. When I entered the UNIKL building, I swear to God that I do not want to study here just because I have to wait for a long time for the elevator. LOL.

To cut the story short, when I went into the interview room, I gave the interviewers a warm smile and sat there calmly. The questions weren't hard compared to the ones that I received from Petronas Educamp and Felda interviews. It was plainly about describing myself, reason for me to choose Actuarial Science as my major, and which university I wanna go to.

The last question kinda turned everything into what I am today. I answered that I want to study in UK coz to me, studying in UK was kinda cool, with the beautiful sceneries and all. So when it comes to which university I wanna go to pursue my study, I tried to remember of a university name that I saw in the Jobstreet magazine that I got for free from Edufair in KLCC. I have no idea what university was it like, but I just said it to save myself for the question. If I wasn't mistaken, it was London School of Economics.



So the interviewer asked me nicely on my thoughts of studying in the US. When I heard of US, I was like it's a big NO NO for me. US is totally not in my list coz the news in the television and newspaper have painted bad impression about the country.





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When the scholarship results finally came, I managed to obtain Petronas scholarship to study Business Administration in Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) and MARA scholarship to study Actuarial Science in the US. I was in the dilemma coz to me, both are really good choices. Although I do not want to go to the US at first, but I have always think that those who got the opportunity to study overseas are the luckiest person on Earth!

Like any other Muslims, I started to do Istikharah to ask guidance from Allah and Istisharah to ask guidance from people, in this case my parents, relatives and friends. Many gave their opinion where Actuarial Science would provide me with a better career enhancement and that there are not many Malays in the field. To help me in my decision making, my cousin asked the orphans in his orphanage  school that I volunteered for teaching to perform hajat prayer. And I was really thankful when my mom, who usually can't let me go although to be in a boarding school in our hometown, finally gave her permission for me to further my study in the US.

That was when I began to set my journey to the US.

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To prepare for my student life in the US, MARA sent us to enroll in an American Degree Foundation Program (ADFP) in INTEC UiTM , Shah Alam where we studied English, Calculus, Islamic Studies (Pendidikan Islam) and American Culture most probably to avoid us from being culture shock when we arrive there. Haha. When we were in our orientation week, our seniors told us that ADFP means All Day Fun & Play! :D We were told that we were lucky to be in this program because it is the most relaxing program compared to other programs such as A-Level UK (ALUK), Australia Matriculation (AUSMAT), etc. And I think that it is TRUE! We really have fun in ADFP! For extra info, MARA students (in my era) only have to spend 1 year in ADFP before flying to the US while JPA students have to study for 2 years (first year in ADFP, second year in ACTP) before getting the chance to fly to the US.

So I guess we are really lucky to only spend 1 year in ADFP and get the chance to stay in the US longer! :)

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I could say that Alhamdulillah, I experienced a cheerful and fulfilling life in INTEC, thanks to Persatuan Dakwah (if I'm not mistaken coz I don't really remember the names clearly, sorry... my bad). I found out about this organization when I heard an announcement right after a talk from Ustaz Ridha on whoever is interested to wake people up for Sahoor or Subuh prayer. What we have to do is just to knock onto our neighbor's door in Akasia, a female college where I used to live when I was in INTEC. I find that it was interesting so I decided to help out and the rest is history.

On the other side, Inshallah if I remember, I will snap a picture of a journal where I wrote about me sneaking into an empty room/someone else's room through the back window in a masjid just to help my friend/someone to unlock their door from the inside because they accidentally left their keys in the room. Turned out that I entered the wrong room! LOL!




I also missed the time when we sell books after Maghrib tazkirah outside of Cemara surau to increase our organization fund. We got the books for free from an uncle who owns a bookstore in Ole-Ole. He let us took any books that we want to sell, gave us commission for every book that we sold and simply let us return back the book that we didn't manage to sell. So it's a win-win situation. He totally put his trust on us although we can actually ran away with the books and make profit from the books (we took quite a handful books from him). 




He also likes to give me discounts whenever I went to his bookshop since the very first day he opened the bookstore! Well actually, I was the one who asked discount from him. haha. *shy-shy* And he gave me discounts on all items that I bought from his bookstore! So, almost every month I will buy Solusi mag from him with a discount and bought other editions later if I missed the chance to buy them. There was one time when I was searching for a paperbag for whatever reason which I don't remember and he helped me to find one in his bookstore. When I wanna pay for it, he just gave it to me for free! May Allah bless him! :D He was also down to Earth because I have been calling him Uncle since Day 1 we met when he's actually an Ustaz! The funny part was when I bought few mini mathurat sugra from him as presents to my family, friends, and siblings but later on I gave one of the mathurat to him as a gift! Haha.




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That's all for now. Inshallah in the next post I will share with you more on my life in Purdue. :) If you are planning to study abroad especially in the US and you have any questions in mind, feel free to comment down below and I will try my best to answer them inshallah. Till next time inshallah. Salam~~~ ^_______^

*Disclaimer: I do not own images in this post. All images courtesy of Google