Pre-departure #2

18 August 2011, 8.00a.m. – JPA’s pre-departure briefing at their headquarters in Putrajaya.

Batu Pahat is about 3 to 4 hours from Putrajaya, which meant that I had to leave home at 3.30a.m. just to make sure that I reach there on time without my dad having to ‘fly’ on the highway. Cruising through BP at 3.30 in the morning was rather calming. I rather wished that I had my camera with me so that I could take decent shots from the car.

Frankly, I was expecting to yawn my way through the briefing because firstly, it was a briefing. How many briefings have you ever attended which weren’t yawn-inducing? And secondly, I didn’t sleep a wink before we left for Putrajaya. Since my holidays started, I’ve been going to bed at around 2 or 3 in the morning so I simply couldn’t coax my brain into silencing itself sufficiently for me to fall asleep. As I write this, I’ve only had around 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep since the 18th, not including the times when I slept in the car. Oh, my eye bags!

I did yawn quite a bit, but not as much as I thought I would, probably because the briefing wasn’t as boring as I expected it to be. I did have to resort to doodling to keep me awake though.

Doodles on Page 1 of my notes

Anyway, to satisfy your curiosity and perhaps draw you even deeper into the deep abyss of boredom, I’ll give you a brief outline of the briefing according to chronology.

When we arrived at the briefing hall, we were promptly given our tailor-made suits, a 1Malaysia lapel pin and a JPA bag, which is even smaller than the smallest school bag I ever had. The suit (which costs RM430.00 and was deducted from our clothes allowance) consists of a blazer and a pair of pants. The pants have stretchy rubber sides! Sure, it’s good if you’re the kind who has a fluctuating waistline (like yours truly), but it is so unpleasant to look at.

After a short, childish rant over the stretchy pants to the people sitting near me, we rehearsed standing up for the Negaraku, the prayer recital and the students’ pledge. Both the prayer and pledge were led by students from ALL2, my class in KTT! *childish haolian moment*

Amirul and Mcdowell who led the prayer and pledge respectively

At around 9.10a.m., the VIP, Encik Othman bin Mohamed Nazari from JPA arrived. Like little chicks, we all obediently stood up, sang the Negaraku, sat down, recited the prayer, listened to his pep talk and recited our pledge. Basically, he was there to tell us that we must remember to contact our family members when we’re abroad, inform the officers when we leave the country and that we could get married after the third year. Stuff like that. XD

En Othman

Then came the briefing with the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) representative, an Encik Nasir, if I’m not mistaken. He was there to tell us about the flight regulations, the do’s and don’ts, the weight limit, and the all-important flight details.

The MAS representative

I have a measly limit of 20kg for my check-in luggage. Even with my excellent packing skills *ahem* I have absolutely no idea how to bring only 20kg of items over. Hand luggage should not exceed 5kg. O woe is me.

My flight is scheduled to leave at 2350hours (Malaysian time), 28 August 2011. I’ll transit at Frankfurt, Germany, breathe the air there for roughly two hours, and then proceed to Krakow, Poland. If everything goes according to plan, I should reach Poland at 1000hours (Polish time), 29 August 2011. Thisisallmovingsofast! *breathes*

After that was perhaps the most looked forward to event of the day: the briefing by the officers from Bank Islam. *kaching!*

Practically everyone turned to look when two men in grey coats came in with two yellow boxes. No prizes for guessing what was in them.

The officers with the yellow A4 paper boxes. Which contained more than just A4 papers.

I’d be foolish to write the amount of money we received here, but it wasn’t really a lot. They gave us enough money to get by with, and perhaps, if we are careful we’ll have quite a sum of savings. Anyhow, I’m just grateful my parents didn’t have to fork out that amount of money from their savings just so that I can further my studies.

An officer from Bank Islam then briefed us on how to use our traveller’s cheques and advised us a little on how we should go about with the banks and all that.

Next up was Professor Dato’ Dr. Nik Mohd Nasri Nik Ismail, founding dean of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). He was there to brief us on Medicine from the Islam point of view. It was interesting to listen to what he had to say about it, but I didn’t take any notes because, well, I’m not Muslim and I don’t foresee myself converting to Islam anytime in the future. He did seem to understand the requirements of his faith well enough though, so I suppose it was beneficial to the Muslims.

Prof Dato’ Dr. Nik Mohd Nasri

After a lunch break from 1.15pm to 2.00pm, we headed back to the hall for our final briefing – our meeting with our seniors. There were more seniors there than I had expected. That was a rather relaxed meeting with them basically allaying whatever apprehensions we might have had and answering our questions.

We finally ended at around 4pm, and by then I was most ready to head home. Who knew that a seemingly simply briefing would take 8 hours to complete.I did miss a few people at the briefing, especially my former classmates who didn’t pass JPA’s cut-off point. It was, however, heartening to learn that some of them will be heading to Indonesia to continue their studies.

Now all that’s left to do is for us to prepare ourselves to leave the nation, and put the taxpayers’ money to good use.

8 days to go and counting.