Along the Orange Road.

After the recent Bandung trip I made my mind up that instead of going overseas to ITB to further my education, I would instead settle for the cheaper, more closer-to-home alternative in Nilai. And it was because of this decision that I became the first (and, as of yet, only) person to register for a Bachelor's degree in Actuarial Finance at Manipal International University (MIU), if not in the whole of Malaysia.

A view of the MIU Nilai Campus. Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Prior to my registration I'd already known that this was a fairly new university, and was yet to produce any graduates. However, I was fairly surprised to find out that the most senior students there were still only in the third semester of their first year.

Sticking with the 'new' theme, MIU had only moved to its vast Nilai campus on Monday, 21st of January. Up until then the university had called Kelana Jaya its home, albeit a temporary one as the building it was using was shared with some sort of training center that belonged to Malaysia Airlines (MAS).

On the day of the big move (which coincided with my second day of orientation) I arrived before pretty much all my other orientation-mates as I'd left home early to avoid the traffic jams of the Monday rush hour. I took the time to walk around and check out the spanking-new campus, or at least as much of it as I could.

The university was apparently supposed to cover a massive 136 acres upon its completion, and as only one wing of the main building - and even then, only three of its five floors - were available to be used, it was safe to say that in terms of construction, it had a long way to go. Still, at least it was an improvement from my last visit - I had been denied entry to the site only two or three weeks before as it was still under construction at the time.

So anyway, orientation went fine. The seniors were warm and friendly, and intelligent to boot. (They had to be, most of them were either engineering or biotechnology students.) The orientation committee members were all part of the MIU Student Representative Council (SRC), and it was rather humbling to discover that their president was a fresh SPM graduate from an MRSM in Johor - when I was a fresh SPM graduate at this time last year, I spent my days kicking my heels and generally lazing about at home. 

A fellow orientation-mate, a Business Administration student from Zambia, described MIU as a "project". I realized she was right. And now, I too was part of this project.

I'd been here before. The parallels with my Rembau experience were uncanny. But unlike Rembau, we're all adults here. There would be no youthful rebelliousness and insolence to get in the way of progress. No naive decisions from novice leaders. No bad apples to spoil the others in the sack. Here was a project that could actually turn out good - great, even. It could be everything I had dreamed Rembau would be, and more.

The motto of my beloved Valedictorians is that 'Pioneers Create History'. And create it we shall.

Madness.

Recently I was weighing up a couple of options for my degree studies. One of those options was the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). 

Therefore, it was decided that I go there (with my mother and sister) and see the place myself before I made any decisions.

In any case, I'd already more or less made my mind up about going to MIU in Nilai before the trip, but as we'd already booked the tickets, we might as well go anyway.

And, of course, with Bandung apparently being the shopping center of the Indonesian island of Java (Bandung is also known as Paris Van Java), we might as well get ourselves a few things while we're there.

*****

Bandara is the Indonesian word for airport, and is short for bandar udara (which literally means 'air town'). It was at Bandung's bandara, the Husein Sastranegara International Airport where our plane touched down on the first Friday morning of 2013.

We then took a taxi from the bandara to our hotel in a place called Sukajadi. It was during this first ride through the streets of Bandung that I decided once and for all that there was no way I could live in this place, let alone study here.

The taxi took us through a labyrinth of narrow, crowded streets (amazingly, some street vendors managed to find enough space to set up shop and sell their wares). There were always people passing through, and sometimes there'd be another vehicle coming from the opposite direction. It's still beyond me how on earth we managed to get out of there with barely any amount of fuss.

Just as I started to wonder if all the streets in Bandung were like this, we soon came out onto larger, more proper roads.

The traffic was shocking - it seemed as if the only rule on the Bandung roads was to not hit anything. There were motorcycles making sudden U-turns in the middle of the road, cars cutting into lanes without so much as a turn signal, pedestrians taking their time crossing the road like it was nobody's business - I could go mad if I were forced to drive my way through all this every single day.

But wait, that wasn't all. Oh no, dear readers, there's more.

After we'd checked in at our hotel (in front of which was a typically bustling beehive of traffic) we decided we'd get straight to shopping - Bandung had quite a number of well-known shopping districts. So we rented a car, as well as a driver, to drive us around.

The hotel's parking lot was ridiculously small. Indeed, it was just about the size of a typical house's front yard. (That's what it probably used to be, too, as old and historical buildings in Bandung aren't demolished or taken down, just re-used. Many of the shops we went to afterwards used to be somebody's home back in the day.) And with all the traffic on the road in front of it, I couldn't imagine how our driver could move the car in reverse out onto the road.

As it turns out, in Bandung they have a rather interesting system where at every shop, restaurant and basically just about  anywhere you can park your car, there'll be a few guys there who'll stand by and guide you (by shouting orders, naturally) into or out of your parking spot. Their other job would also be to hold off incoming traffic (especially on those busy roads) as you parked, and as you later attempt to get out of your parking spot. And as you leave the place, you roll down the car window and slip them some cash as their tip. Since I don't know what these guys are actually called, I'll just refer to them as parking attendants.

Some parking attendants wear uniforms, while some don't. That kinda makes you wonder if the ones who don't wear uniforms were actually hired by the people in charge of the places where they did their thing, or were just doing it for a quick buck. In any case, I found the parking attendants, official or otherwise to be absolutely crucial in a place like this. Or else the traffic would be even madder than it was in its current state.

Another interesting aspect of the Bandung roads involves some regular-looking guys standing in the middle of densely-packed crossroads directing the traffic. Or in other words, amateur traffic cops. Just like the parking attendants, these good Samaritans helped to keep the traffic in check. Then again, they might just be real traffic cops who couldn't be bothered to put on their uniforms, but what the heck.

Also, I should mention that at times there'd be people walking from car to car (usually during traffic jams or at red lights) selling things or begging for money. At one red light, there was even a monkey doing tricks on the side of the road, and after it was done its owner would go around asking for donations. I guess that's what happens when there are too many people and not enough jobs.

So anyway, the three of us went shopping. I found two things I'd heard about Bandung to be true: that branded items were cheaper here than in Malaysia, and that there were a lot of fine-looking women. I'd rather not elaborate on the latter, of course. As for the former, we took full advantage - my sister and I bought more than a few items of clothing for ourselves. My mother, however, was rather more interested in the local delicacies. We later went home with a cardboard box full of brownies as our carry-on luggage on our return flight to Malaysia.

Also, before the shopping began, we asked our driver to take us to ITB, which was the reason why we'd even bought the tickets to Bandung in the first place. However, all the madness that I'd seen in those first two hours after we'd arrived at the bandara had been enough to throw me off studying here - for good. In the end, we only passed by the front gate. But I guess that was enough for me. I don't know how much I'd be kicking myself had I gone all the way to Bandung and not seen ITB.

After a whole day of shopping on Friday (with a delicious lunch of local food, a dinner of Indonesian KFC and massages for my mom and sis in between) and half a day on Saturday, we went back to the bandara and got on our flight home. Our two-day vacation in Bandung was over.

Despite the many similarities between life in Malaysia and in Bandung, it was the numerous differences that made me realize that there really is no place like home. Give me Kuala Lumpur any day, there's no way I'm going back to that mess of vehicles, cigarette smoke and car-to-car street salesmen.

To Manipal it is. Wish me luck.