International.

One of the good things about studying in an international university as a local student is that you get to meet lots of different people from different countries. It's the closest anyone can get to studying overseas without actually studying overseas.

I'm typing this while occupying the same room as a couple of Zimbabweans, an Indian, a Singaporean (who was originally from India) and a Malaysian Chinese. It's interesting to realize that in spite of our very different backgrounds, all the decisions we have ever taken in life have led us to this exact moment - all of us taking a break from the hecticness of university life by just chilling out in the middle of the night as the rain beats down on the streets outside.

Back in Rembau, I had no choice but to spend almost all of my time with fellow Malays. I'm not saying that was a bad thing, but as someone who grew up being surrounded by people of different religions, ethnicities and backgrounds, I often craved a little diversity. Furthermore, as someone who prefers the English language over his own mother tongue, I seldom got to put my English skills to use.

In spite of everything, I still thoroughly enjoyed my two years in Rembau. You make your own happiness and all that. I believe in taking life as it is and, instead of complaining about the things you don't have, you'd be better off making the most of the things you do have.

I've spent almost two and a half years in MIU and, once again, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. My experiences while being in an almost exclusively Malay environment throughout my time in Rembau have actually allowed me to appreciate the fact that Malays in MIU are very few and far between - there are probably more Zimbabweans (not to mention Africans in total) here than Malays.

I'm not sure how many different nationalities there are here in this university, but an advertisement I saw some time back indicates the presence of at least 20, mostly from Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Plenty of languages are spoken here as well - I've picked up a few Tamil and Hindi/Urdu words, and it's pretty cool to be able to understand what people are saying when they converse in these languages, albeit only in bits and pieces.

I'll be graduating in about a year after I finish my internship, which is due to begin in February next year. I have no idea what will happen after that, but I'll depart from MIU knowing that my three years here were well spent. The experiences I've gained here could never have been gotten anywhere else, and for that I am forever grateful.

Void.

I try to write in this blog at least once per month, but, not for the first time, I failed to do so throughout the whole of March. No, I haven't abandoned blogging - the reason for not writing in was simply because I've either been too busy or just plain uninspired. With regards to the latter, I don't typically write here without having something I really want to talk about.

Many, many things have transpired since my last post, which was written near the end of February. That was when the Cricket World Cup was still in its early stages; Australia has since won the whole thing after beating holders India in the semi-finals and then co-hosts New Zealand in the final.

It may seem a bit odd, but of those many, many things that I mentioned, I can barely remember any of them. No, I do not suffer from short- or medium-term memory loss, and no, those many, many things were not so insignificant that my brain hasn't even bothered to attempt to recall their details. Many of them were excellent experiences that I'm sure have helped me to grow as a person, and, surprisingly enough, it this growing that I believe is the reason for this void in my memory of the past two months.

I've noticed how much I've grown over the years that have passed since I first came to MIU; I remember the bright-eyed naivete of my first semester - it's a bit funny to look back on that time and wonder how I could have been so nauseatingly positive and optimistic, especially considering the more cynical and world-weary person that I am these days.

(Yes, I'm still only 21 this year and haven't seen that much of the world yada yada, but world-weariness is a relative term, and I seem to be more world-weary than I've ever been every few weeks or so. Young people can get tired of life's sh*t, too.)

Anyway, one reason why I've stopped bothering to talk about things that have been going on in greater detail is probably because I've stopped seeing the things I've been up to as experiences - merely work that needed to be done. It's always exciting on your first day of work and you want to tell everyone everything about it, but as time goes on everything just becomes routine and you just get sick of talking about the same things happening over and over again.

Besides that, some of the things that have happened are things that would probably get me into some trouble if I were to write about them on a public platform such as this. I'm not a fan of getting into trouble - I accidentally skipped a talk by a visiting speaker back in Rembau once, and afterwards I lay on my bed for a good few minutes thinking about what I'd done.

The purpose of this blog - just as it has always been - is mainly for me to keep my writing skills sharp. Simply doing my assignments isn't enough; research-based drivel isn't something that I've ever been a fan of doing, since there isn't much room for creative expression.

Having said that, I realize that I've been ranting for pretty much this whole post. If you were expecting this post to contain something interesting or thought-provoking, then I apologize for disappointing you. I just wanted to write something; my only plan for this post was to start writing and see where it would take me.

I have two open-book tests tomorrow, and I probably should have been studying in the time that it took me to write these ten  paragraphs - not to mention the time taken to actually count the number of paragraphs that I'd written. Still, at least I didn't decide to count the number of words.

Cricket.

You could be forgiven for not realizing this, but apparently there's a huge international sports tournament going on: the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. Being a football man myself, I've never really cared much for following other sports, least of all a sport that virtually no one in this country cares about or even knows the rules of.

Malaysia is a football-mad nation. As I perused the sports section of the newspaper today, half of it was talking about local and international football, while other sports took up the other half. This included the Cricket World Cup, which took up maybe a single page, and even that was nearer the middle of the paper than the back. The lack of coverage in the written media clearly indicates a distinct lack of interest in the event, and, of course, the sport itself.

Photo courtesy of Indian cricket legend MS Dhoni's official Facebook page.

If you, dear reader, are an avid cricket fan, then I hope you can forgive the country's collective ignorance and disinterest in the game. I do not intend to offend anyone, but the fact is just that we Malaysians are simply far more interested in other sports, including (but not limited to) football, badminton, golf and F1 racing. Most of us have no idea who the two cricket players in the above picture are, even though one of them has his name written on the back of his shirt.

I recall a time back while I was in boarding school, when the school decided to start a cricket team to compete in an inter-school tournament involving other SBPs (fully residential schools, for you non-Malaysians). Almost no one was interested in joining and, since all the sporty types were already involved in other games, the school ended up sending a team full of bookworms looking to get co-curriculum points for their CV. They ended up getting soundly beaten, of course, but one would think that they hardly cared.

As for me, I've only recently started opening my eyes to the world of cricket, mostly from having university friends from countries where the so-called 'game of the lords' is a pretty big deal. I now have a rough understanding of how the game is played and how scores are calculated, but I'll never fully grasp cricket until I've actually played it. Hopefully I can do that before I graduate.

I did a bit of reading on cricket last night, and I found an article explaining why the World Cup only starts getting serious in the knockout stages. I found it an interesting read at first, as it explained how in the 2007 edition, India got eliminated early on and millions of cricket fans basically stopped watching, causing the broadcaster to miss out on a serious amount of advertising revenue. The tournament was then restructured to ensure the big guns stay in the competition for as long as possible.

But then I made the decision to read the comments below the article and...well. If I wanted to read internet comments written by angry Indians, I might as well scroll through my university's confessions page - at least there I'd know whether what was written was justifiable or otherwise. Being a distinctly non-cricket and non-Indian person, I had no idea if those commenters were right to be so offended by the article. Anyhow, I guess it's not really my problem, so no point in dwelling on it.

It's true that you learn a lot at university, and not just the stuff you get during lectures. Cricket is one sport that I never thought I'd show any interest in, but the fact that I've written this post indicates that I was mistaken. My interest in this sport, however, is probably just due to my natural curiosity instead of genuine enthusiasm for it. The article I mentioned earlier stated that 80% of Indian males under the age of 25 follow cricket to some extent; I couldn't just let myself be completely ignorant of something that so many people are crazy about.

Like I mentioned earlier, I really do hope I'll get to play at least one game of cricket before I graduate early next year. After that, I don't really see how I'll ever get the chance, unless I somehow move to a country on the subcontinent.

They say love makes you do crazy things. On this evidence, I'd argue that curiosity can have the same effect.