The drive from Seremban to Kuala Terengganu took us around 9 hours. Then our family stayed for a day before heading to Kelantan on Monday.

We arrived in Kelantan at 9 am, where I met my cousins, and my uncles and aunties. Other than that, we just stayed in my grandmother's house on Tuesday.

The next morning, and it's Wednesday. I woke up early that day, cleaned myself, and put on my black Baju Melayu.

Then I had a breakfast consisting of... Mee Kari, which is questionable for a First Raya breakfast, and then go to the nearest mosque for Hari Raya prayer.

I then joined the boys (my cousins) go up to the neighbours house to claim our yearly Duit Raya (and get to know them, of course), when around 20 minutes later, we found another group of boys, which we joined and visited a few houses together.

However, this Raya felt like something was missing. This year's celebration was REALLY small compared to my previous year's experience by a mile.

On Wednesday night (the First Raya Night), we head to Kedah for the next 3 days of Raya. Our family arrived somewhere at 3 am, Thursday.

The morning I woke up, and there are so many people outside of the house. And it was at this moment, that my brain goes full introvert mode. There are 20 people in my grandmother's house, and I only get out of my room a few times...

The third day of Raya, our family visited my father's friend in Penang, and I went to bought my college supplies. See, I didn't really go to a lot of places this Raya, which is a little bit sad.

The last and fourth day of Raya, we first went to a river 1 driving hour away, and then visited my cousins there. During the night, my family packed up our stuff, I stayed up until 3 am to do this Padlet, and then we got in our car heading back to Negeri Sembilan at 4 am.

Usually, I overthought before I even start doing something. That "something" may be:

• Messaging someone

• Asking questions

• Everything about crushes

• Writing that last point

• Writing this post

• Writing THAT last point

I'm even currently (30th of April) thinking what would everyone think if this padlet would be presented in front of everyone (hello!).

Introverts are people who like to be alone. Well I don't. Socialising is one of the best parts of life, and there's no way I'm missing that. But I am an ambivert, because I do recharge by being alone, most of the time.

So the root of the problem here is clearly not my social preferences, it's the lack of confidence. Why, one might ask? Easy, this takes us back to this section's first post, Overthinking.

My overthinking behavior made me think twice every single time I tried socialising. "What if I'm bothering?", "What do they think of me?", "What if I sound random / awkward?"

Feeling left out? For an introvert (ambivert actually)? Now that, is sad.

So how do I feel left out?

Usually, in a group of friends, usually called a circle, I *feel* like I was the one left out. For example, if my circle planned an outing together, I was usually not invited to join them.

It's Friday, May 10^th. I joined a group performance for Hari Guru after being politely forced by Sathanaa, although I actually kind of voluntarily joined them.

Saturday, the girls' outing day. I tried indescribably hard not too procrastinate, but my laziness got the best of me. Later that night, our performance group had a group discussion, and some new people joined in: Ammar, Qayyim, Haziq and Aqil (my former social circle). Seeing this, I figured that it's not worth my time participating in this activity, so I left, and it's the biggest mistake I made this week.

Right after I left, Hasnul, Darwisy and Huffaz (all the original members) left with me, leaving the group with just 4 men. I felt terribly guilty, so on Sunday I joined back in. Also, it's outing day!

This month's outing plan was simple: Go bowling for 3 games, buy food supplies, buy our class' Hari Guru presents, and head back before 5. It went... as planned.

Monday, got to meet my crush again, an even busier day. New assignments, practicing my dancing performance, I had social problems, another daily dose of overthinking that no one cares about me. The same goes with Tuesday.

Slowly, the assignment count rose up to 14 at its peak. That, is, an absolute monster of a number. I started questioning if this is what it takes to be an extrovert, because I'm absolutely killing it on socialising this week, man! I reconnected with many people, talked with my crush a lot (but never too much, I acknowledged my limits).

And finally, Thursday. Happy Teachers Day to you, Mr K. I did a relatively good performance, and so do my classmates (except for Haziq, he messed up a bit). There's also some... mistakes that happened, I am not sure at all. All I know, we didn't get to give our presents, I am absolutely clueless of what we did wrong. This is very dark, so we'll try to not talk about this.

Alright, let's begin. The morning, the 4 of us head to the entrance of IPG, while thinking where should we go today. It was at that moment, that Muhammad just randomly suggested IOI City Mall, in Putrajaya, nearly an hour (only) away from here. "Well, that's not THAT far, innit?" and boy, will we enjoy our outing there.

The Grab we took to go to IOI alone costed us RM 50, compared to the standard ~20. The first thing we did was getting a fairly priced and good Nasi Lemak, and tea, then to the Popular Bookstore, which we spent almost 2 hours in. I have no idea how.

Then we had lunch, went to Decathlon to get Muhammad some tennis equipments, and it's 4:00, so let's get home.

But... there's a problem. You see, Putrajaya is a very busy city, and in the evening, when people are coming back from work... the traffic didn't go that well.

We had to spend 20 minutes jut trying to get a car, and when we do get one, it costs us RM 110! THAT'S TWICE THE LAST TIME. Thankfully, we arrived mere 20 minutes before the gate closes and we'd be considered late.

So I woke up early again, for God knows how many times, and dressed up. Then I think I went to the dining hall with Amir, and waited, I think 40 minutes for the bus to arrive.

I'm pretty sure we arrived in Bangi at around 9 am, and then I ate some stuff, typical celebration things, you know.

What I do absolutely love today, though, is the fact that I am just so socially extroverted today. I went around a lot, talking to a lot of people, seniors, juniors, my crush, classmates, as much people as I can.

Everyone did a fantastic job with their performances, the song choices is actually good this time (because almost everyone was listening to MASDO), and the food were pretty good, as usual.

At 2, we hopped on our bus and head back to my home state. Tired, we got to rest in the evening, and that's that.

Nonetheless, I can say that I am pretty proud of myself today.

I get jealous of a lot of stuff, like someone being academically, socially, spiritually better than me on certain subjects, anyone who talked to my close friends or someone I like without me, someone's possession or things they have that I don't.

Being so easily jealous is never a good thing if you wanted to have a friendly relationship with people (I guess that's one reason why it's hard for me to get friends).

So on the first day, as far as I can remember, I met my roommate in the afternoon, never talked to him, until like, the night, I was extremely introverted at the time.

The next day, I THINK that's when I first met my former classmates, befire we got our actual class based on DIP and PS. And it's also the day we met our homeroom, Miss Yaya.

As far as I can tell, that was pretty much it for the first day. We then had an orientation week, which was fun and all, but to be honest, it's not the greatest way to get me socialized with people at the very first days meeting them.

Adam is quite hard to talk about. He's generally one of the hardest classmates for me to work with, probably because of our different workstyles. BUT, he is relatively friendly, we never had any beef with each other, but I tend to avoid being in the same work group with him (no offense).

Personally, I think she's a really really good teammate (in fact, one of the best in my class). Not necessarily at leading the group, but she knows how to do her part REALLY WELL. She's very friendly, she's a beautiful person, and very chill to talk to.

As of my relationship with her, she's probably the closest girl to me so far (likely because I told her too much stuff, I think I trusted her a tad bit too much) other than Sathanaa, which we'll talk about later. But for now, Ayra and I were good pals :)

In my opinion, as of right now, Aswad is a relatively fine teammate. Although, I will have to tell him what to do (in my experiences).

He was SO SO extroverted, I'm not even jealous of it. I also think he's quite overdramatic in certain situations (wonder what had happened before).

When we get really really close, though, is sometime when we're transferred to Seremban. He's a chill dude. A very inconsistent man with his work motivations, usually a pretty good teammate.

As one of his closest and longest-staying friend, I personally think he could really be a tad bit more social with others, as in, showing more expressions while talking, maybe (I'm no extrovert, so take my opinion as a grain of salt).

There's not that much to talk about her. I've never really chatted or do as much activities with her compared to others. What I can tell is, she's definitely not a bad teammate (Well, everyone kind of are).

For now, my current relationship status with her was pretty neutral. I'm not really trying to improve it, but wouldn't mind anyway.

I've known Haziq on the first day I stepped on KPP, in Bangi, in December 2022, PPCS that year. We got the same course (Mathematical Thinking), and have been coursemates, classmates, roommates, clubmates, circle friends, and God knows what else.

He's very introverted, but not as much as Eusoff is. In terms of teammates, Haziq and Eusoff are at approximately the same level. He's very reliable, but his commitment in group works in so inconsistent, just like Eusoff.

We've spent some time together. Just like all Kedahan people I've met, his jokes are very rude and unfiltered. He's a bit hard to work with as a teammate, but not as inconsistent as Haziq and Eusoff.

An introvert that does a great job at looking like she got 4 hours of sleep most of the time (just a joke, mate), and a beautiful person. She was also SUCH A GOOD teammate, easily one of the top 5. Working with her was so absurdly easy, just like Sa and Ayra.

Relationship-wise, there's still a lot of improvement (from my side) to be made, but so far the progress is... fine, at best.

Now, I'm not sure when I actually remebered Sa as one of my classmates, but I got close to her very very recently, sometime before I knew Maryam and Ayra.

As a friend, she was one of the best people to chat with. I can fully trust this girl and tell her my problems. She's also an introvert, which I guess, makes up for her academic CGPA.

I'm not that close to her as I am close to someone like Ayra, though. Haziq's better at that than me, in this case.

This cute girl was a great vice classrep, and could replace Haziq when he was away really really well.

She's a good teammate, does her work really well, very active physically, socially and spiritually, overall a really good student (in my view).

He was harder to talk about than Adam. As a human being, generally, he's a good person. BUT, when it comes to being teammates, that's the... "bad" part. He was the single hardest classmate to work with, in every. single. subject (except for than one Islamic Education group work).

Other than that, he's known for not being the greatest leader. Even as both a classrep once and an MTP (in my opinion). But, he seems like he cares about everyone, and tried his best to keep a good relationship with them.

Teammate-wise, she's really good at group works. Like, really good.

So as a teammate, he was ironically a pretty challenging person to work with. He's basically just hard to talk to, in general.

Socially, I was probably fairly closer to TPS than any other 2K2 boys other than Megat, Uddin and Alif.

Well, as of right now, let's just say that I didn't have any. Well, I had a few before, but right now, there should be no one in my mind. Although, if you want the updated status, you HAVE to ask me personally, and I "probably" will tell you everything, because I have no one to talk to ;)

She also joined K2 after the Pure Science and DIP division. At first, she's not hard to forget, just hard to remember (It's two pretty different things).

Teammate-wise, this Kedahan girl's not the best at it with me, our workstyles are fairly distinct, but it's not that bad.

Socially, we're doing fine. Not as good as other 2k2 girls, but it's a reasonable distance between the two of us.

He's a very chill kid, compared to other "kids" (no offense) like Alif. He's basically a mixed Megat and Alif. His jokes are awkwardly laugh-cracking, and he can do his work as a teammate pretty well.

Overall, he's a cool little guy.

As a classmate, he... has a bit of a temper problem. It's very easy for him to get pissed by other students (even lecturers, in some unfortunate cases), and I wish he could improve on that. But, he understands lessons very very well, definitely the most committed student in my Korean class (it was so hard to not sleep during those classes for me).

Hi, my name is Muhammad Afif Nazran Bin Norhaizal Bin Ramley Bin Mat Tamat (that's as far as I remembered). I'm a member of a very unique and diverse class, 2K2, where we can cooperate as one, or every one of us talk behind each other's backs, or literally shatter into a million pieces (It depends on the situation. Most of the time we're the worst team)

I'm the guy who would collect gossip information as much as possible as a hobby, and I'm the guy who would have a crush on my own classmates and feel awkward afterward (definitely had never happened before, aye?), I'm the type of guy who would try to be cool and chill but then immediately panic when I realised I left my earbuds at class 11.

My environment forces me to swear in my conversation just so that people would take things seriously.

The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual.

- James Clear, Atomic Habits

And now, I've been swearing more than my friends on average, which is obviously, just sad to know.

To be honest, there is a group of people that I hate deeply just because of what they have done to me.

The problem here is, they don't know about it. The root of the problem, is, once again, expectedly, my overthinking. But this time, my overthinking mind is proven to be correct (at least, kind of).

I've been watching a whole lot of Formula 1 within the last 2 months, and I meant a lot of them.

But to be honest, I'm still a new person to the Formula 1 community, and there's still a lot more things to learn about.

I'll likely have to leave this conflict for a little while due to exams that are coming up next week, so we will see what happens next.

I struggled SO HARD on finding that last point's coordinate. I'm having such a bad anxiety at the time that I mess up basic arithmetics. But then I realised... I can just take the x from the points beneath the last point and the y from the point next to the last point. Now I have to do the write of shame, finishing the equation and writing the coords of the last point. Haih...

Biology (Also expected)

Bahasa Melayu (Time pressure)

Sejarah ('Alright' spot)

PAI (A bit hard)

Music (unexpected)

Physics (So much easier)

Chemistry (Could do better)

Korean (Nice one)

English Language (Eh, fair enough)

Mathematics (Thank God)

But a more detailed version would be: To have an arc with someone, I must form a deep or frequent enough connection with them over a period of time (averaging about 1-2 weeks, but it may vary a lot). The person are typically not someone I'm already really close with (unless we're forming an even deeper connection, then it may count as an arc). My arcs commonly focuses around my classmates, and sometimes but rarely involve other batchmates too.

For example, November 2024 was a heavy Izaz arc. Izaz and I works together A LOT during that month, as emcees, teammates, and we even chatted for some time.

That's pretty much it. I'll be using this term regularly for the upcoming posts.

• Spiritual

• Intrapersonal

• Academics

• Social

• Sports & Health

Is it try-hard? Yes, absolutely. But I love using these pillars as a viewpoint of my current progress in life, and whether or not I should be investing more time and energy into one, or reduce another. It's an attempt to keep my life balanced. Even if it's not, it makes it easier for me to analyse where certain problems are coming from.

For example, it's pretty common for me to sometimes feel like something was going wrong in life. With these pillars, I can see where what went wrong. It may be [SOCIAL] my relationship with a girl-classmate (foreshadowing much), [SPIRITUAL] increasing secularity in myself, [ACADEMICS] my Notion assignment page piling up, or [INTRAPERSONAL] this feeling of hatred towards myself.

Obviously, these pillars were far from perfect. But it was meant to be that way. Intrapersonal, for example, is the most vague out of the 5. There's not really much actions that JUST AFFECTS intrapersonal. Intrapersonal is the scale that monitors the wellbeing of the other four pillars. Social, is the most influential of the five. A problem with social would wreak havoc on the entire system (and it has happened, where Social's problem directly damaged my Sports & Health's area).

That's pretty much it. I take it back that this thing is simpler than arc. I'll mention these a few times too in the future.

Following our arguably successful debut in WSC KL Regional Round, we advance to the Globals in Bangkok, from June 27th to July 3rd (Happy Independence Day), and boy, was it special...

This post focuses more on the events of WSC themselves. For Maryam-or-Azriff-or-Hayvin-related events, check out the posts after this.

The first official event to take place (after the opening ceremony) was Scavenger hunt. In short, we were divided into groups of 10 (all strangers. Scary.) and were sent to an attraction spot (for Bangkok, it was a theme park) and complete tasks and have fun.

It was really, really, concerning me before the event. I lost all confidence in my social capability. In the end, it's not too bad. My team consist of a Kazakh, Pakistanis, Kenyans, Nepalese too if I recall, and finally, meet Paloma, the one and only American on this WSC Global round. I managed to befriend here, quite luckily. We even exchanged country stickers with each other (I GOT THE RAREST [AMERICAN] STICKER IN THE EVENT HAHAH SO PROUD)

Challenge, Debate and Writing were next (Sunday). Challenge was not as challenging as in Regionals, but still very difficult. We somehow managed to win all 3 debates (God bless you Azriff. Maryam and I were chatting about Squid Game half the time :D), and writing was really fine. I'm happy with my essay. And man was that essay helpful.

The last event, Bowl, was my favourite. Yes. Was. For context, Bowl is basically a team Kahoot. Each team is given a clicker, and a screen shows the questions and we have 15 seconds (most of the time) to answer. Our early questions were okay, only getting a few questions wrong. We then got our alpaca (finally). I switched my red with an orange because Maryam likes it, and finally reached our final question, with 1000 points on the line.

Of course, they had to make the final question based on MY SYLLABUS. They had 15 topics to choose from, and with 33% chance, they chose mine.

I answered wrong.

And for the rest of the day, my mood is disrupted by this mistake.

That's pretty much it. We'll talk about our "sweet" moments below.

Anyways, from that point on, I've kind of taken the responsibility that I have to make sure Maryam doesn't get lost (If she did, I better be there with her). And GOOD THING I DID.

Throughout the week, the both of us will get lost / wander off the most out of any other students. Other than getting labelled as a couple (Please don't do that. Really.), I enjoy taking care of people. This is the first time I've had to "take care" of a girl my age, though. I swear, I didn't catch any feelings DURING the bodyguarding period. I only have one responsibility, and feelings would be a burden to have while she's fully trusting me too.

Intrapersonal and Social are by definition quite the opposites of each other. Social might aswell be named as Interpersonal and it still describes itself perfectly.

Interestingly, there are many parallels between these two on the pillar system.

Intrapersonal and social is extremely connected. A weak intrapersonal weakens my self-esteem, and indirectly weakens my social. A weak social, on the other hand, causes my mind to overthink and destroys my self-worth, which is again, an intrapersonal concept.

But the way to fix one is kind of the opposite of another. To fix intrapersonal, I will distance myself from society, typically for a few hours (Usually I take a very, very, long shower). It makes me... love myself again, somehow. I notice the little details about myself, and embraced every bit of it. It works. For some time.

I then use this good mood to talk with as many people as I can, and showing absolute positive energy around them. Some say I will act like an innocent child (in a way that I'm not stressed AT ALL, not the annoying kind of childish). That's how I can fix these two pillars from collapsing the entire system.

meet ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. For non-professional readers, this is not to be confused with electrician.

Thanks to Physics Form 5 for introducing me to these kinds of thing. It's... fun (at least to learn it for now. I'd have no idea what's coming)

Soo hope for the best. This could be it (or it could be not), God knows. I'm learning, and it's never too late. Many people discovered their passion in their mid-20s, i still have plenty of time.

Social has been eating up too much of our energy, for very little actual progress. Most of those energy just goes to the overthinking and negative thoughts. Academic is the most badly affected by it, followed by Spiritual...

How did some people even stay with me during those times?? I was an absolute loner how was Ammar, Auni, Ayra and others okay with befriending someone like me?

Well now, I did achieve emotional maturity the earliest after going through that 2 year of emotionally sensitive phase.

I really have gotten better I see...

So here's the hard truth: If you keep on trying to satisfy everyone, you can't. Well, you CAN satisfy EVERYONE, if that'd exclude YOU. When everyone else's opinions matter more than you, you've lost your own freedom of choice. You are essentially a puppet of expectations formed by the opinions of the people around you.

You have to be comfortable to be disliked by someone. But not TOO comfortable.

If you wouldn't take advice from someone, why would you care what that person's criticisms are?

You may take this lightly, but when in real life situations, your first thoughts are probably "Oh, what if I look dumb? What will the others think of me?". Listen: No one cares that much about what you did other than you. They have their own life to think about. If you did something embarrassing, people may see and remember it, but after 10 minutes, no one would care.

Reader, whatever happens, I want you to promise me one thing. Try to really love your family. If your parents are trying, even if they're failing in some ways, try to see the sacrifices they’ve made. If they’ve given you the tools to succeed, that's a foundation worth appreciating.

I know, they may not be perfect. They may have raised you incorrectly, they make lots and lots of mistakes, they won't let you question them, even when they're clearly wrong, they may favor another child more than you, their way of raising may be objectively too unnecessarily strict.

I agree that there is a really small minority of people that don't deserve to be parents, but if you've been reading this, with a stable internet connection, maybe with school's internet that your parents provided, with an electronic device given to you, even if it's the bare minimum, they deserve at least some appreciation by their world; you.

People shows their good and positive sides much more than their negative ones, as they should.

So don't ever think we're worse than someone, just because we can see our shadows more clearly than theirs.

To be a successful person (without being born into royalties and ultra-rich families, of course), you will have to go through harder things than most people. It's a price of effort. More effort COULD get you an easier future, and a mediocre effort would normally get you a mediocre life.

That's why it's hard to be truly successful. If it's not hard, everybody would've done it. Going back to the comparison post, that's why you shouldn't compare people's success, if you can't see the years of effort they've put in.

Don't complain. At least, try to never do.

Complaining literally does nothing to your problem, other than asking people to sympathize with your situation. You could've used that energy to go ahead and assess and solve that problem, or just accept it if it's something you can't control.

There's a difference between acknowledging a problem and making a fuss about it.

We also ask that question when we're in an ambulance with our loved ones, when we're on a flight to finally return to our home country on a semester holiday, and when we asks ourselves to keep pushing through that temporary struggles.

While we always want to "be there" already, when we look at it, much of our lives are actually spent in the "not yet". Life is like a liminal space, everytime and everywhere.

But just like liminal spaces, sometimes rather than looking forward to the seemingly infinite and scary abyss of the future, it's good to take some time and look to your sides. To look at the decorations of the ceilings, the texture of the carpet beneath you, and the design of the hallway lamps. It's beautiful, really.

Don't worry, friend. You'll get there, eventually. Even if the destination isn't what you hoped for. Even then, at the end of one road, another awaits you. And while you're at it, enjoy the ride.