Gifts from the bank

This is the last post of the "packing" series. (click on the label below for the earlier posts)

When I was in France, I used the bank Crédit Agricole. It wasn't really a choice of mine...we were brought to that bank to open our accounts when we first arrived in France. And I just continued using it...even after I moved to Lyon and had to change to another caisse régionale (regional branch; somehow the same banks in different regions are somewhat independent from each other -_- )

Each time I opened an account, I received a card holder.

left: from Angoulême, in the Charente-Périgord region
right: from Lyon, in the Centre-Est region

I never used either of them...since I keep my cards in my wallet and it would be a bother to carry around another card case. But I kept them in a drawer "just in case" (that's the pack rat's motto, in case you don't know :P ) they would come in useful someday...

As of the other items I posted about, I decided not to bring them back to Malaysia. And now I'm kinda regretting my decision...the would be useful for stuffing some name cards right now...

Oh well. I can't get them back anyway.

(Psst...what's more the black one was of a velvety texture...and I love velvety textures. lol)

The bear that didn't make it

December 2007.

My birthday was always during the Christmas holidays, so I usually didn't see any of my French friends then. But that year, before the holidays Aurélia came to find me and handed me a wrapped gift. "I wanted to give this to you before the holidays," she said. (or something to that effect)

In it was a key-chain, a Winnie the Pooh key-chain. (My friends all knew that I liked Winnie the Pooh, because my pencil-case had Winnie the Pooh on it.) There was a button on the back of its head, which when pressed would make the bear light up blinking for a while.

I used that key-chain for some time...making it all bruised (since it kept coming into contact with my keys...) Then one day the hook (you'll see what I mean) broke and I was left with a Winnie the Pooh that couldn't hang anywhere any more.

I still kept it (it first sat on my table because I didn't know what to do with it, then became an ornament on my bookshelf, I think). I think I would have kept it forever if I didn't have to move out, back to Malaysia. But finally I decided that it couldn't come back with me...

bruised and battered :(

the button

Goodbye Winnie the Pooh. I miss you.

Thank you again, Aurélia.

A makeshift board

Check this out:


Do you recognise it?

If you don't, this might help:


If you still don't recognise it, then you will never figure it out :P

It's a Chinese chess board. During my first year in INSA, I had to go for English classes. We needed to do a short talk on a topic of our choice...and I somehow thought of this. But I didn't have the chessboard with me...so I took a friend's cereal box and cut it up to make the board (that friend eats a lot of cereal...it was a jumbo-sized box!)

You might notice that there are tiny letters written in pencil on each of the chess pieces. They are the letters used for move notations...I didn't even know about them before doing my research for the talk. (I only know how to play...and not very well. My English chess is a little better...and I knew the notations for those too! I mean even before doing this talk :P ) So I needed to have them written down so that I wouldn't forget.

I kept this board for five years, thinking that it would serve again if I had to do another talk. (and also, if a friend suddenly expressed a desire to learn Chinese chess) But I never used it again, and I decided that it had to go when I was packing to come back for good. It hurt to throw it away. :(

Anyway, for those who like the black side better, here's your team! (though it's the blue side, now :P )

Vive la 49ème promo!

Um...remember the posts I wrote about stuff I threw away before coming back from France? (if you don't, click on the label at the bottom) After a little break, here's another one.

Poly de parrainage, 49ème promo de l'INSA de Lyon!

This is...the little booklet (well, not so little, actually...it's A4-sized :P ) that we received during our integration. We had a week-long integration, filled with different activities...but I can't remember much of it now. (oops...)

The main thing I remember was that we had "families"; seniors (who wanted to take part in the integration) would form families. Each family has a name, and the integration committee (well, a group of students) would take the list of new students and put them into different families. (am I being clear? Sorry if I'm not)

Anyway, in my year, the ASINSA (Asian department) foreign students didn't have any family (they left us out! *sniff* ) So when we went for the integration activities, all the seniors pointed us to THE family that was formed by senior ASINSA students. So that family ended up being very big! :P

As for the activities, we would go all over campus (and believe me, the campus is huge!) and here and there we would face off with another family in some kind of game. For some reason, every time we met another family we had to try to yell louder than the other family. (Intimidation? Domination? I don't know...lol)

So with all the "homeless" (or "family-less") students in our family, it certainly helped us win a lot of yelling matches :P Not that there was any prize.

Oh, and our family was called the Mickeys! Yeah, like Mickey Mouse. And we had a really lame slogan - which I didn't understand at that time but understood later when I saw it written down - it was "Pourquoi Mickey Mouse? Parce que Mario Bros!"

Literally, it is "Why Mickey Mouse? Because Mario Bros!"

The thing is, the slogan could be written "Pourquoi Mickey mousse? Parce que Mario brosse!", which is read the exact same way, using the French pronunciation of English words. Yeah, unfortunately. *sigh* And "mousse" is to lather (like the mousse when you shampoo your hair, except that it's a verb here), and "brosse" is to brush. So, uh...this is a pun. I guess. Except that it's really lame because it hinges on wrong pronunciation. *sigh*

All right, back to the booklet...in it, they there was all sorts of information, about our dorms, about the restaurants on campus (there were four!), ...and I can't remember what else. :P All presented in that comical manner you see on the cover...

I kept this for five years, and I was rather sad to leave it behind... But I hadn't touched it in the last three or four years I was there, so I guess it would similarly collect dust in Malaysia. So off to the recycle bin it went. (and let's hope it has been reborn into a better life...)

So now I shall have to be content with my yearbook (or should I say graduation book?)...which I shall probably (certainly!) keep for a much longer time. (which just means it will collect dust for a much longer time, I guess)

Here fishy fishy...

It isn't April yet...but this is to continue from my previous post on packing my stuff.

In France, April Fool is called Poisson d'Avril, which literally translates to "April's Fish".


This fish is from either our first or second year in France...when we were still in Angoulême. We had lots of French classes in the beginning, and any discussion wasn't off-topic, because we would gain vocabulary on that, and we were supposed to learn about French culture too!

Our teacher, Geneviève, told us that the French make paper fish and stick it to people's backs on April Fool's Day. Anyway, she started cutting out paper fish for each of us, and wrote our names on each one. Then I don't know who started asking her to sign it, then everyone else started passing their fish all over the class for signatures!

Mimi was a big fan of Pierrick then, a guy on Star Academy, the French version of the Idol series. And Hidayah was into Agatha Christie (and Hercule Poirot) at the time...I can't remember why, but I think I pulled her into it, being an Agatha Christie fan from my secondary school years.

Then there was Firdaus and Mai who wanted me to cook fish for them... I had cooked steamed fish with tomyam sauce (really sinple, just put the tomyam sauce on the fish and then steam it). I think it was cooked in Dayah's room because she had a big rice cooker...the one with a steamer. (And when I said, it's so simple, you can cook it yourself...they said, it's not the same when someone cooks it for you...haha, lazybones!)

So yeah, I kept this fish for the five years after leaving Angoulême. It was in my document folder all the time...because I didn't know where to put it. But when I was leaving for home, I decided that it was no use keeping it any longer...but still wanted to preserve a digital memory of it!

Takrif satu radian

I've wanted to write about this since I was packing my stuff to leave France for good. (more than a year ago!) But procrastination sort of got the upper hand. :P

So now I think I will spread them out over a few posts.

You see, when I was packing, I needed to make sure my luggage wasn't overweight...so I had to throw some stuff away. Some things I really didn't need any more...and if I brought them back it would be to bring them from one dust-collecting storage to another. But some of these have sentimental value...so I took photos of them before saying goodbye.


Remember these buku latihan? They're the same in all schools...apart from the logo. These are my Add Maths notes...I brought them to France for reference, but I think I never used them :P

A peek inside the cover...


We started learning Add Maths with Sukatan Menbulat! (I don't even know what that's called in English :P ) Tahukah anda takrif satu radian? lol

(And you see...learning Maths in BM hasn't hurt my English in any way...but I think I'll keep that rant out of this post.)