I was home for 12 days for the Chinese New Year break, which was excellent by Malaysian standards (some companies closed for a week), good by Chinese standards (our company had 10 days off), decent for any break from work and too short by my standards.


***

When a group of friends from the same primary and secondary school sit around nursing their over-fed bellies and drinking plain water, talk sometimes turn to things in the distant past.

There’s gossip from primary school, arguing about little details of our secondary school lives and reliving the exciting moments on the numerous trips to beaches.

There’s a likelihood we’ll still come back to these topics decades later.


***

For the past few days, I have been surviving without the internet connection at home. The apartment broadband connection was terminated some weeks ago, but I have been able to survive due to an unsecured network.

It was so unprotected that even the router control password was not changed. Using the default admin/admin username and password, I could fiddle with the router settings to give my BitTorrent program unrestricted access.

Those good days have since passed. Since my return, the same router’s security has been beefed up and I no longer have any access. In the absence of broadband, I will probably spend my nights reading, writing and…


Shit. Now that my exams have passed I really have no idea what to do with my time. Not that there’s a humongous amount of free time, probably 2 hours a day or so. I’ve pinched an international finance text book from my godmother, but that would not keep me occupied for very long.