The Wild and Windy Night

Now playing: The Long and Winding Road by The Beatles

I’m not sure if I like this theme…yet. It’s relatively better than the rest of the other themes, but it kind of looks all over the place. But I needed a break from the Elegant Grunge theme because it was starting to grate on me for some reason.

I feel the need to post this picture because y’all will be seeing my face in the Stuff@School pullout in The Star this Monday, exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark.

If you’re thinking, “Jeesh what even is this thingmabob Michelle constantly rambles and raves on about every second of her life on Facebook, Twitter, and now her blog”, here is the full explanation of what is going on.

A few weeks earlier, I was flipping through The Star newspaper and found the first, um, pre-issue of Stuff@School for the year. I’ve been collecting issues of S@s for a few years now, particularly because they have this “Write Stuff’ section where you can submit your own writing works, and I’ve always wanted to submit some stories of mine but always never manage to do it because I always, always exceed the 1,000-word limit. I’ve always loved the pullout though, because it’s the only kind of English pullout for schooling teens I can find anywhere. And also because there was one time I was featured in there for the Mighty Minds Challenge without myself knowing how it got there.

So anyway, I found the pre-issue, and the words on the front page really caught my attention: “Do you yelp for joy when you see Stuff@School? Is there a writer within you with lots to say and a riveting way of saying it? Are you chained to Facebook, Twitter and your blog?” And then I just yelped because number one, yes I was excited to see this new issue of S@s, and number two, yes I write a lot, I won’t say I have a riveting way of saying it, more like annoying, but yes yes yes I consider myself a writer, and number three, I breathe the Internet so naturally all three fields describe my life perfectly. And under those three questions is “If you just ticked all the boxes above, name and fame and attractive prizes, including a one-month internship at The Star, could be yours!” and I got curious, of course, so I read more into it and found out that Stuff@School is organising this young writer’s programme called Starstruck! and basically, at the first round, 40 participants from the whole of Malaysia will be shortlisted, and writing assignments will be doled out and once those works are done, they will be published in issues of Stuff@School. To sum it in a shell, it’ll be like writing for a newspaper, and seeing your face and name on newspaper print every week, which in itself is bonus enough for me. It’s pretty much the closest I can get to being ~famous~ anyway.

To apply, we were required to write a 500-word description of ourselves, which is actually a torturing task because to write 500 words, and only 500 words, is basically like writing a ringkasan/rumusan/summary because then there would be loads of crossing out, or in my case, backspacing. I actually only sat down and started to write two days before the deadline, because the whole time before that I was just pushing it to the back of my mind, telling myself, you’ll have time later, you’ll have time later, and by the time I realised it was two days to March 13, I finally got my arse on the chair and started to squeeze creativity juice out of my brain. As people who follow me on Twitter would know, I complained endlessly during that period of time when I just sat there procrastinating before finally getting down to business. I finally finished it in the course of two days, and was relieved I finally got it done.

To be honest, I didn’t get any hopes up at all. I’ve learned not to harbour high expectations in anything so I rarely thought about it. Of course I wanted to get shortlisted, but the thing is losing/winning with no expectations is better than losing/winning with high expectations. Hence, as aforementioned in my last post, I was ill and asleep when I realised it was the day the names would be announced, and so I got on my phone and…you already know what happened.

I just found a while ago that the upcoming Stuff@School issue will be printed in the national edition, which is to say, to those who subscribe/read The Star newspaper, watch out for the Stuff@School pullout section this Monday, because I’ll be in there! Here I’ll grace this post with some smileys which are really rare on my blog to express my excitement and ecstasy. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Basically, I’ll be in every issue of S@s for the articles I will be contributing, so, I honestly don’t mean to sound conceited, but if you want to read what I write then you can subscribe to Stuff@School –but only through your schools because S@s subscriptions are through schools only. I know, it’s quite complicated, but it’s the way it is. BUT, subscribing through your school honestly isn’t rocket science, go here, find the telephone number for the Kedah representative, call him and inquire about the subscriptions, and voila! As for the people who go to the same school as me (well Asmarians in general), I’m the ambassador for S@s in Asma, ahem, and flyers will be put up in every class once I get the information on subscriptions, as well as the ELS board, where there will be a section dedicated to weekly snippets of S@s and whatnot. If anyone is interested in subscribing, and please do subscribe, don’t you want to read about what I write (loljk), give me your names and classes. As of what I know right now, you only need to pay RM22 for the full 24 issues. Cheap, right? So go subscribe now! Y’all can find me at 4 Negeri.

Okay, promoting business aside, you can also submit your own works to Stuff@School as well, anyone! All information on work submission can be found on S@s issues as well.

That’s about it for now, and I’ll be constantly updating on my journey with Starstruck! as I go. Also, comments on this new theme? New them > old theme / old theme > new theme?