AOTULE Student Exchange: The Arrival at Kuala Lumpur

So, as I mentioned in the previous post , I changed my flight schedule so that I used Bandung-Kuala Lumpur instead of Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur. The reason was simple: the price was cheaper if I go to Kuala Lumpur directly from Bandung

My plan was like this: arriving at KL -> buying new hand phone number -> calling my senior high school friend (Tobil a.k.a Anggara) -> going to KL Sentral -> meeting Tobil -> going somewhere to buy some souvenirs and having lunch ->  going back to airport -> picking up by University Malaya. I didn’t ask to be picked up in the morning because I didn’t want to bother the university. It will be better if UM pick us at the same time, I thought. The plan was going right: Tobil and I were going to KLCC to have some lunch and buying some souvenirs in Petaling Street. Quite good except that Fahmi (my senior high school friend who also stayed in Malaysia) was angry because I didn’t tell him that I went to KL, hehe. I assumed you were already in Korea

Since the airport is quite far from KL Sentral and KL Sentral to UM  is nearer than airport to UM, Tobil suggested me to tell the person that would pick me up from UM to pick me up in KL Sentral. At that time, I felt something strange: I didn’t have contact person list from UM! I called international student center office, but no answer.. It was sunday, the office was closed. So I just sent text message to Dea, told her to inform the person from UM that I was already in KL Sentral. None of us had the contact list.

Several hours later, Dea sent text message to me that she was already in LCCT airport and changed her phone number into Malaysian number. There was delay on her flight. After queuing in immigration office, Dea told me that she couldn’t find any person from UM. She assumed that the person should be back because of a long waiting time. I told Dea to go to KL Sentral so we can take taxi together to UM. I said that I was on the praying room. She agreed with me and sent a message: “ok, I use pink long sleeves t-shirt, we can meet on KL Sentral praying room because I haven’t pray yet..”  and I replied with: “Dea, the praying room is quite far from KL Sentral entrance, I think we can meet on the entrance”.  Dea didn’t reply my message because her handphone didn’t have enough battery. I was quite panic. I was waiting in the entrance, wandering around, going back to the entrance, going back to praying room, going back to the entrance, etc until I found that: KL Sentral has two separated praying room! Oh God, this place is quite huge… then I decided to go inside the nearer praying room from the entrance which was different from the first praying room I entered before.

After waiting for several minutes finally I saw a girl wearing pink long sleeves t-shirt entering the praying room. She is Dea! We haven’t met each other before, so lucky we could meet each other at KL Sentral.  After praying, we took a taxi to the UM but sadly we didn’t know where to go in a huge UM campus. Ha! Dea even had some arguing with the security officer because the security guard knew nothing about AOTULE. I was lucky to have Dea with me..haha. After that, Dea suggested to go to Kolej 8, where the person which name is printed on our AOUTLE’s acceptance letter might live. “We must meet him”, said Dea. At Kolej 8, luckily we met security guard who knew about the student exchange program. He said we must go to Kolej 10.

At Kolej 10, we met Mr. Razif who said: “Where have you been? We can’t contact you”. Sure, we have changed our number. I felt guilty since I changed my number and told Dea to do so Sorry.. never thought that he would make international call for us  ”Haven’t you received the contact person list? We sent it to your international student office”.. we were very surprised to hear what Mr. Razif told us later. Sure no! I just checked my email this afternoon. Thanks God, we can be in the right place but it would be less confusing if we had the contact person list with us.

After a tiring day, we had dinner together. At the dinner I met my AOUTULE friends as well as I met Mila, Tika, Mahmood, Ms. Leena, Mrs. Mariam, and Mr. Idzuan. I was really happy At the dinner I saw a group of people chatting and laughing. I thought they were chatting in English but I was wrong, they were chatting in Chinese. How interesting!

I got my room’s key. Dea and I would stay in the same room: A-4-06. We never thought that it mean: building A, fourth floor, use stairs! Haha.. It was hard for us to bring our luggage to the fourth floor of the building but Syamsudin, Andreas, Tika, and Mila helped us a lot. When we arrived at the room, another girl was entering the same room. Never thought that she would be our roommates and best friend. She is Fang Ziwen from Tsinghua University

Anyway, based on Andreas story he met Mr. Idzuan also in an accident when they went to information center at LCCT. Then Andreas and Mr. Idzuan were waiting and searching for us in LCCT for several hours but we already in another place… Andreas and I knew that Andreas and Dea had the same flight but Dea didn’t know about it. On the other hand, Syamsudin and I also had the same flight but none of use knew about it. Quite funny, right? So the moral of the story are: never make a lot of assumptions and try your best to have a good communication.

… to be continued …

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