Masks are not stupid

The other day I was invited to a buka puasa somewhere in Keramat.

As I have not yet purchased a cheap car to drive around in, I was obliged to take the Flu Express a.k.a RapidKL LRT to Dato' Keramat. And I decided to wear a mask in public for the first time (Yeay!) But mine's not the normal round or rectangle-shaped mask. It looked more like Optimus Prime's mouthpiece (without the Optimus Prime lips lah).

So I got a few stares from people who either think i look cool or idiotic. As the train progressed, the train was so packed, there wasn't even room to breathe. Ok, that was pure exaggeration, but you get my point. And i noticed that a majority of the passengers do not wear masks, including nurses from Ampang Puteri. In a photo taken inside a Mexican public transport i saw, almost everyone wore masks. But that's ok. If Malaysians can stand durians, they can stand anything.

But i observed the not-so-publicized advantages of wearing a mask:

1) You could take on a mysterious persona, like a ninja. Because people only see your eyes, communication takes place only through glares, raising eyebrows, smiling eyes, etc. Super mysterious.

2) You could smile at everyone and they won't think you're completely nuts. Being forced to make a solemn face all the time in a train is depressing, trust me.

3) You could sing along to your favorite songs without shame :)

4) And finally, yeah, you could reduce the risk of getting influenza A (H1N1) piggy flu. Trying saying that 5 times in a row, hah.

And the downside of wearing masks:

1) In the LRT where its nice and cool, your breath fogs your spectacles, and outside where its hot your face sweats like a certain unpronouncable animal.

2) If you exhale through the mouth you could smell the contents of sahur. Urghh.

So since my advantages exceed my downsides, i recommend wearing masks. Weird logic, i know. But at least you could now smile at that hottie in the train ;))

MOC

I totally think that the MOC (Muslim Overseas Camp, if you don't know) is

1. More pre-departure than pre-departure camp.

2. More relevant than BTN..even counter BTN in some ways *beep*

The irony was, MOC was held at a BTN camp.

Politics aside, MOC was a sentiment-free, highly informative camp that I highly recommend attending, especially to my juniors (who also happen to be 1 year older than I am..another irony)

The goal, self-explained by the name, is to prepare muslim students for life overseas. And I must say, the facilitators did a good job at that.