My Journey to Berkeley - part 2

Anyway, that AstroMag article about Astro’s scholars is particular erroneous where my tale is told. To set things straight, Berkeley is ranked 6^th overall and 2^nd best in technology by THES. US News ranks it 20^th overall (T_T) and 2^nd best in engineering. The people who interviewed me didn’t pay enough attention to what I was saying I guess.

Now, back to the story – my joy upon receiving admission into Berkeley in March was fleeting, very much so. I soon realized that I could scarcely afford the estimated international student budget of USD43k, which itself is guaranteed to increase annually due to inflation. *cues dreams of Californian beach babes shattering* Berkeley, the public university that it is, only gives tuition waivers to Californians and refuses financial aid to internationals until their sophomore year ( for those not in the know: freshman => sophomore => junior => senior) and even then, only in meager amounts.

At this point, I was grasping for straws albeit still filled with radiant hope characteristic of naïveté. In my JPA interview, I mentioned that I got into Berkeley and they gave me that curt “don’t tell us where you want to go, we’ll decide where to send you” answer. I applied for the AMCHAM scholarship. I sent letters to numerous corporations – Taiko, Sembawang, A*Star, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Ford, Caterpillar, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin etc. All I got in return were negatives. I had a friend who tried getting money for me from Motorola. YangLi even wrote a letter to Tony Pua to blog about me, which he eventually did. You’d be surprised how many people have actually asked me if I’m the guy they read about online. But, still no sponsors.

Eventually, I exhausted all my options but the Astro scholarship. Initially, I didn’t even consider that as an option. Astro officially states that they’ll sponsor Malaysians majoring in “engineering, related to media and broadcasting technologies”. Nobody, not my friends nor the people in ReCom, could tell me how I could spin my way around this. Not only that, the online application required four essays (actually three mandatory, and one optional; but would you dare leave the fourth one out?). Heck, when I was going about with my university applications; none “required”, mandatory or otherwise, more than three.

Then again, desperation drives men to many things, of which applying for a scholarship that one has conceivably no hope of getting is probably the least. Admittedly, the essays that had to be written were rather similar to the ones I had labored for hours over a few months ago. With the passing of time, I was now able to organize my thoughts more coherently. The essays I wrote at this point were definitely better than their predecessors, giving rise to wishful thinking – “If my essays had been better than, I might have gotten MIT and I wouldn’t have to scurry around looking for sponsors now”. Interestingly, my mom never fails to remind me that were it not for my many conflicts with Datin, I would have a lot less material.

But I digress. I submitted my application a week or two earlier then expected and received a call from Astro even before the application window had closed. Unfortunately, the time slot they had given me clashed with two of my AS exams. My interview was postponed for two weeks. When I finally went for it, it was actually quite a fun experience, once you omit the parts where I was dumbfounded. We talked about MagLev technology and my passion for cars. Then my interviewer asked me who first mooted the idea of the modern satellite. The answer’s Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer (he’s the one who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey).

I bet you didn’t know that, did cha? Wahaha, in your face, dumbass!

Actually, I was pretty much clueless myself. But no, I couldn’t say that, could I? So I told him about Newton’s thought experiment where cannonballs were fired from increasingly high peaks to show the effects of centripetal acceleration. The cannonballs would continually fall, but due to the curvature of the earth, their range would get much larger and finally, there would be that one cannonballs that would never hit terra firma despite perpetually descending. And we moved on to talking about geosynchronous satellites. Fun, no?

However, it turned out that I had it pretty easy when I started comparing notes with the people called for the second interview a few weeks later. One was asked about the power outputs of satellites and another about the mechanism of a laser (which by the way, is not a word but an acronym). In this interview, it was all focused on the “soft” skills of a candidate and his/her personality. Given the personality factor, its a wonder I scraped through. I do think that my talking about Astro’s official monopoly and its expiration in 2017 did work in my favor. I actually did spend hours upon hours reading up everything I could on Astro. Unfortunately for me, my computer crashed a few days before that all-important 2^nd interview. Thus, I skipped Physics lectures in college to spend time on the internet frantically seeking for anything that would give me the extra edge.

Conclusion: Truancy wins you scholarships

A few sleep-deprived weeks later, Astro awarded the scholarship to me. Life since then has been quite a blur. A swirling vortex of colors, people and events. I’m just thankful that I’ve been able to spend much of it with the people I’m proud to call my friends.