The Mystery of Ephraim

Pre-University Studies

:: Taylor’s College, Bangsar

:: Taylor’s College, Petaling Jaya

:: Taylor’s College, Subang Jaya

:: Taylor’s College, Sri Hartamas

Taylor’s American Degree Transfer Program

Taylor’s University College, Lakeside Campus

:: School of Biomedical Sciences . . . University of Queensland

:: School of Pharmacy . . . University of Queensland

:: Taylor’s Law School . . . University of Reading

:: Taylor’s Business School . . . University of South Australia

:: Taylor’s Language Centre . . . University of Bristol

:: School of Hospitality & Tourism . . . The University of Toulouse

:: School of Communication . . . University of South Australia

:: School of Computer Science & IT . . . RMIT

:: School of Architecture, Building & Design . . . University of Melbourne

:: School of Quantity Survey . . . University of Melbourne

:: School of Engineering . . . University of Birmingham

The first and original Taylor’s campus was located in a four-storey dilapidated building at Jalan Pantai, Kuala Lumpur offering the Victorian HSC for a student population of 345. With an archaic and dysfunctional education system stagnating the country, the College grew rapidly and by 1985, it moved to its second campus in PJ New Town. Four years later, the Subang Jaya Campus was launched and two new Pre-University programmes introduced: the International Canadian Pre-University programme and South Australian Matriculation.

Rapid growth ensured, and by 1990, a host of other programmes were introduced, including the American Degree Programme; Architecture, Quantity Surveying & Construction; Business, Accounting, Marketing & Finance; Cambridge A Levels; Computer Science; Software Engineering & IT; Engineering; Hospitality Tourism & Culinary Arts; Taylor’s Business Foundation.

An incubator for foreign universities, the College continued to expand and the 4th Campus in Wisma Subang was launched in 2001 housing the Taylor’s Business School. The following year, Taylor’s College Petaling Jaya became the 5th Campus at Leisure Commerce Square and Taylor’s School of Hospitality and Tourism was relocated from Kuala Lumpur to this new campus. The Petaling Jaya Campus also housed the School of Communication, School of Architecture Building & Design and Taylor’s School of Computing. Then in 2004, the 6th Campus was launched in Subang Square housing the American Degree Programme.

As the College could not keep up with increasing demand, the 7th and newest Campus in Sri Hartamas was launched in 2008, incorporating a contemporary design and conducive study environment. Able to accommodate up to 800 students, the Campus runs the Cambridge A Level programme, South Australian Matriculation programme and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.

Having mastered the art of absorption and regurgitation, close to 60,000 students have graduated from Taylor’s and many have became leaders in their chosen fields. From such foundation, thousands of computer analysts, accountants, tax agents, share traders, financiers and speculators have build up a wealthy and progressive society; architects, surveyors and engineers who have put up showcase highrises, roads and bridges linking various cities; hundreds of doctors, dentists, pharmacists, who look into our body and health; teachers, philosophers, politicians, lawyers, judges and even one novelist that writes with brain!

Today, Taylor’s Great-Minded graduates are found all around the world, but more clustered around Melbourne, where a mysterious George Taylor once lived and where initially, the College took its exam from the Victorian HSC. Prided itself as the original capital of Australia, Melbourne also claims to be the intellectual heart of the nation. Here, heads in the sands, backsides in the air, a crazy football is played that is unheard of outside the country. Adelaide, a city of sleepy churches, woke up for a brief moment and usurped Taylor’s Pre-University programmes from Victoria where the current crop of students took its exams from.

Sydney, where the waterfront beauty of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House breathe in a new dimension for anyone with vision, and where the most creative of global talents are put at work. Just as an architect expresses his boldness with his pencil, a writer exposes his vision through his keyboard. And there are other principle cities of Australia: Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, and Tasmania, where they live and observe the world pass by peacefully. Others went to Canada and settled in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and some, who couldn’t stand the cold, sprang south to the states.

In England, many settle around the country but the largest clustered around London, even if it meant moving south from Oxford or Cambridge,  attracted by the nightly illumination that wound about the streets like orange snakes. In this Great City, white beams of headlights and red flashes of taillights converge into a swift-moving current in the glow cast by lines of mercury lights that make London a magnet where people from all over the world gather to dance:

Shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty!
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty.

More like shaking the booby than the booty. But outside the dance floor, people still congregate to talk about politics. Just as time is judged how far east or west of Greenwich, the Law radiates from Oxford, the world’s morals and standards are judged by British politicians or the BBC. BRIT-ISH, the People (ISH) with the Covenant (BRIT), or the “Covenant People,” a People given an unique role in this world. And although the once great manufacturing industries were gone, the Premier League stood tall and alone with no equals.

Remove the diadem, and take off the crown:
this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.
I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it:
and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is;
and I will give it him.
Ezekiel 21:26-27.

And so God Save the Queen as she sits on Jacob’s Pillar Stone. Leaderless and misguided, the Queen utters words of nonsense every Christmas eve as she poodles after Mithras, the Persian goddess. Stunning truth! Painful truth! Truth that cuts. Outside, the skyscrapers still tower around, emitting strength and novelty of the ever Shinning Light of British eminence; a giant black slab speckle with lightsm attesting to the world that the heart and lungs of a dying Empire is still refusing to die.

Still suffering a phobia of an archaic government in charge, some returned and have established themselves in their home states, remembering that mom’s food still taste best. But the most ambitious settled in Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur, where the veins and arteries flow north and south of the country.

Flashed with great income unprecedented in the history of the young and optimistic nation, it is a great metropolis where graduated ladies could enjoy their weekends with their hairdos, tummy tucks, tattooed mascara, boob and facial uplifts, then mingle among the six stories of nail-polished shopping at the ultra-modern KLCC.

For the men, they would find the best eateries along the rat-infested backstreets and stinky alleyways and thereafter, gamble with a syndicate by targeting one of the weak spots in the English Premier or Champions League, then mingle with the ladies of the night who were ever desperate to have a share of the new found spoil.

But the Alma Mater keeps on beautifying and expanding with each incarnation. From its original four-stacks of shit at Bangsar, the College has turned into a stunning Lakeside butterfly. Bold with vision, folly with wisdom, the administrators will soon come to its monstrous potential. A source of amusements and an expression of boys’ high-powered testosterones after a full blown exam, some will plunge into the five acre-lake before cheering girls, as if sending the highly-charged dudes a message, “Bravo! Come and kiss me if you can dive the fastest to the far end of the Lake and back.”

Others, who are at their most vulnerable stage of an indefensible love tussle, could see the lake as their final destiny. Hasty with ambition, the delicacy and fragility of college teens have been overwhelmingly overlooked. Like a crocodile waiting patiently, silently, a memorable romantic outing at night at the lakeside or a juicy death trap, an accident or an incident will soon occur before an army of jagamen will soon be placed, batons ready, a bracelet of pearls in formation, 24/7, adding to the costly pains needed for growth and maintenance.

Lord Denning might long be dead, but his opinions, thoughts and decisions would be well scrutinised and deliberated; his students, ready to pound on any possible fallout of Taylor’s largesse, lurk nearby like rival gangs of hyenas.

Regardless of the ever rising fees and the amazing abilities that collapsing parents worked tirelessly to foot the increasing expenses, the Taylor’s signature will continue to expand, worldwide, unstoppable. Partnered with many foreign universities, more programmes are in the planning stage.

The School of Creative Writing, the School of Music and Performing Arts: Ballet Dancing, Opera Singing, Drama and Acting, with the first international motion picture to be filmed at Taylor’s Universal Studio in Kuallywood, Over Mount Fuji, all staged and acted by Taylor’s graduates. The studio initiated a 4D concept, hailed as the first in the world.  Due to uncordinated and poor sound track and actors’ lack of depth and experience, the venture was a disaster.

“Wooden,” patrons complained, demanding full refunds, “We aren’t fooled by such cheapjacks.”

Although the movie was a flop, all subsequence productions were successful, bringing in large profits. Existing schools will continue to expand, foremost the School of Hospitality & Tourism and the School of Architecture.

With a bold 2020 vision and ideally situated right at the equator, all premium hotels around Kuala Lumpur, designed and engineered exclusively by Taylor’s graduates, will have incorporated a launch pad for Space Craft launches, with timely half-hour interval for Space Travel and Tourism, serve onboard with saliva-inducing Mee Rubus, Sup Kambing and Asam Laksa, a culinary art refined and refined to the finest in Taylor’s Lab by its French speaking researchers.

And for romance couples who demand deluxe service, a bed is ready for the asking. Soundtracked music, piped in on its skylab, its preamble and climatic close choreographed by the movement and waggling of the bed, has all been carefully thought-out and pre-programmed by our very own XiaoWei.

This year 2010 marks the forty-first year the College had operated in Malaysia and now is the time for all students of Taylor’s College and Taylor’s University College from whichever discipline or campus to connect and reconnect. If gathered together, the milling crowd of faces from all over the world would comfortably make a sizable city. It composes of many races, many nationalities; from many disciples and campuses; from different eras and as priceless old wine is pour into newly-made bottles, accumulated wisdom is imparted to the new, but it has only one footprint: a bold and Great-Minded vision riding on a global language: English.

(If you like reading this article, you’ll surely like reading my novel, Over Mount Fuji. It has the same style, just that it has a slower build up, but at the end there is far more satisfaction in finishing it. All the chapters are here and free!)

### If you enjoy reading a catastrophic novel on Japan with a touch of sweet romance, have a look at this.
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781849238250/Over-Mount-Fuji

Also Over Mount Fuji is selling in Kinokuniya and MPH bookstores throughout Malaysia.

Over Mount Fuji is a novel with a fictional apocalyptic setting, extrapolating a unique reason for researched phenomena of deep ocean mysteries: ship disappearances, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the mysterious bloop sound in the South Pacific Ocean.

The novel follows the American reporter Eileen O’Neill and Professor Wulfstein, an expert on deep sea phenomena, who together try to find the reason for the increasing number of disasters seen throughout the Pacific. Wulfstein posits a strange hypothesis that makes him the laughingstock of the scientific community, but he has proof, real proof. Proof that the others refuse to see.

A tense adventure with wonderful descriptions of everything from unnatural storms to a mega earthquake, this is a unique and gripping novel. Coupled with a love story involving minor characters Nobuko and Byron, you’ll want to find the ending in one sitting, but be prepared, it has a non-fictional ending.

©) Joel Huan, author of Over Mount Fuji, an alumna of Taylor’s College!

I was a student at Taylor’s College in 1974. That time it was based in Bangsar. My teachers then were (1) Mrs Rashid — English; (2) Mrs Wong — Economics; (3) Ms Saw — Mathematics; (4) Ms Squire — Biology;  under our Principal, Mr Ted Miles, an Australian.

I now live in Sydney, and doing research into the deep mystery of life, which would sound strange to you, no doubt. But it is extremely interesting, I can assure you, and many of my research are written in the form of articles and critiques which are posted on this site. Feel free to read and reflect on them if you have time. It can be very rewarding and refreshing. If you like to write to me, my email is (no space): eqlunn at gmail.com

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~ by Joel Huan on January 5, 2010.

Posted in Taylor’s University
Tags: English Language, Malaysia, Over Mount Fuji, Taylors College