atas atap

you had me at yellow

2012-01-25T19:56:00.007+08:00

dear _____, except your life, is everything okay with you? i think the next time you ask me for dinner suggestions, i'm going to say 'a life'. not that it matters.
*
Aravind Adiga's Between the Assassinations is very depressing. it gives a macabre picture of Kittur, India and i believe Adiga is merely painting an impression of what truly goes. if it is that horribly ghastly, then, good. because it has been written for all the world to read and discover with an acutely disturbing feeling.

*
a case of looks-can-be-deceiving-hah-serves-you-right:
that girl you're dating (whoever you are), the one who dresses up fancy to see you, the one who fries chicken nuggets for you and coyly eats with small bites is, at home, a successful slob with clothes getting from a molehill to a mountain in her room, a high-achieving glutton, and because she is lazy, leaves leftovers on the dining table for spores to fester (charitable, eh?) . yep, that very same person who affectionately feeds you food when you go out.

no wonder men are sooo... few. they had contaminated-contaminating-hypocrite girlfriends.

*
perhaps once, the race of man used to have wings. everytime i see someone flexes his or her shoulder blades (scapulae) on tv, it always looks like wings are going to pop out. i always hope wings would pop out. nuh uh, with no inspiration from James Patterson's cocky Maximum Ride.

*
who has transferable files of Warrior Baek Dong Soo? i'll treat you dinner if you let me have it. i promise.

a critique

2012-01-16T15:25:00.002+08:00

i have finally been captured by the Hallyu wave. it is an eye-opening experience.

a few years back, glancing at the laptop screen from which others were watching, i did not see anything worthy about Korean entertainment scene; be it soap operas, movies or K-pop. but of course i could not see it. i did not take the time to watch it.

but last year, when writing another sentence for my thesis would be detrimental to the hemispheres of my brain, i rummaged storage boxes and found CDs of Full House. and lo, let me put it this way. it was similar to opening the door to very thrilling things. later, trapped by the waiting game of thesis binding, i resorted to watch one Korean movie and drama after another, thanks to Yana and her external hard disk.

okay, i get it, you're going to smirk and call me sappy. ha ha. not my problem.

i find Korean dramas challenging in terms of issues. the way i see it, they exploit the eternal love theme to portray other issues. look at it like this, they take real issues and embellish it with sappy romantic scenes and very good looking actors/actresses. you can choose to drool over the stars. you can also choose to really watch the dramas and at the same time drool over the cast.

one thing that i like about K-dramas is its emphasis on familial ties. it looks real even on screen. it's mightily heart-warming. other than that would be the issues, for example:

Secret Garden is about class struggle, a little on the Marxist side. the prince versus the pauper, the have against the have nots, humanity taken for granted.

Pasta; determination and the importance of standing your ground. about overcoming impossibility and gender discrimination with your brain and your hands.

Bad Family challenges the conventional notion of family institution. what makes a family, a family? is it blood ties or responsibility and affection?

My Girlfriend is a Gumiho challenges humanity and bestiality. are humans really better than animals and non-humans?

Marry Me Mary criticizes dysfunctional parents.

Cinderella's Stepsister questions how you repay people's kindness and presents family ties from a diferent angle.

You're Beautiful is yuck. couldn't finish past episode 1. too... yucky. so are Boys over Flowers and Playful Kiss. it's just downright sappy.

Personal Preference brings in the theme of being yourself, deceit, and sexuality.

observing so, K-dramas' must-haves would include having fever, getting drunk with soju, cell phones being out of reach, rain, eating, teeth-brushing, buying clothes, fancy cars, doing an abrupt u-turn in the middle of traffic, and you're welcome to add more.

one of my favourite actresses is the granny in Full House. she is practically everywhere. in Full House, Gumiho, Coffee House, World's Within, My Love Patzzi. she fulfills the image of universal grandmothers - strict but loving, naggy but concerned, fierce but adorable.

so it's not so bad, i figured. the very good-loking cast is a bonus. well, audience wants to see people they don't meet everyday.

p/s: and please. do not argue with me if you're going to use the Twilight crap.

careful, careful

2012-01-07T00:45:00.005+08:00

they sure weren't kidding when they said evil walks the Earth. you need to be careful.

be really careful with parents who chide their children's size. listen to the hurtful words that they use to describe their children - fatso, pig, fatty, lards. watch how they treat their children - the children's breakfastlunchteadinnersupperdessert are all fast food. during shopping trips, the children get bars of chocolate and jellybeans, gleefully paid by the parents.

what does that make you? you feed fat to your children whom you call fat? what do you do to help them stop being fat, stop busting their veins, stop being a bully victim at school because of their size? if your child is obese, you help him/her live healthily. that's your job.

the recent footage by NTV7 news on 7-year-olds going to school for the first time kept zooming in to the biggest kid in class. dude do you like people doing that to your kid? are you stupid or very stupid?

ah. i am just enraged. careful not to put me in a position of power. i'd sentence you to death by fast food. not hanging, not fatal injection, not electric chair. put you in the shoes of being fat without people helping you to make it right.

you can't blame people who grow up to be evil to society who victimize them because of their size.

here's a truth: if the aforementioned parents have the heart to call their children fat, you have no idea what they would and could do to other children.

the notion that parents love children unconditionally doesn't happen to everyone. mostly, it's heresy.

a little turn off the main road

2012-01-02T15:51:00.004+08:00

two brilliant covers for Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time".

Bowling for Soup's

and

Travis'.

oh yes it will, here's one for you

2011-12-27T12:51:00.003+08:00

If you ever leave me baby,
Leave some morphine at my door
‘Cause it would take a whole lot of medication
To realize what we used to have,
We don’t have it anymore.

There’s no religion that could save me
No matter how long my knees are on the floor
So keep in mind all the sacrifices I’m makin’
Will keep you by my side
Will keep you from walkin’ out the door.

Cause there’ll be no sunlight
If I lose you, baby
There’ll be no clear skies
If I lose you, baby
Just like the clouds
My eyes will do the same, if you walk away
Everyday it will rain, rain, rain...

I’ll never be your mother’s favorite
Your daddy can’t even look me in the eye
Oooh if I was in their shoes, I’d be doing the same thing
Sayin there goes my worthy son
Walkin’ with that troublesome girl

But they’re just afraid of something they can’t understand
Oooh well sweet kiwi watch me change their minds
Yeah for you I’ll try I’ll try I’ll try I’ll try
I’ll pick up these broken pieces ’til I’m bleeding
If that’ll make you mine

Don’t just say, goodbye
Don’t just say, goodbye
I’ll pick up these broken pieces ’til I’m bleeding
If that’ll make it right

-adapted from bruno mars' "it will rain".

that time of year again

2011-12-23T12:56:00.004+08:00

contrary to popular belief, Christmas is not the birthday of Santa Claus. Christmas celebrates the birthday of Jesus. so if you're not Christian and you take this opportunity of multiculturalism to celebrate Christmas, even if without the carol and the prayers, you should be careful. it could affect the sanctity of your religion. you have to know the difference between a cultural celebration and a religious celebration. the line of blaspheme could be thin at times, especially if you think you're so cool celebrating a religious celebration not yours.

the thing is, people look at Christmas as something way cooler because of the decor. KLCC has one of the biggest Christmas trees every year. and people who could afford to shop in KLCC are mostly people who celebrate Christmas. in all certainty, no wonder that KLCC's Christmas tree is always bigger, grander, mightier than the whole ketupat business. yang aku tak paham apsal la yang Melayu ni yang sibuk nak celebrate Christmas. tak cukup2 ke raya beberapa kali setahun?

someone once wished me Merry Christmas. she was Muslim. i found it offensive and may be she did it in good will but to me, it's inappropriate. it means she didn't understand what Christmas is about and it means she was insensitive that there are people who do not celebrate Christmas, simply because they are not Christian as much as they do not celebrate other religions' celebrations because it's not their religion.

every religion has its own God. please do not misunderstand this as blasphemous; i intend this as respect toward other people's faith. so if you are Muslim and celebrate Christmas, this means you acknowledge a god other than yours. what does it make then? you figure out before you label others as 'uncool' for not celebrating Christmas. some people are simply contented with their own religion.

p/s: the previous disenchantment with photography has shaken off. i'm lugging andra around again. it was re-sparked by syaja. but i'm being careful. i don't want to remember unnecessary things. i think it's hurtful.

if i loved you i would tell you

2011-12-15T22:15:00.004+08:00

that it's not about the way you smell after shower, the sheer landscape of your spine or how sublime it is when your face blooms into a smile. it's about when you are at your crappiest and you admit that you need help.

this is when i love you the most.

this is why i stay.

because you are human enough, man enough, ballsy enough to look at yourself and pronounce the worst.

if i loved you i would tell you this*.

*borrowed from Robin Black's book If I Loved You I Would Tell You This.

and he said

2011-12-10T13:03:00.006+08:00

"damn aku patut tackle kau dulu," after not meeting for a long, long time (i was a fat slob in school).

very flattering. got me smiling for a long time like a mad woman in the attic. although somehow what he said made me think of a tuna fish. tackle. heh.

time for some chai! at Ben's, KLCC. it always exudes that subtle sufistic surge of feeling, considering the role that chai khannas played in ancient Islamic-sufistic poetry gathering and composition. good stuff. cheapest so far in its range. Coffee Bean's chai latte is at RM 12.90 for a small one. Ben's is at RM 8.90 for a teapot double the amount by Coffee Bean, with two almost invisible (i mean thin) slices of almond biscotti, polite waiters and waitresses and a squeaky clean place.

the very epitome of sublime.

chalo, yaar!

10/10 for The A-Team

2011-12-09T16:33:00.005+08:00

i recently watched The A-Team, courtesy of zakwan. fast, full of action, definitely high level of testosterone portrayed. amazing in the way Shawshank Redemption and Rock n Rolla are. not to mention that The A-Team is studded with favourites, in no particular order - Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper and Jessica Biel. Neeson has aged so gracefully and the militarility that he portrays gives hopes about good soldiers. i have watched Neeson as Zeus in Clash of the Titans, David in Chloe, and Daniel in Love Actually and Neeson's Hannibal in The A-Team trumps the others. his pure, raw conviction of conscience is so tangible, so apparent that it gives a good colour for soldiers.

Cooper unleashes charm in his full-force conviction for what is right (and fun) and his character, Face's adoration of Neeson's Hannibal is endearing. Cooper's Face reminds me of his Phil in The Hangover; so full of life, and even bursting with it. Biel is effortlessly mesmerizing but i like her better in The Illusionist for more conflicts. i also adore Sharlto Copley's Murdock, the insane but nevertheless skillful pilot who absolutely displays utmost commitment and expertise in flying any aircraft. it's refreshing to see that it's okay to be crazily in love with what you are good at, albeit being crazy at other times.

10/10 for The A-Team, hands down. alpha mike foxtrot, says the A-Team.

late for bed

2011-12-06T13:57:00.004+08:00

i often wish that i don't have to learn things the hard way. that very fragile clot of sanity in my head has been found to be hanging at the end of its thread far too many times. despair could be very attractive at times.

amer said 'bersyukur itu wajib'. that's a good reminder, anytime.

syaza said someone Knows better. also a good reminder.

i read somewhere that one of the pillars of Faith i.e. belief in qada' and qadar means you do not despair. you take it all in whether you like it or not, you put yourself in the big boss' hands and believe, come what may.

and believing could be so hard. but despair is not an option. i have plans and so many plans and plans have a cunning way in not working out. and it is upsetting. people will make you feel small. you have to feel big on your own. be a balloon, a whale, an omnibus, anything but small.

no one starts big. i know i am jealous of a lot of people but everything, everything has its place and time. perhaps this is why people take up a religion. it's a safety net.

so, hey, 26-year-old green creature with a ridiculously blue moustache, it's okay. you'll make it. there are just things you need to learn. do not despair. du bist doing fine.

(i really need to write. the effect of not doing so is unimaginable.)

so can i

2011-12-05T10:19:00.003+08:00

here's why i am still not married when a lot of my friends are busy procreating. c'mon, off with it, if you could be so blunt to speculate the reasons (someone once doubted my libido) to my postponing a lifetime taking care of a man who might not end up being worth it, so can i be blunt with what you do after saying 'i do'.

because

because

because Bruno Mars is too far-fetched an option. until i have a better option, i'll wait for Mars. besides, knowing that it's impossible makes it endurable. i don't get my hopes high.

on the other hand, i congratulate people who understand that the concept of matrimony is not in a big wedding and people who don't give a rat's ass about what others say if they hold a private ceremony. if after 3 children you're still paying for the loan you took for your wedding , then hell, it's quite sad.

you buy a car with a loan, and if you don't pay the installment, the bank takes away your car. in the case of a wedding, since all the fancy cupcakes and roasted lambs are all finished, i wonder what the bank should take. not the bed.

on the other other hand, if being married means your wife can spend her free time on her iPad that you helped to pay for and lets the maid take care of the house and the kids but still complain of being tired and busy, shouldn't you marry the maid by now?

i am not being sarcastic, or bitter. i just believe that if you get a license to legally spend your lifetime with someone you love or lust over, i also deserve my space for my own life. i don't need your point of view.

fitful part 2 - finale

2011-12-02T13:35:00.007+08:00

Caspar:

sometimes i get scared that she doesn't understand what i really want to say. words never come easily to me and although Audrey is a competent sign language user, there are times when i really wish that i could call out her name and feel the air expelling from my deficient vocal chords into the magnificent sound of her name. i get jealous when people call her name. i am deprived of this privilege, exiled from its wonder, marooned in silence.

like when i hear her rattling her keys as she walks to the door to go to work and i am just resurfacing from sleep, this is one of the times i wish i could yell her name to wait, wait, let me see you before you go. i'd make so much noise; i smashed the bedside lamp against the wall on one occasion and i heard her calling out to me in panic from downstairs, Caspar what's that? i rushed out of bed to the stairs, hands flailing in signs, desperate to let her know that i am fine, it was just the lamp, i just want to see you before you go, i'd buy a new lamp on my way to the office. she blinked and smiled, shaking her head. i did tell you i was going just now, she signed, laughing now and hugged me as i reached the bottom of the stairs.

she opened the door of her car and i heard her phone ring from where i was standing in my pajamas at the door. she already had one foot in the car and she paused there, answering the phone. in the morning sun, in the morning feel of the world, i walked over to her across the porch and buried my face between her shoulder blades, wrote her name in looping letters with my finger on her back, just beneath the right shoulder.

not that i need her to know so much. but because i could not spill out what i feel in words that she could hear, i am always looking for chances to hold her hand, touch her hair, bite her finger, nudge her with my feet, hoping wishing wanting that these contacts would ship the words in my head into hers. writing it down takes the excitement away, text messaging makes it phony. i have to rely on the tangibles - skin, fingers, hand, shoulder blades, collarbones, nose, the whole deal.

because sometimes it disturbs me when people who can speak hurt others with just a word. because sometimes it bugs me how a word can destroy so many years of being together. because what i feel for Audrey couldn't even be worded in all those entries in all the dictionaries.

fitful part 1 (excerpt from something looonger)

2011-12-01T18:31:00.008+08:00

Audrey:

whenever it is that i am not facing his way; i could be in the kitchen trying to fix the ruined pudding, answering the phone with one foot in the car ever ready to get in but interrupted, opening the stubbornly rustic gate, he'd just walk over in soft footsteps across the kitchen floor the porch the lawn, across the distance and space and bury his face between my shoulder blades.

a perfect fit.

i'd feel him write my name with his finger in looping letters on my back just beneath the right shoulder, i'd feel his nose at that very center of the locus before he turns on his cheek whose muscle would whirr into a smile and it's still hard to believe that this man is mine.

wafts of how he smells would simply fill in the small universe of us, fresh and endearing; the kind of smell that a person has after shower, the drops of water vaporizing away in faint whispers, the rejuvenating scent of two hydrogen and one oxygen molecules intertwined with the sheer chemicality of soap. it's the kind of smell that somehow starts a good day no matter how hard i hit the wall or the floor waking up from sleep in the morning.

Caspar smells like this, of small things and simple possibilities and i would bottle it up if i could so i would always have a bit of it with me.

at least it's something, eh?

2011-11-21T15:18:00.002+08:00

hear, hear, click here.

you, i love you best

2011-11-16T15:13:00.004+08:00

It was a lighthearted enough moment for Homer to lean over Angel and kiss the boy-smack between the eyes, where Wally had just kissed Homer. It was a good place to kiss Angel, in Homer's opinion, because he liked to smell his son's hair.

"Good night, I love you," Homer said.

"I love you. Good night, Pop," Angel said, but when Homer was almost out the door, Angel asked him, "What's the thing you love best?"

"You," Homer told his son. "I love you best."

-from John Irving's The Cider House Rules.

*

best cover of marvin's room

daddy for sale - season finale

2011-11-08T18:52:00.005+08:00

We never saw Nina after that. She never came back. We chatted with her online occasionally, internet was a wonderful thing. She looked happy. Over the years, Nina’s face is looking more and more like her mother. It’s just that she is brown, she said and her mother is fair. But she never asked abut her father. She deserved that adequate space in which to heal herself. We did not know how much she was hurt by that kind of betrayal from someone she called daddy, she never said, but if that did not hurt, then we did not know what hurt was. We never said a thing about him either. He had been caught in close proximity with the girlfriend. Life would always come and get you right back, sometimes it bites you right in the face. That’s when you wish that you did not do a lot of bad things.

Like I said, we never saw Nina again, not until today, as the seconds tick and tock off while I am in my seat munching peanuts distributed by the airhostess, an hour to go before I reach Japan. I have asked for everything possible- peanuts, chocolate, blankets, magazines, peanuts and peanuts again but the excitement of the prospect of seeing Nina almost makes me explode that I can't stop drumming my fingers on my knees. I am being stationed in Japan for three years to man the new branch of the semiconductor factory I am working with. I had sent an email about my arrival to Nina last month. She in turn had given me a list of what to bring her from Malaysia. One of it is Maggie instant noodles which I had bought by the dozen for her. Others are all pickled fruits and the frightfully artificial-orange Super Ring. She had promised to wait at the airport with her mother’s good old BMW that they had brought along to Japan. We never got a chance to go for a ride the day her mother came to fetch her. At least today, I would get that chance. Fim had expressed an understandable amount of envy to me when he learnt about this.

When I have passed the security gates and collected my luggage and Nina’s box of junk food, I look around for my exceptionally cool friend.

There she is all right. Can’t really miss her, to tell you the truth. She’s brilliant, that girl, I have to give her that. She is holding a sign painted in the reddest of red that says “Pay up!”

daddy for sale part 4

2011-11-07T23:28:00.002+08:00

Two weeks after that, Sim got his SPM result. Sim was bright, it was not really a surprise that he scored all that was needed to be scored. Uncle H bought him an expensive watch and then proceeded with matters pertaining to Sim’s tertiary education. We were lucky that our late father had prepared for our future. If only he were here to shout ‘Hooray!’ for Sim, dance around the room with mother and us and then take us all out to eat satay Kajang. God, I missed my parents. I still do.

Nina came around and seeing us all high on excitement, asked about Sim’ result. She stared in wonder at Sim’s result slip.

“You have a lot of A’s.” She commented. “Way to go, man. If you could eat your A’s, you’ll never go hungry.” She said and laughed. Uncle H had returned to the office. We called for pizza delivery. You should see the way Nina called Domino’s pizza. She pretended to be someone from a rural village who did not know the first thing about pizza, let alone delivery. She was immensely hilarious, I had to give her that.

Later I discovered that the only thing Nina was interested in was languages, words, meanings and things beyond meanings. When I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, as always, what she said took us by surprise. She said,

“Oh I could probably recite poems at fund-raising events, get someone to play guitar for me and then scream myself silly. Or I could marry one of you. Sim alone has 11A’s.” She laughed. Sim said okay. We ate pizza and watched TV and asked Nina to cook the same fried noodle that we had last two weeks. She did, after much coaxing and searching high and low for ingredients in our kitchen whose meals did not get pass Maggie instant noodle and eggs. Others were all bought, or coerced from the kids passing by our house. And because we had said that our bullying would end once Sim was off to overseas, that day Nina had even made us apologize to each and every one of the bullied kids and their mothers as well. We spent quite a while going around the houses because after apologizing, their mothers would then make us tea. We never knew apologizing could feed us.

Then we were back at our house, gulping cold air bandung with ice cream soda by the jugs. It was scorching hot.

“What else can we do today? It’s only 3 pm.” Sim said. I looked at Nina. She was about to say something.

“Well. I… um… I should tell you now that I’m leaving. My mom’s coming at 5. She’s on her way here.”

“5 pm today?” Yim said, annoyingly taken by surprise again.

“In her fancy car?” Fim perked up.

“Yeah. We’ll see if she had time for a ride.” She grinned. Her mother was leaving for Japan for a partnership in her company's new branch. Nina would follow.

“I don’t have a reason to stay." We were no judges for that but we were dismayed that she was leaving. There was the internet and all but Nina was fun to be around with. She was like those fireworks that you see on a night sky, its after-image lingering in your eyes even after it has ceased fire, its brilliance makes you wonder why it could not stay longer.

Nina was actually all ready to go. She had been packing last night. She had come to tell us this morning but because we were all buzzed up with Sim’s result, she decided that she wanted to steal some of that buzz so she spent the day with us. That was what she said, steal our buzz. Long after that, we still used that phrase whenever we want to join anyone’s trip somewhere. Especially me, when Sim has started to work and I always want to tag along for his out-station trips.

We went to wait for Nina’s mother at her house. Both her father and the girlfriend were not at home.

“Does he know that you’re leaving?” Yim said.

“Yeah. I told him last night. He said “Go where you like.”

“You never told us what was it that you did that had upset him.” I braved the odds. She turned to look at me. She did that half-smile.

“He wanted me to re-type the girlfriend’s resume, there was some typo in it. It was revolting, still is. I didn’t think he could do something like that to me, that’s betrayal. I felt really low, like because he’s my father, he could get me to do anything he wants because he says so to the extent that I have to help his girlfriend. I couldn’t do it. So I said I was tired, I’d see to it later and then later, I said I couldn’t do it, I didn’t know how to copy the resume’s format and all. Then he went mad and said hateful things.” She stared at the ceiling. Yim looked at me sadly.

“Sorry I asked.” I said.

“Naah, no big deal there.”

“Does it make you sad?” Wim said.

“I don’t know what sad is anymore.” She said, still staring at the ceiling. Then she started singing something, it was the same song that she sang the first day we met her, when she was walking away from us. I remember it now. It is Everclear’s “Wonderful”, the part that goes “I close my eyes when I get too sad, I think thoughts that I know are bad, close my eyes and I count to ten, hope it’s over when I open them.” I wondered how many tens Nina had been counting all these years, how many times had things gone okay again when she opened her eyes. Or if she had stopped counting all together.

At 5.30, her mother arrived. She was beautiful, she looked intelligent. She wore blue silk baju kurung and a pair of Scholl and greeted us warmly, as if she had seen us every day. Nina had something for us. She had bought a party pack of miniature Mars bars. She gleefully handed it to Sim and said "Here's my payment", grinning mischievously. Yim mumbled thanks and we wished her the best, the sort of things we heard in movies but this time, a real goodbye was happening.

daddy for sale part 3

2011-10-28T15:47:00.002+08:00

“Don’t do that.” Yim said, his face all crumpled up in a frown, he sounded hurt.

“Do what?”

“Shock us. You are ever so surprising.” He said. When we received the news of our parents’ death, Yim was the one who could not take it. He would not speak for a week. Wim said that Yim had shock-intolerance.

Nina only smiled. “But it’s true. My parents are divorced. That’s my father’s girlfriend.”

Now that we knew who that woman was, we lowered our voices.

“Where’s your mom?” Fim said.

“In Penang, back in her parents’ home. My younger brother's with her.”

“Does she live here?” I said, my head gesturing to wherever the girlfriend was.

“Naah, but she hangs around a lot. Cooks for my father. Or they’d go out watch a movie or something. I don’t dare to eat what she cooks. I cook my food.”

“How did they meet?”

“My father’s a doctor, she’s a nurse. Convenient eh?"

“Why didn’t you follow your mother?”

“He wants me to follow him and god save me if he doesn’t get it. So I play along, see how things are, but I don’t think I’d stay long. Can’t stand all this.”

“So they divorced because your father has another woman?”

“Women.” She corrected Yim. “This is not the first. But this has done it. Took only a week to nullify the marriage. Thank God for His laws.” She said.

“Women? Women? How long has it been like this?” Fim said, disturbed.

“Too long. There was one when I was in Standard 3. If there was anymore before that then I don’t remember.” She replied. Deadpan face.

It was disturbing how she was being nonchalant like that. It was unnerving. Perhaps it looked so to us because we had never watched a domestic war, save those in the movies. If she was putting a front then we did not notice it. She looked so brave. I admired that. But when I asked what was it that had made her father so upset with her, she changed the subject.

She asked about our parents. She knew that we were orphans, someone at school told her to be aware of “The Bully Brothers.” We told her about the crash and all- we had stayed at home when father took mother out for her birthday and how a drunk driver had hit them from behind and their car had hit a tree, it blew up in a mega explosion, their death was instant. Uncle H had been called to identify the bodies. We told her of watching others’ fathers and fathers in movies, wondering how it felt like to do adult things with our father, of waking up in the middle of the night forgetting that they were no longer with us and having our heart broken all over again to find traces of them around the house, like father’s favorite mug or mother’s seasoned wok. It was the little things that shattered the worst. Three years and we still had not gotten used to it.

The ugly truth was that we had a wonderful father, the best in the world but he was dead. Nina’s father was good-looking, a doctor, pretty much alive and kicking but he was dysfunctional and had extra marital affairs. Our mother was just a homemaker, she did not even have the slightest idea of how to use a computer but she had a wonderful husband and five rambunctious sons, only that now we did not get to see them anymore. Nina’s mother had crap for a husband but she had a 25-thousand-ringgit-a-month job and drove a BMW, her kids were doing fine too. We never get everything but like one of my school friends, Zikri said we all want as much as possible. Greedy perhaps but it’s only true.

“Do I still have to pay?” Nina said.

“No.” Wim said decisively.

“What color is your mother’s car?” Fim said.

“White.” She paused then said “When are you going to stop bullying others?”

“We’re desperate, you see, but soon.” Sim said and smiled mischievously.

“Do you have food? Can you cook?” Yim asked, eyes shining with hope. Nina cooked fried noodle for us that day. Because we were boys and boys eat a lot, god save us, I was sent to the shop to get another kilo of noodles.

The bullying would not be long, anyway. Sim’s result would be out in two weeks, the whole bully thing was his idea of making use of his free time. He did not want to work, he told Uncle H, he wanted to stay home and then when the result came out, he would go straight to college. He had already prepared a list of oversea colleges that he was interested in. And like I said, we had never actually beaten anyone. We were just, well, I think deep inside we were all dissatisfied that we ended up as orphans. The way we saw it, we did not do bad things but our parents were still taken away from us. We were angry at the world at times, we believed everything was downright unfair. We were kids, and orphans. We wanted to be bad, for once. But when we though about it, things were also unfair for Nina. She was a good girl but who knew what torture she had to face at home. It’s all the same crap, only different people, different day. It teaches us a thing or two, lessons that we carry for all our lives.

inadequacy

2011-10-24T10:22:00.002+08:00

you are everything i want but i want more and you're not enough.

here's an apt quote by Anais Nin:

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. "

*
all that she did in the video clip is menggeliat ke kiri ke kanan seperti ulat beluncas di tengah panas tak dapat berteduh di bawah daun pisang. and to quote my sister, sampai sekarang tak tau siapa houston.

*
okay miss knowles you have made it clear that you don't know algebra in your song 1+1. i don't know what you really intended to say but it sounds like you see 1+1 as algebraic. 1+1 is not even algebra. algebra uses symbols in lieu of numbers. please write a better song.

*
petronas' latest deepavali commercial is one of the most brilliant i have ever seen.

*
someday i'll get a real job and pay taxes but to have learnt that my state of being happy is not manufactured by the companionship of a man, a spanking fancy car, or a gargantuan bank account, is absolutefinitely one of the most valuable lessons this year. i am unbelievably happy because i get to teach, buy books, fuel the car, buy things for people i care about and eat grapes.

daddy for sale part 2

2011-10-18T14:50:00.002+08:00

We waited impatiently. At 7 we saw Nina’s father’s CRV drove past our house, its silver body blended with the dusk. Uncle H, our guardian had returned home; he was a contractor. When our father died, his company had been left to Uncle H, his younger brother. Father had prepared all the legal paper works, it was as if he knew he was going to leave us. There was the company and there was a trust fund for each of us. Uncle H was okay, really, no fuss and all, but I only realize it now that we were so very hungry for a father figure. Uncle H was 35 years old with no interest in getting married. Everyday before he went to work, he would leave some money for food. When he returned in the evening, he would ask if we needed anything, check that we were all in one piece and then went to his room. But at least an adult was in the house. That much, we could thank him for. It is just that we wanted a father – hell, we’d take any father those days- to take us fishing, play football with, teach us about cars (and girls, possibly), to come get us if we got into trouble somewhere, someone just to call Papa, the list was incredibly long.

Sim was waiting for his SPM results, Fim was seventeen, Wim sixteen, Yim fifteen and I was thirteen. We all went to the same school. I had actually seen Nina in school, she was in my form. I noticed her because she had laughed so happily and loudly one day while she passed by my class. It was infectious. If there is one thing that would make me recognize her some day, it would be the way she laughed.

At 8 we decided that we should go threaten Nina tomorrow, possibly with a dead rat.

At 9 someone knocked on the door. We jumped. Yim said “Whoa”. We pushed Sim to answer the door.

“Hi, I’m Nina’s father. You can call me Uncle Sham. She said that you lot want to go fishing but your uncle is busy. Do you want to come along?” We looked at each other and then sped to the shed behind the house. We grabbed our fishing gear and rushed outside to Uncle Sham, now waiting in his CRV.

“Grab some clothes. We’ll spend the night there.”

We rushed back into the house, grabbed shirts and shorts and everything in between- luckily Fim remembered to tell Uncle H- and then plunged into the CRV. Off we went.

We went to Kuala Selangor. The journey took an hour. It was all so thrilling. Uncle Sham was warm and fatherly, I could not see why he would be upset with Nina. He was really fun. He offered us cigarettes -none of us smoked- bought us food, set up the tents for us and taught us fishing tricks. He asked about us, about Sim’s plans after the result was out, about Uncle H. He told us things about his job, fishing, why he moved here, what he did when he was young; things that we longed to hear from a father, things we imagined would be the scheme of what fathers would tell sons, those things that we saw on TV. Things.

Fim caught a large catfish. Uncle Sham caught another three. Uncle Sham showed us how to gut and clean the fish, then how to roast it. We ate it there and then, the taste, the feeling of eating a fish caught with a father, it was unbelievable. We were borrowing Nina’s father. For a moment, while we were there fishing, he was mine, ours and no one, no one could take him away. Under that sky, those stars that were there that night, this was our father. This was someone to ask about fishing tricks and opinions for tomorrows. This was a real father, not a make-believe, not a play house father.

But at the back of my head was a question: what was he so upset with Nina about?

“This is nice, isn’t it? I don’t have sons, this feels real as much as it gets. I’ve always wanted a son.” Uncle Sham said and smiled contentedly. My brothers nodded and smiled happily.

“Usually with whom do you go fishing?” I said.

“My friends. Or with my cousin when we have the time.”

“Where?”

“Here and there. During long holidays, we would rent a boat and go deep sea. Or go to one of those places with kelong. It’s exhilarating.”

“You don’t go fishing with Nina?”

“Nina? What nonsense. Can’t take a girl fishing, you know. This is a man’s domain. Girls get tired easily. You tell them to do something simple, they’d tell you they’re tired.” He laughed. He went on to bash on women; he described them as arrogant, overly emotional creatures and how they did not even know how to check the engine oil. We looked at each other.

“You will stay up ‘til morning, won’t you?” He turned to look at us one by one. Honestly, we would. But the way he described girls had pretty much rained on our parade. As much as we could remember, our father was all head-over-heels with our mother. He called her ‘Ling’, short for darling and still asked her to feed him even when the five of us were at the dining table. He seemed like he could not get enough of her. “Your mother, boys, is amazing,” He once said, that admiring look on his face shone like the moon. We did not have sisters but we were brought up to respect women. When our girl cousins came to visit, our parents would tell us to tidy up our rooms for them to sleep for the night and we would go sleep in the living room. And remember that we liked Nina. She was cool. She sold us her father. Which was no surprise at all now.

I yawned. I yawned the biggest yawn in my life. I got up, said “Goodnight, Uncle Sham” and went to one of the two tents. One after another soon, my brothers joined me. We understood each other that well. Outside we could hear Uncle Sham grumbling, that even boys nowadays could not be trusted to stay up to fish. How could a father say things like that? How could anyone say things like that? We had no idea. There must have been something wrong with the universe that night, could be the full moon. That man had no affection for women. Did he forget the fact that his mother, his aunts and grandmother, his sisters were all women? We wondered and fell asleep.

The next morning, we went home in silence. Uncle Sham dropped us at our house without a word. At 10, we saw his CRV going somewhere, that same sour look plastered all over his face. We went to Nina’s house. We were also hoping that there would be food.

Boy, you should see the furniture. And the ceiling design. And the chandelier. Nina’s father must have had some degree in décor. Well, that’s sarcasm really, it all looked pompous. Like it was all bought to impress guests, to show off, to be praised, not for the comfort of the family.

A pleasant woman in her mid 20s opened the door, she looked perky and eager to please. She wore make up, her eye-shadow was blue and matched her blouse which looked a size smaller. Nina was at the other side of the house, she said. She pointed us the way and disappeared upstairs. We found Nina under the duvet that she was trying to hang on the lines to be sunned. Yim went over and helped her.

“Oh, it’s you! Thanks. That thing weighs a ton. Must be the bugs, haven’t sunned in ten years.” She said then laughed. She turned around, saw us and said “Hey.”

“You can have your father back.” Wim said, all business and serious. Nina did that half-smile of hers.

“That bad, huh?” she said, moving towards the house. We sat in a line at the sliding door, Nina at the very end, sitting beside Sim. Near the wall was a bed of yellow flowers, the kind that would close all its petals at night and open them up when the morning sun came. I could see its deep brown centre standing out amidst its yellow housing.

“Who answered the door?” I said. “Your sister? Fancy make-up.”

“That, gentlemen, is my father’s girlfriend.” I was not sure about my brothers but my heart sure did skip a beat. In fact it skipped a beat and then dropped to my feet. Looks could be so darn deceiving. We did not think she was pleasant anymore.

daddy for sale part 1

2011-10-15T12:43:00.001+08:00

“Pay up!” Wim said in his harshest voice while the rest of us just sat around at the wooden bench under the shady mango tree, chewing unnamable things. Cruel was the evening nowadays, bringing along with it an intoxicating need for all manners and personification of cold and cool things, from Wall’s ice cream to Makcik Bedah’s ABC at the entrance road of our housing area, from carbonated root beer on the rocks to mere ice cubes freezing dreamily in the fridge. I slapped a mosquito in the air, my eyes glued on our next victim.

It was a girl this time. We never got a girl, they usually were sent to and fetched from school by their parents. This had to be good. She was still in her school uniform, her white tudung and baju kurung glared at us under the fierce, 4 o’clock sun, her light blue sarong played a stark contrast against its white counterparts, against us. Her bag did not look heavy but what I noticed most was that it was Friday and her shoes were still clean. Take my school shoes on a Friday, or one of my brothers’, you would think we had gone jungle tracking for PJ.

“For?” She asked, one eyebrow raised, undeterred, undisturbed at all, as if she went through all this everyday, as if she was in some movie. If couldn’t-care-less was a girl, this must be she. She just stood there facing us, as if the five of us did not spell any danger to a girl walking home alone on a long, lonely lane at this time of the day, her house being the furthest at the long series of houses along the way. Her eyes shifted look from me and then on to my brothers.

“Well, you’re walking in front of our house compound, see? Everyone who passes here pays.” Wim was doing that gangster impersonation again. We should not have let him watch The Godfather. He did this fifty times a day.

“Like PLUS.” She said and did a half-smile. Wim looked at us questioningly, clearly not catching the acronym for the highway project. I was about to say the toll booths and the highway when he turned away form us.

“Yeah, like PLUS, whatever that is.” He said, playing it cool. I had to give him that. He could remain cool while everyone else was in a supermarket shouting ‘Fire!’ In fact that was exactly what he did, remaining cool, when he accidentally set our neighbour’s chicken coop on fire when we were small. Too bad none of the chicken perished, we could have had roast chicken for a week.

“So what happens if I don’t pay?” Her hand plunged into the side pocket of her baju kurung and out came a small Mars bar. I had never eaten Mars but I had seen people eating it in movies. She unwrapped it and took a bite. My mouth watered.

“We beat you.” Wim said, saying every word slowly. The girl laughed, took another bite and chewed, enjoying every single bit of magnificent caramel and chocolate.

“Look, I should get a trial run. I’m new around here. I don’t know who’s who. Why don’t you let me watch you in power? After all, if I am to pay up, might as well know what I am paying for.”

Wim looked at us. Sim, my eldest brother gave an okay signal with his head. We moved a bit and then Wim told the girl to come sit with us. She obliged, her Mars bar finished by now. I was hoping she might have had some more and share with us. Or me at least.

Soon enough a frail boy passed by. He quickly handed us a plastic bag full of rambutans and then ran for his dear life. This was one of our earliest victims. He religiously paid everyday, usually with whatever his mom had prepared for him. During the early days, he would just surrender what he had- bubur kacang, curry puff, Hup Seng cream crackers, banana fritters, his mom must have been the best cook around. Just the sight of him excited us to no end. A week after that, his mom must have packed him an extra portion because we had seen him carrying two plastic bags. We had no idea what he told his mom but a home-cooked dish was like the extra, extra chocolate syrup on your ice-cream. If you get it free, don’t ask.

Another one passed by, an Indian boy, I think his name was Siva something. He handed us boiled chick peas in a big white plastic bag, the one that those yong tau foo hawkers used. He quickly departed while we were busy “Woo-hoo”-ing. Sim shouted thanks. Sim said we should visit him when Deepavali came.

“Hm. What an excellent business.” The girl commented. Fim, my second brother nodded.

“Show time’s over. Pay up.” Fim said, his wavy hair bounced up and down when he was excited. People say that he was the most handsome of us all.

“Too bad. I don’t have any money.”

“Too bad then we’ll have to beat you.”

“It doesn’t have to be money.” My fourth elder brother, Yim, the pacifist among us, said. “It could be any kind of payment. Well, we like food, for instance.”

“But I still have to pay? So that I could pass by your house in peace?”

“You bet.” Wim said, getting annoyed. No one had really questioned him before. Actually, we had never beaten anyone. We just took their schoolbags and threw everything in it on the ground. We never tore any books, though. Books were sacred things. Usually after their stuff was thrown onto the ground, these kids would surrender and we would put the books back into their bags. And we had never been paid money. We always got food from their home. That was the whole point of the operation- to get home-cooked food. Yim was the sole owner of the antique “It doesn’t have to be money”. It was his intellectual property, he owned the copyright. No one was allowed to take that from him. Do that and see if you could go on a day with him not talking to you and deliberately leaving your shoes outside when it rains.

“You can have my…” She paused and blinked, looked at us one by one, thinking. “You can have my father.”

“Not funny.” Said Wim, shaking his head, nose crinkled. He was annoyed by now, I could tell from the way he impatiently shook his right leg while standing.

“Not kidding.” Nina retorted.

“Why would you sell your father?” Sim said. He was interested. I could see his ears twitching.

“Well. He’s currently not speaking to me. He’s upset with me. Might as well get him out of the house and give him a break.”

“Why isn’t he talking to you?” Sim ventured.

“He said I was rude. I only said I was tired and that I would do what he wanted me to do later, I said I would see if I could do it and then when I figured I could not do it, he went ballistic, he scolded me and then he said if he had a son then a son wouldn’t get tired as easily as me, a son would be a better child to him.”

“What did he tell you to do?”

“Look, do you want me to pay or not? That’s the only thing I can offer to you.” We looked at each other. Yim told her to step aside so that we could discuss. She got up and stood a few meters away from us and our mango tree. There was no sign of defeat. She was obviously winning. Only we did not know that at the moment. The whole prospect of selling a father might seem ridiculous but for us five orphan boys whose parents had died in a car crash three years ago and were under the care of an uncle who had no time to be a proper father, it was priceless. But looking back now, I wonder how we had actually agreed on it. But sometimes, you need no reason or logic. Sometimes you are allowed to follow your whim.

“So how are we to get him?”

“He’s at work. Today’s Friday, he’ll be back at 7, I’ll dispatch him over to you at night. Leave it to me.” Sim shrugged. We all shrugged. We let her go. She said thanks and walked away form us. We just watched her, her white tudung swaying in the wind, and she was singing something I could not figure out.

“Go ask her name, Zim.” Yim nudged me. I sprung to my feet and practically ran after her, asked her name and got back to my brothers who were waiting.

“Nina.”

We liked her already.

2 jalur

2011-10-12T13:27:00.002+08:00

to burp and taste in your mouth the sheer delight of a dish made for you by someone who loves you unconditionally and to know that dish fuels you up for the rest of the day are indeed rare privileges that no price could pay.
and to be able to give back and make someone proud beyond measures, damn, it feels good to have a Master's degree.

again and again

2011-10-05T16:32:00.002+08:00

here's the truth. that Korean band 2PM actually sings "Again and Again", for me. true fact. i am convocating again and my session is on this coming Saturday at 2pm. see? thanks, boys. i highly appreciate your effort and time. it's very stylish.

so tahniah habib, ni second time kita attend convo sama2, although you do not get a robe. mana ada robe convo saiz Perodua Viva.

and i have finally figured out why my mom wants to attend the convo eventhough without an award and a speech this time, with a 3-hour ceremony, a couple of hours driving, even with costly toll fees and gas. even. because it matters to her. because it's another priceless milestone. because she knows that at least some things happen in the right way. because.

for i still would try not to attend the ceremony because of the countless trifles (not the dessert, the other trifles). but i have realized by now that she would come even if i had 100 convo ceremonies to parade in. it's just a tad disappointing not being able to give something extra... special.

on the other hand, it's good to have people who understand what i want to do and the reasons i have for it. i did my MA because there was a certain insatiable hunger to know more (and for bigger salary), because i couldn't be satisfied with a mixed degree and i badly wanted a major in literature, because i needed to outdo myself, because ten years from now i don't want to look back and regret, because i refused to be ordinary with just a degree, and because this is a gift for my mom.

the creamiest cheese on the whole convo cheesecake would be that she has agreed to belanja makan at Isetan foodmarket. YEEES!

so much for a civilization

2011-10-01T23:03:00.003+08:00

irksome, very irksome:

1. ai for I

2. stupid parties who design roads with traffic lights at very close intervals

3. i know your hijab is bigger than mine but that does not give you the license to disrespect a majlis ilmu or to stand so very close to my sister at the ATM machine

4 to 10. facebook dan segala yang datang bersamanya. and if you think that it is up to users to use it wisely or stupidly, oh well, look at the amount of people who use FB to beg for attention. the number is shameful.

5-20. beratur lah kat traffic light, bi oh di oh hesh!

21. stop saying i am like someone or someone is like me. i find it insulting. i am my own me. it's not my problem if you find this pompous.

grr grr. maghah.

p/s: get smart. paedophiles are everywhere. children should not be made so popular on social network sites.

mighty will

2011-09-26T10:28:00.005+08:00

i might be late,
all sorts of things happen on the road and my car is small
misunderstandings fall from the sky and crash onto me
or i could be too blinded by selfish pain to put on your shoes
all the time i take, all the roads i take
i might be late
but i'll come,
i will come for you,
you need to know that.

skyscraper

2011-09-10T09:58:00.006+08:00

often forgotten, it is a fact that you share your name with someone else, all your life. you write your name and finish it with someone else's name, tied by birth, by marriage, by i-don't-know-what-else-you-know-what-i-mean. and by this, i do not mean those occasions when you fix Kutcher/Spears/Jackman/Johansson at the end of your name. i don't care who pops up in your mind when you read the first line but there are not many people who could lay claim for that privilege/catastrophe, depending on how you look at it.

it is catastrophic when at one point, after more than 2 decades of sharing your name and the other person's name in the same line, you realize that they keep destroying you. you cannot be in their vicinity for more than 2 days; they pick fights with you, they chip away bits of you in subtle ways more cruel than a masked executioner. because they know they are related to you in an extremely close way, they perceive it as a license to bind you to their whims and cruelty. i have no idea why they don't take that chance to understand you and support you.

and to learn this after so many years growing up under their eyes, is very obscenely hurtful. your sense of belonging is ripped, shattered. your sense of home is funtoosh now. your sense of identity, your billion-dollar, top-of-the-class worth become questionable. you start borrowing the equivalent of the person from your friends. you basically get robbed of a normal, happy growing-up experience by the person who is supposed to give it to you. you would very much like to blow up a lot of things, especially the properties of that person; hell, you'll take bombing lessons for the sake of it.

but you also learn that there's one less person to worry about in your retirement plan. it's even - they destroy you, you ditch them. it's simple math - they give you one, you give them one. replace one with whatever number you like. you might live with a heartache, a scar for years but at one point, you forgive them but there is no more kindness to be done.

how? however. you'll find your way. but you should know you are not under any obligations to give a shit. and even you do not know the immensity of the shit that you don't give. because if you give it, they are going to leech off you all over again. it sure wasn't a joke when people said that evil walks the earth. and please do not destroy whoever that shares his/her name with you. most people tend to do great things and conquer continents. you do not want to be ditched when that happens and you are not mentioned in their speech during a glorious awarding event.

the lighthouse

2011-09-03T22:47:00.001+08:00

source

you and your hands

2011-08-29T22:51:00.005+08:00

thank you for destroying my whole sense of appreciation of the sacred day. i don't like it anymore because everything that you do is for your friends to see, to delight in. every-freaking-thing is for your friends to pig on, to sit in comfortably, to enjoy. it's the day for you to flaunt to your friends and your shallow, uncivilized, third-world-mentality relatives that you can afford everything. in the race of who is most prepared to celebrate, you win. i am left with nothing, nothing at all. someday i am going to pay you back for every single betrayal that you inflict on me. i'll put it in a sundae cone, or a bowl of chilled pudding because revenge is best served cold. arsenic is not even expensive. if i want fancy, i'll get some cyanide so you could turn blue. i'll keep the cure nearby.

the only thing i like about the sacred day is the free viewing of fireworks. and tomorrow is just a tuesday.

gyoza and mandu

2011-08-24T10:14:00.003+08:00

i wish i could disappear, the first day of the next Hijrah month didn't come, stupid facebook didn't exist, and i were someone else.

8

2011-08-20T00:23:00.010+08:00

8 is an amazing number. the very physicality of it goes on and on with neither a start nor an end, an infinity of perpetuality, a mobius circuit of presence. the top scientists in the research lab F-341 of the factory have come up with a new shower foam, a breakthrough in the arena of bacteria-combat and soon to be nominated as antibacterial shower foam of the year, of the century, if they are greedy enough. the advertising team is already scuttling around on their feet, scribbling doodling drawing the most hideous form they could think of to represent the deadly 8 bacteria that the shower foam will surely vanquish destroy demolish. they are launching it next week, with a big (more to gargantuan) red ribbon and a parade of bacteria-mascot that will perish when ambushed by the shower foam mascot team.

ladius matreum, the ninth bacterium, the overlooked the invisible the subtle but deadlier than all the 8 combined is already mutating when the 8th bacteria that is supposed to be crushed by the new shower foam comes in contact with cigarette smoke, thanks to negligent lab assistants who must access their facebook while cleaning the petri dishes flirting with potential facebook friends and thinking of the overdue credit card debt all at the same time.

p/s: oh but i'd be content with the smallest corner of this earth if only he were mine, to quote tagore.

a plethora of such

2011-08-09T23:08:00.005+08:00

i read somewhere, i think it is at iwrotethisforyou.me, that experience is just a fancy name that you give to your mistakes.

and so, how true. 'experience' is just a fancy name that i give to my mistakes. other than 'oops','uh oh dammit', and 'ohshitohshitohshit'. this means i have a lot of experiences. a lot. a plethora of it, even. but it's still true. at that eureka, lightbulb-ish moment significantly after having had my head struck against a jagged wall or being hit by a Shinjuku train that goes zzzzzzup!, i tell myself that 'it's okay, at least now you know the immensity of the shit that has just happened. you get the experience.' of course i spare myself the part 'you have made a grave mistake congratulations bitch.'

but someone told me that the bigger your ambitions are, the bigger would be your mistakes. somewhere in an alternate universe severed by the current spatio-temporal arrangement, there's another me who has never gone out into the world to explore new frontiers, to outdo herself. she wakes up everyday to do the same thing she did ten years ago because she is too afraid to venture out of the comfort zone. she waits for things to happen, not believing for one moment that she has the power to make things happen if she wants it to happen. man, i would not join a club with that 'me' as its member.

may be i sound like i am justifying my mistakes/experiences. may be i am just another flop, a black sheep, a fallen star. i'll do something today and regret it tomorrow, make my bed and bear the consequences of perhaps having bought a mattress that does not healthily support my spine. but i could always buy another mattress, make better decisions and 5 years from now, hell, next year, i'd know i have done something great and that it matters to people who know. next year, i wouldn't regret of not doing anything. next year, i'd be able to help people who matter to me when they throw themselves in the same sanity-threatening situation.

and don't you know it already, at least i get the experience. so go do something great now. even if it means you have succeeded in realizing that snow white and cinderella are stories of class struggle*, even if that something great is cleaning the three bathrooms in your house. you need all the little pieces to become great. no one starts big, not Hitler, not Obama, not Maroon 5, not Mozart.

*is borrowed from Secret Garden (yes, that Korean drama)

for the record and for things i cannot exactly word for you

2011-08-05T21:13:00.002+08:00

i do not love you..
-Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

p/s: neruda, you are one cool old man.

i wouldn't have ____d you if you weren't complicated.

2011-08-02T23:54:00.003+08:00

remember to always be yourself. unless you suck.

-joss whedon.

*

it's vomit-worthy when someone who uses 'you' instead of 'awak' tells me to speak in malay. language doesn't make you a native of it. i speak english because it could communicate my thoughts well, not because i am not patriotic. when you speak in malay, you turn every '-ion' suffix into '-asi' anyway, like komunikasi. and you frown at me speaking in english. if deustch or some hawaiian dialect could word my thoughts, i'd speak it.

*

dear 26-year-old me,

i hope you're awesome and have more books. and another pair of Dorothy Perkins boot-cuts. it's fading now.

*

i adore collarbones. i find it incredibly alive. like a bold statement under a night sky. like the kind of person at whom you would turn twice just to return his/her smile.

*

to borrow someone's favourite word, estee lauder's bronze goddess is ultra-sleek. i swear on the raya cookies that have cheese.

official dismay

2011-07-30T22:01:00.003+08:00

dear office staff,

i do not expect you to be a superstaff and on your feet scuttling around getting jobs done all day long. i understand that you are only human, like me, and you are also of the working class, like me. i respect your skills and knowledge in your field. i especially do not have your kind of expertise. i appreciate your time and efforts, especially those of you who are really reliable and efficient. thank you very much, you're priceless gems.

however, i also do not expect you to use the office phone (doesn't matter that it's via the extension system) to talk to your buddy about your BMI or where you bought your macaroons that are best to go with sugarless coffee (i quote you verbatim) while i sit here like a stone waiting for you to call your superior who is supposed to meet me. how do i know that it's your job to call that superior? simple, because when the superior steps into the office (apparently surprised that someone is waiting to see his person), you immediately put the phone down and hurry head-on to the superior to explain MY situation. oh i thought you had an office phone with a perfectly working extension system?

i also do not expect to not find you every time i go to see you to deal with things. i find it insanely infuriating to see you at the cafe at 8.30 am, 10.30 am, 12.30 am, 3.30 pm in one day, laughing so merrily; especially when i have to waste so much time waiting for you to get back from the cafe. like you, i also have other things to do, trains to catch, shit to be given, people to hurt. i only ask of you to be at your place during your working time. i certainly do not mind seeing you in the cafe had your job title been cafe operator/cafe manager/cafe office staff/cafe clerk. i checked; yours doesn't even have the word 'cafe' or anything relevant to it. and then at 4 pm, when i come again, you have already packed your bags and clicking on the damn Facebook, waiting for the clock to turn 5. you tell me to come again tomorrow, which happens to be the day for whatever it is that will have you somewhere but your desk.

you know you could have been better. because there are other office staff who make the world a better place to live in by simply doing their job. i understand you are a very important person, you have to check your FB all the time and patron the cafe all the time, oh, your iPhone is beeping a notification. well, i do not mind all these lollygagging and gallivanting, as long as you do your job.

but you don't.

p/s: characters are not fictional, albeit unnamed; no particular organisation is being criticized; and no office staff is harmed before, during or after the production of this post. not yet.

sobering up again

2011-07-22T13:17:00.004+08:00

The Archipelago of Kisses
Jeffrey McDaniel

(i should clarify that there is no relevance between the poem and the note thereafter. i happened to find a poem i like.)

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don't invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey.
It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

-sometimes it takes 50 ringgit to show yourself that what you are doing is not what you want. or need either. 5 years from now i'll look back and read this post and remember the dire consequences of not listening to prof q and listening to my foolish heart. someday i'll hold an important post or leave on a jetplane but i'll always remember to treat myself better. and to realize that it is my own heart that's hurting me is a lot of sobering up to do.

the purchase season finale

2011-07-12T02:07:00.001+08:00

Alice:

When I arrived, I was placed at the front, the center of this small universe for this one particular day before I left. I was dressed in a yellow dress whose fabric was so comfortable, so soft to the skin that it would be a dismay if damage was to befall. I knew exactly where and who had picked up the dress. I liked his hair.

The occasion would start in half an hour. I waited solemnly, cloaked in the quiet of the hall and the wooden perimeter of the spot. There were footsteps echoing, its sound bounced off the high ceiling and the walls. The person got closer and wafts of his smell, his thoughts, the very landscape of his spine and vast affection made me smile. I thought of his work attire full of buttons, his chest going up and down underneath my hand, his head dozing off on my shoulder, his words, his silence, him. And Joseph came into view.

"I hope you like the dress." He said. I hoped he could see me nod, hear me say yes.

"Well, I can't stop you from leaving. But just so you know, you're losing a lot. I'm cooking new dishes, I'll be executive chef someday…" His voice trailed off.

"Anyway you could, just, well, just watch me, all right?" He leaned down and kissed me on my forehead.

"Your dad's coming. Bye, Alice." And he left. In that yellow shirt against the somber mood of the occasion, he left. In a moment, my dad came with my mom. Here were the two persons I could not stop loving. If I had two suns, here they were. Two moons, here they were. If I could ask for a pair of everything good, then here they were.

My mom kissed me and a sky of her words poured into my head; years and years of words, of love and understanding, occasional mistakes and unrelenting faith; the price of whom cannot be measured.

My dad leant over and took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry I wasn't around much, okay, baby? I love you. We love you. Everyday." I didn't want to hear sorry. I understood his job. I was okay. We coped, me and my mom. Because despite all the days that he had to go abroad, he still came home to us. I wanted to stop him from feeling guilty for not being around much, I wanted him to stop feeling that he needed to compensate, to be punished. But here was dad. And this was how he saw the world.

And the world could have been better in so many ways. In so many little ways, in fact. If flea markets could happen everyday, if food didn't burn, if simple words were simply spoken, and seafood didn't have to cause allergy. But it was a whole new world, an almost impossible one that I was wishing for; where drunk drivers did not drive around killing people as they walk by the roadside simply to go buy cookies for tea.

the purchase part 3

2011-07-10T22:42:00.001+08:00

Richard:

There were vendors who knew Joseph by name and showed him what they had on sale today. He'd politely listen and nod and then said 'Thanks, I'm looking for a dress today'. Someone asked about Alice. I heard Joseph say he was buying her a surprise. I trailed behind him and looked at what he looked, trying to picture him and Alice walking around here browsing for things. This must be what they did on Sundays. Alice was never at home at 11 am on Sundays. She did say she was meeting Joseph but because he was a training chef, I thought they were always going to eat somewhere fancy or new or experimental. Come to think of it, there were fancy or new or experimental here. There were just about everything.

"Mr. Riley!" I put down the pumpkin and looked for Joseph. He was holding a yellow summer dress. Against the blue sky behind him, the dress stood out and made a perfect contrast, a single spot of sunshine and crisp wonder, a bundle of simple comfort and it spelled out Alice. I had wanted to procrastinate and postpone. I had wanted to delay so Alice could be delayed from leaving. But instead I walked to Joseph and then told him that I liked it very much.

"Really? It's cool for the occasion?"

"It's co… wonderful for Alice." I said, fingering the dress. It was so soft.

"I'll take it." He happily said to the vendor and took out his wallet. I stopped him.

"I'm buying it." I told him. He looked crestfallen. He was about to say something but I went first.

"Joseph do not deprive me of this. I had missed so much because I was so busy. You practically get to spend more time with Alice than me, so let me buy this." He opened his mouth to say something and then said 'Okay'.

"Let me buy you something, all right? Anything. We can go see other stalls if the needs be but I'm still buying. I don't want to see your wallet today." I told him.

He was already fingering a yellow summer shirt, the same shade of yellow with Alice's dress. I paid for both and told him to go home to iron the shirt. He had wanted to come with me to take the dress to Alice but he obeyed.

the purchase part 2

2011-07-08T14:34:00.001+08:00

Richard:

That was a Mohawk. I could not keep my stare off his head even as he walked towards me. He had started to look uncomfortable. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. I wished I had been warmer to him on the previous occasions that we met but my gestures did not always translate what I meant. I was old-fashioned and new things always had a way to ambush me and catch me off-guard. Not that I had anything against Joseph's Mohawk. I just needed to get used to it. A few months ago his hair was longer than what I would have liked. He tied it in a pony tail but with strips of hair hanging wildly at the forehead and his temple. When I had started to get used to it, he changed the style again.

"Mr. Riley. Hi." He said and grinned. I nodded. Up close, the Mohawk was actually neat and tidily cut. Nothing was out of place. Joseph leant closer to me and a worried look came onto his face.

"Do you think I should, uh, get rid of it?" His eyes gestured upwards.

I thought for a moment. This was someone significant to my daughter. This was the person who would rush to where her car broke down and changed the tire for her.

"I suppose if Alice had frowned, you must have cut it off already." He blinked. Then a smile slowly appeared.

"Shall we go pick a dress?" He said and glanced at the shops.

"Yes. I honestly don't know which to buy for the occasion."

"Alice likes purple." He said off-handedly as he opened the door to a boutique and let me in first. I had forgotten that; forgotten that she liked purple, Earl Grey, word search puzzles, snow globes. Pictures of her flooded my head as my eyes landed on the dresses hanging around me. She was that tiny heartbeat in the sonogram, she was three with sunshine hair, she was on her first bike, she was eight with braces, she was building a Lego tower, she dropped my laptop, she was with a nebulizer, she stabbed the water bed with a pair of scissors, she hit the oak tree across the street with my car. And then there was a gap as I got caught up with the growing company, the overseas clients, the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Where was I? I was busy. And I took for granted that she had always loved me.

Joseph browsed the dresses as if it was second nature to walk around an expensive shop like this to look for the perfect one. Not that I could not afford it but I wished I had known which to pick up to pay at the counter; I wished I did not have to buy this for an occasion that I would be separated from my daughter. I wished I could just fetch Alice to choose what she wanted but alas, she was getting ready to leave. Irony never appealed to me.

I looked around and only saw these somber dresses peeking out from their lines and I did not think it could do justice to Alice, to her laughter while watching TV, her awe at good movies, the way she never folded the pages of her books, those sneakers she wore everywhere, those screams whenever she spotted me first at the airport, the juicy pieces of chicken she stole from my plate, the weird things she made me eat but I ended up liking anyway. I spoke her name under my breath and dare the power that be to leave Alice alone.

Joseph:

Alice had never worn dresses like these; prim, delicate, monochromic. Alice wore that one pair of jeans until it frayed all out and countless sleeveless shirts. Alice wore summer dresses whose colours stood out in a crowd. Alice wore my cardigans and jackets that I have outgrown. Not that her father could not afford these fancy little black dresses. Alice was simply Alice.

Separation did not make it easier. How do you dress a person who was going away from you, for a very long time?

I thought of that dandelion tattoo on her right shoulder, snowflakes on her hair like a starry night, her hand on my chest when I lay my head on her lap, the loud, excited way she spoke as if everything was in capital letters. Would I rather not have these in the first place or would I bear losing it after having had it?

"Found anything suitable?" Alice's father said to me, frowning. I looked around, frowned and shook my head. I said 'Let's go to a flea market around the corner'. He let himself be led.

the purchase part 1

2011-07-07T12:02:00.001+08:00

Richard:

Purgatory was not supposed to be filled to the brink with women of the finest porcelain skin wearing very exquisite dresses and vying to purchase more with credit cars glinting off the lights at the ceiling, nor was it to be situated in endless rows of designer's boutiques all along 5^th Avenue. I was immediately out of place, a sore thumb that stuck out, an oddity. I went in and out of one shop after another, not knowing what to ask to whom, not confident enough to strut up to any available salesperson and say my intention out loud. The confusion, the doubt, this was punishment I must undergo.

What colour should I buy? Would these layers and frills serve its purpose and suit the occasion at hand? Would the length matter? And most importantly, would Alice look good in whatever I ended up buying? She must; and this was my last chance to buy her something that I would normally call vainglorious and unnecessary before she left for the long journey; only that now no word could describe this one purchase in her name.

My wife, Lisa had said to buy something that I could imagine our daughter looking happy in. This was supposed to be a surprise so Alice was not with me. Lisa had been busy preparing the food. I supposed all the fussing with the caterers and the dainty pastries took her mind off the pressing matter. I was amazed at her capability to hold her head high above the suffocating atmosphere of the fact that our only daughter was leaving. Because I had always been so busy, she decided that this could take my mind off it. I was to go and shop for a dress for our daughter to wear for her long journey. I saw it as a punishment.

And here I was, still standing outside the glass window, my reflection in it stood awkwardly amidst the poker-faced mannequins dressed in fleece and majestic silk. I should go in, purchase a dress and dispatch it to Alice but today was one of those days that all I wanted to do was stand still and let time fly by. I wondered who had validated separation and I did know the answer.

I took out my cell phone and dialed a number, hoping that he could help.

Joseph:

I first sprung out of my dream when my cell rung that one specific ringtone that Alice had put for her dad's number. I checked the clock and it said 10 am. Had they somehow changed the time for the occasion to earlier and I had forgotten? I picked up with a careful 'hello'. How do you make your voice sound like it had not just come out of sleep?

"Hello." I cleared my throat. "Mr. Riley."

"Joseph. I seemed to have woken you up." There was a trace of guilt. Was I supposed to affirm or deny that? I thought for a moment.

"Am I late for something?" I said and ran a whole list of things relevant to Alice.

"No, not at all. Sorry for calling at this time. Are you, well, are you free now?"

"Yes. I took the day off so I could go see Alice."

"I knew you would. Listen, Alice's mother has sent me to get a dress for Alice. I am, how should I describe the situation, I…" I could hear him groping for words, trying to pluck them out off the air.

"Mr. Riley, should I meet you somewhere?" Years with Alice had let me into the man's mind. He needed help.

"I'd appreciate that." I took note of where he was and went to brush my teeth. The central strip of Mohawk on my head jumped into the mirror and I immediately regretted offering to see Alice's father. At least, later when I would be attending the occasion at their house, he would not really make a fuss out of it, at least not immediately. But then you made plans and something would always pop out. I wouldn't have done the Mohawk had I known I would be going to their house this week.

But, Alice likes it, I told the person in the mirror.

i’ll purchase your patience if i could

2011-07-05T10:58:00.001+08:00

120km/h pretty much exorcises the whole darn wallet. not to mention that i often have the ambitious delusion that habib is a ferrari. not to mention that habib is likewise downright delusional.

i swear an oath to combat/annihilate/abolish/kick lazy indolent facebooking lazy inefficient slow lazy neglectful facebooking lazy lazy lazy office staff. any office. just you wait. i now might be someone powerless at the bottom of the food chain who has to ask/beg/beseech you to do things that you are actually paid to do but when i am the shark/the killer whale/the ultimate party at the top, you will see. the only human beings who are paid to facebook are mark zuckerberg and his team. not you, you lousy parasite. shame on you.

grr. grr. if patience could be bought, there went my salary. no books, no good food.

tolong promosi

2011-07-02T16:18:00.003+08:00

sapa nak beli kain baju, angkat tangan. turunkan tangan, sentuh mouse or touchpad, click sini.

things that your siberian husky might think (other than wishing for a literally husky voice)

2011-06-24T21:52:00.006+08:00

after discarding my heart, you went on vacation with him. i couldn't bear the thought of your excitement, the luggage that you packed, the shirt that you ironed for your flight, the scent of your fragrance lingering in the hallway, the look on your face in your eyes on your lips that screamed 'i can't wait to see him'. you didn't even ask what i want; an ocean, a campfire, a throat to slit. i couldn't stand this fact; that you went to have fun with him but while you were out with me at the mall at the park at the playground, while you were in the same room with me, you were always talking talking talking to him. that voice that you used when you answered his call was on loop in my head; unlike a broken record, it went so perfectly clear. you didn't sound like that with me. not that i had anything against how you sounded with me, but it was unsettling unnerving unbelievable that i didn't get that but he did. now everything that you did would always seem, to me, to have his influence thought nuance on you. how sick was that? very much to me, to have lost trust like this. i had seen how so elated you were when he called. i wondered if i had that effect when a lot of things i said went unheard because you were talking talking talking to him. i hoped you were not hurting anyone of his with what you were doing. i hoped nothing bad happened to you when you were with him. i hoped you had every right to be with him like that. i could just go.

p/s: the idea that siberian husky has a husky voice is borrowed from dyu.

tangibles

2011-06-22T13:24:00.006+08:00

i know all things come to an end. but there are always sequels. people change but like characters in a book, they simply develop.

i want to ask you if you love me but i don't want to seem weak*. so one of these days, i am going to ask you if you want to grow old with me. take you to this very far place i am going so there will be only you and i. you can wear a wig, i can do a mohawk, we'll just be somebody else for a couple of days then be other things. i'll spend all day at the library for my research, or do my part-time job and you don't have to bother, just do your life. i won't even bother to text you, i am also busy and i have my own money. i'll feed you if you want me to, accumulate our clothes for a week and then ambush the laundry. and then at night, after you're done with your life, just sleep. with me.

we'll exist together only for the weekends. this way, i won't get tired of you, and you me. and weekends don't have to be at fancy restaurants eating my kind of food that couldn't satiate your appetite. i'd do these on the weekdays when you're working. weekends could just be in bed. in front of the tv. beside the washing machine. anywhere that i could taste your spine, your skin, you.

because i have such a small heart, in a broken person, living in hopes for sunny days, i'll just live with these tangible things. i know the length of your arms would fit me like a glove, your stubble so coarse like the bark of a tree, your voice could shout my name in a crowd. others with the same chromosomatic arrangement as yours find me intimidating or cold. others just want someone who can proofread their essays. others could not live with a bond that only aims for carnal pleasure. i cannot live with conventional thoughts or traditional social roles. i don't play house. i just need another warm set of mortal anatomy to fit the very big bed.

one of these days, when i ask you, i hope you can say yes.

*is borrowed from rihanna's california king bed. he!

freedom of speech, he!

2011-06-20T14:14:00.003+08:00

freedom of speech is a good element for a society but people need to realize that while it exists, there is no absolute freedom of speech. there are limits that have to be painted in red and made to scream at the top of its lungs should anyone abuse it. by the way, silence is also freedom of speech.

having said that, i note with dismay how the press turns mortal deaths into a circus of Nosy Parker neighbours and disrespectful harassment of privacy. time and again, i have watched on tv how the press barges into the space where the relatives of the deceased are trying to breathe. this is the time that the press would like to have a picture of the deceased, ask whether the deceased wanted a white baju kurung/baju melayu for the next Eid, ask the last meal that the deceased had, want to see the deceased's room. the press of course makes good use of busybody-neighbours who hitherto have never showed up at the deceased's doorstep. the next day, they will publish it in their newspapers with headlines that would sound worse than the what has really happened.

as much as i believe that death is an undeniable part of life, i don't see a twinge of rights that the press could claim for their harassment of privacy. some people are simple, hassle-free individuals and the death of a relative would rattle them to no end. they do no need the press to make a circus out of it.

just for the sake of curiousity, would members of the press want their departure from this life turned into a circus and plastered all over the front page of skanky, lecherous tabloid newspapers with a headline that runs "Arwah kempunan asam pedas"?

chrysanthemum

2011-06-12T22:48:00.003+08:00

Like chrysanthemum and its abundant petals, like the sun and its royal shine, I was planning to grow up and bloom, glow and shine while living my life. Shielded from the world by that sacred amniotic fluid, while my cells spent day and night multiplying and my limbs were growing from scratch, I had plenty of time to think and plan. Safe inside my mother's protective womb and separated from the external world, I received a lot of input. My mother read to me; from stories of the Greco-Roman pantheon to Oppenheimer, from Gandhi to Churchill, from the Grimm brothers to Grisham, encyclopaedia, National Geographic magazine, Billboards, newspapers, ingredients on food wrappers and advertisements. She would tap her tummy and say, "Listen, listen, honey" and then read to me.

Sometimes when her day had been spent working in the hypermarket and she was too tired to read aloud, she let me listen to music. My auditorial pleasure ranges from the Beatles, Gloria Gaynor, Streisand, the Corrs, that princess-like Swift girl, Snow Patrol, Coldplay, and that Bieber boy, among others. You might have gotten the impression that my mother had a goldmine, considering the amount of input I was receiving. She did not. She read to me in bookshops, from Borders to the dusty second-hand bookstore in Frassen Street. She would find a deserted corner and read to me in a soft voice. For my music lessons, she surfed the Net from the public library's computer lab and put the headphone around her belly for me to listen while she browsed for more part-time jobs and soup kitchens. My mother believed that she did not need to be filthy rich to provide me with knowledge.

With all these myriad inputs, I kept changing ambitions. I had wanted to be a marine biologist, a bohemian artist, a fighter-jet pilot, a lifesaver at Miami beach, a space invader, a shoe designer. I had planned to endorse Nike and Calvin Klein and become a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations. I had dreamt of standing in gatherings holding placards that say "If we don't end war, war will end us" or "Save Pandas". I kept planning and dreaming; there was plenty of time to choose later and so much more to do so many things, to live and walk the world, to grow and spread my wings.

Besides these endless dreams and such indecisiveness, I had outlined something definitive, though. When my mother would be older, I would buy a house by a lake and take her to stay with me and my little family. She would not have to wake up to the commotion of traffic jams and construction sites anymore. I'd marry a loving girl, have a kid or two and let my mother spoil them while I play the bad guy who grumbled about bills and the ridiculous price of Nintendo. I would give my mother some pocket money for her to buy things that she fancied without having to worry about budget deficit. I would take her to orchestra performances, art galleries, and flea markets. My wife would take her shopping for every possible season all year round. I would play chess with her, look after her garden, help her with stairs, take her to her medical check-ups, cut her food into small pieces when it would be hard for her to swallow, and wear pink sweaters that she knitted. I would do all these to the end of her days.

I remembered all these, my lessons and plans, my dreams and aspirations, the days I spent so close to my mother's beating heart. I also remembered the day I was born dead and the shattering sound that my dreams made.

tukar nombor ke 25

2011-06-09T13:29:00.003+08:00

A+ for master's thesis.

p/s: phrase "tukar nombor" sponsored by dyu.

because

2011-06-07T13:57:00.002+08:00

joss whedon, screenwriter for Angel, Buffy, Dollhouse, and Firefly once conveyed a wise statement:

"I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of."

this is one of those moments when someone else could say exactly what i mean.

panjandrum

2011-06-02T22:02:00.005+08:00

you do realize that in order to obtain a Seth Tan, you have to be a Nora Elena? and you know you don't want to be Nora Elena. wake up.

*

years back, someone i knew, in an (affectionate, no doubt) attempt to give a nickname to her boyfriend, named him "My Smelly (unfortunate boyfriend's name)". people would rather be called stinky than smelly.

*

shouldn't a lot of money be put into making a marriage work, instead of the wedding?

*

countdown lagi 361 hari untuk adik bullu balik :)

*

rebecca black is better than miley cyrus. partying partying,yeah! funfunfun.

*

najlaa, for you :)
najlaa kalau nak datang boleh tak belikan saya macaroons? hehe.

*

i like hillary duff.

*

eternal sunshine of a spotless mind. do you dare?

i told the world, one day i would pay it back

2011-05-20T13:35:00.008+08:00

like Pash in Whip It, i had the fat-kid-go-read-a-book phase instead of a Barbie-roller-skate-phase. i was called names because i was fat (someone called me pig), i fought with boys, i had a hard time dealing with self-esteem. i achieved a lot of things; i got 5As for UPSR, i was best debater at state level, i went to a boarding school. but on top of it all, what i can do seemed to come second because i was fat. i learnt the hard way that it's not money or love that makes the world go round. it's always about sizes.

people size up everything; width of durian orchards, length of a tiger’s mighty tail, size of boobs, myopic severity, size of bank account, intelligence, stupidity, infidelity. Fine, I get it but I don’t think people should publicly compare sizes. It’s simply human nature when comparison is made for goal-setting or motivation but when you publicly assign people to a certain size and then chide about it, that’s horrible. If you so like making a fuss over someone being fat and big, it is darn fair and square if the other person is to say that your son is damn stupid. Because it is also a matter of size; in this case, the questionable size of your son’s brain, his ability of using it and the amount of A in his report card.

I saw Chef Wan on tv a few weeks back. There were some kids on his talk show and one of them was bigger than everyone else. He did not exactly chide about the big kid’s size but he kept mentioning it. It was irrelevant and silly because they were invited to talk about their involvement in the show biz. In another occasion, Aznil had two pre-teen kids on one of his pointless shows. One of them was bigger. Another two were supposed to apply make up to the previous two and turn them into ghosts. When it was done, Aznil said the big kid was ‘momok, momok gemok’ and the thinner one was ‘morus, momok kurus’. Everyone there laughed. Everyone there did not care about the big kid’s self-esteem. I immediately lost my respect for Aznil. i hope Aznil and Chef Wan get a lot of their own medicine someday.

So the next time someone chides that you’re fat, you're hairy, or you're sweaty, remember that you have equal rights to chide about their little money or their boob size, or their exam result. See if they like it.

quid pro quo

2011-05-02T15:15:00.002+08:00

years back, when people asked and i said that i studied English Language and Literature, people would always jump to conclusion by saying 'ooh, tesl ek?', instead of asking what it is. not that i have anything against tesl. i have always been annoyed by the attitude of conclusion-jumping and stereotypes.

now, when people ask and i say i have just finished my master's degree in English Literary Studies, people would immediately say 'ooh, English education', yes, like that character in that Kak Limah's movie. this would be followed by a satisfactory smile of having succeeded in making a joke. believe you me, it's not amusing at all. it's getting darn lame and stale, both the movie and the reaction. i loathe lame-and-stale.

and perhaps people should also stop quoting that movie. it's just typical of most, to quote and quote but never learn. 10 years from now, people will still quote that movie but still won't see the message and criticism.

and if i offend you because you so darn love that movie, i am not sorry.

paper cut

2011-04-26T21:32:00.001+08:00

Unaware that the heart is capable of such gloom, the brain does not attempt to soften the blow. The message is relayed and the commotion that follows has everyone thinking if the heart is going to come out of it in one whole piece. As we are speaking, the heart is drowning in woe, its world first splits into two then cracks and bursts into debris, each too damaged to be salvaged. The heart sits and stares at the walls for days, shuts and locks all windows and doors; there are not enough tears to cry. The heart itself has never thought that it could reach such horrific sadness. There is no meaning to name its existence in this state, no one to blame, no solution to be looked for. There is no further step to be taken, there is only this stasis and the heart finds it difficult to move with such profound destruction. There is only the past and reminiscence hurts like paper cut to the eyeball. The heart questions of measures that it could have taken, the extent it could have reached to prevent the malady. Somewhere there’s a bleeding, somewhere there is life leaking into empty space, somewhere reason could not make sense of this. If the heart is asked if it wants to switch off and lay dead, if it is offered nullification and an end, then yes.

Yes, the heart wants. Yes, the heart will take it all. Bring it on.

sweet kiwi

2011-04-22T11:31:00.004+08:00

i had always been fascinated by photography. i used to save money to buy more things for that, i even like noise and its countless little dots percolating a photo. its etymology reveals that photography is of Greek origins; photo means light and -graphy is art. so, photography, etymologically means art of light. which is apt, you know what i'm talking about. it's all about how much light you let in through the aperture. the rest is just practice and practice. or edit and edit.

but sadly, i have grown disenchanted with photography. andra, my eos, sits forlornly in the wardrobe in an arsenal of silica sachets. it collects dust and grumbles to itself but otherwise, it patiently waits. i occasionally pick it up, weight it in my hands, take off the lens to have a look-see inside, snap a thing or two but it no longer thrills, my heart no longer feels like flying. i used to get that everytime i took a picture, everytime i composed a frame and studied a subject; some adrenaline rush, some beating of the heart, some anticipation of distortion and/or perfection. perhaps it's just because everyone has a dslr now, but when i don't get a thrill from a lomo and a polaroid, boy, there is something wrong indeed.

and something did go helter-skelter. something broke into two then into a million smithereens, my world as i knew it splintered into chaos with a swoosh of signatures on sheets of papers. i was struck into realizing that photos and all those composing processes and squinting into the viewfinder, all those waiting for the timer to go off into a flurry of flash, they are of something that i have lost. why do we frantically want to keep a record for a moment, a memory? why does it have to be physical, something tangible to be plastered in glossy photo albums and paraded around? what's wrong with forgetting? i find it disturbing that everytime i look at a photo, my head goes 'you don't have that anymore, stop looking, go read a book'. i find it even more disturbing that the voice in my head is indeed right. and as a harmfully egoistic person, i seldom like it when others are right.

so i'm not going to take pictures anymore. i don't want to be reminded of lost things, i don't want to remember, i'd rather forget. moments can come and go, that's okay but i don't see the need to keep a record. please don't be offended if i refuse to be included in a photo, or help take a picture. it's not you, it's not me either. it's, well, i don't have a name for it. but it did happen.

p/s: sweet kiwi is a maroon 5's song.

konfius

2011-04-18T22:18:00.005+08:00

sampai demam. teringat a couple of years back yang demam 12 kali setahun. and then there were such long years tak demam2, sampai dah lupa apa rasa dan nikmat demam yang enables tidur tanpa perlu bermimpi. to have slept so peacefully, without running in nightmares, without the heart trying to claw its way out of its cavity, is indeed worth the fever.

there should be some rule, that a person who has left should not return. this way, the person would not leave again. but at the end of the day, with this running nose and this heavy head, the song keeps looping in my head and it says "it has to be you".

prof, by saying that my thesis is "very good", you have made my day. i haven't had a day made in so long.

only one

2011-03-30T12:12:00.002+08:00

here's my only favourite kid.

and tiger.

in need of catharsis

2011-03-23T14:34:00.003+08:00

my words are in mourning. i now have 4 flopped stories that refuse to be written. grrr.

p/s: thanks to najlaa's Tony Parsons' Man and Wife, i got a little catharsis. better than nothing.

the mighty importance of the space bar

2011-03-14T11:41:00.002+08:00

without space bar:
therapist

with space bar:
the rapist.

green and mean

2011-02-24T14:52:00.001+08:00

i know plenty of people
with eyes closed
they don't see you like i do
darling i do
(okay? now get your ass here and let's go eat nice things.)

-ost shrek ever after, "darling i do"

the sunlight that's not there

2011-02-22T13:12:00.001+08:00

waiting for the Thai Noodle and Honey Chicken and Darjeeling Tea that i ordered, there was a quartet of a family sitting next to my table. this was at Nyonya Colors in OU, one of those numerous by-the-corridor food outlets where you sit and eat (and try oh-so-hard not to direly mortify yourself by accidentally plunging your chicken to other undesirable directions) very much in the face of the public. but because Nyonya Colors comes complete with such an antique touch of wooden chairs and marble-top round tables framed with wood which stand on very convincing wooden legs, not to forget its porcelain saucers with vintage floral patterns, i endured. and its Peranakan style gastronomic delights with big portions that leave you breathless in finishing it (my ordered meal comes with a lot of noodles and two pieces of chicken, a drumstick and a wing with the drummette still attached), man, that is something worth chasing for (i was being rhetoric, you could of course simply order and pay).

oh, the quartet. excellent food can be so distracting. yes. there were a man, a woman, both possibly in early 30s, an older woman that could be an upper-echelon maternal figure and an infant in a pram. it was around 7pm and the small human was getting restless with all the conundrum and crying being the only means of communication that it knew, it did exactly that (please do not find it derogative that i refer to the infant as it. i had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl). first the man, possibly the father, picked it up and rocked his kid in his arms, walking around to lull the baby to sleep. the younger woman prepared milk in a bottle and then when that was done, the older woman with alacrity, took the baby from the man so that he and his wife could resume eating.

she fed the baby, cooed and sang and rocked the pram. she blathered to the baby, she rocked it in her arms and then put it over her shoulder to lull it to sleep. and somehow, in her mélange of relentless cooing, her lullaby on loop shuffling from one to another, her warm voice that only a mother could have and grant to their offspring and the gentle yet secure way she held that baby with such enormous affection and protection from the wearying world, it was i along with my treachery-stricken ears, my eyes that kept pilfering glances, and my moribund, shattered heart so jaded of running from its cavalcade of hazards, that were now soothed. pacified. at peace. albeit temporarily.

perhaps there’s hope for mankind.

ice kacang puppy love

2011-02-06T00:18:00.005+08:00

thoughtful issues. superb facial expressions. excellent soundtrack. very impressive camera angles. 10/10. will steal a copy of it. click. click lagi lah.

(shamsul yusof haslam, i doubt you could do something as brilliant. all you have in your movies are scantily clad girls.)

p/s: i need a shrink.

would you woo?

2011-02-03T18:49:00.003+08:00

So innocent you can tell by the clothes,
College girl with a 4.0,
Good girl by day,
Damn, who would have known?

far east movement's "she owns the night".

lectrology

2011-01-26T16:49:00.002+08:00

here’s what i have learned from my numerous emotionally dysfunctional relationships, from friendships to those in the romantic sense – there’s no shortcut home. if i want that much coveted and sought abode of my own, i have to do it one excruciating step at a time. i cannot turn the other person in the relationship into some sort of a catalyst to precipitate the construction of my home, either in the physical or the spiritual sense thereof, especially if the other person’s pressure threshold is shallower than a petri dish. i had made that mistake over and over again with a number of people and i regret that i had done much damage to myself and also, sadly, to the other person/s.

ergo, i note with absolute green envy vis-à-vis those who have always had a home or recently found one. in my brain, there’s a segment that administers my bitterly resentful sense of sheer homelessness. it must have been doing a splendid job since i am constantly feeling like a restless yet timelessly timorous wanderer; my shelter the marauding storm, my sanctuary the barren desert and its scorching sun, my compass decrepit, my memories sepulchral, my thoughts desolate, my only possession a reluctant hope laced with fervent orisons, my nemesis a farrago of endless perfidy; in short, a walking neusthanesia without a button to stop or self-destruct. it’s not that i am utterly homeless but the closest that i have in the nature of that idea of an abode are rather quasi-ish at best, on the basis that the few homes that put my wandering heart at temporary rest are not even mine to begin with, like Lord Luck has decided to shed me some uncanny sprinkle of fortune to be welcomed there and treated as family. i am eternally in debt and these homes have somehow provided me with a sort of archetype for how i’d like mine to be. all of it comes to one instrumental point; i don’t want a perfect, 10/10, squeaky flawless home. perfection, good sirs and madams, is a stasis, does not allow further improvement and thus has never appealed to me.

in lieu of a perfect home, i want one that can flourish and glorify in its legacy, one that permeates security but allows freedom, one that is loved for its simple pleasures of freshly picked up laundry and the humming vacuum cleaner. ever noticed the kind of mess that only a home could have, in its cutlery clutter in the kitchen that signals a functioning mother/wife and the splatter of the lawn-mower’s oil that points to a happily mowing father/husband, possibly with a couple of kids frolicking (pilfer the neighbour’s kids if you don’t have any) and a hamster (or something psittacoid, if you like) somewhere in the background? no one wants a dysfunctional house whose furniture are for flaunting and food bought at fast food restaurants.

ah, imma go get that Lecka-Lecka now. that’s one of the perks of being a restless yet timeless wanderer. i can always drop by a Lecka-Lecka or a Godiva booth. or a Jusco. or a Seoul Garden oulet (drool, people, drool). or the food court in Pavilion. oh now we’re getting hungry. shall we just go home, good sirs and madams? at the end of the long drive are those people who unconditionally love you farts and all (was it warts and all?), and i believe you shall make haste. i wish you well for your journey this holiday. i simply can’t wait to revel in the speeding frenzy made possible by the endless highway.

quotidian

2011-01-21T10:12:00.002+08:00

Bruno Mars is one of the few songwriters who possesses morphological and rhetoric wit. listening to his songs, i find myself imaginarily patting Mr. Bruno on the back and saying “good job, my man!” for such mesmerizingly brilliant non-stereotypical metaphors, word play, rhymes, and so on. i like them simply because they sound original and not the customary, ten-for-a-dime unctuous or helplessly lovesick/love-lost lyrical arrangement. a few examples would evince what i mean, but you may and can disagree and perhaps bash about it in your blog:

1. song: “Move On”
my favourite line/s: i always try to do this on my own, but i was wrong, ‘cause only with you, can i move on.
i like it because the songs that i usually hear would say “i have moved on” or “i want you to move on”. this one aspires to move on together with the other person.
2. song: “Talking to the Moon”
my favourite line/s: i’m feeling like i’m famous, the talk of the town… i sit by myself, talking to the moon, trying to get to you, in hopes you’re on the other side, talking to me too.
i like it because of the new function of the nocturnal celestial body, which is usually used as a comparison to/an emblem of the beloved, right from the days of Petrarch, Sir Phillip Sidney to Justin Timberlake who, while still in the same vein, has it modified/upgraded to “sun and earth” (see “cry me a river”).
3. song: “Who Is”
my favourite line/s: oh, i was perfect for the circus, if she dated me, i’d do it, love makes you stupid. i know i’m not perfect but at the end of the day, who is. she wanted someone that’s perfect, well, okay, can you tell me who is. she set the bar just above the stars. a rocket couldn’t reach it.
i like it because of the phrase ‘who is’. in all its simplicity, Bruno’s usage of it paired with the whole song has rendered it with intense connotation.

and then of course there’s “Grenade”, the current favourite that radio stations play once in two hours (it’s “the listeners’ vote!”, they’d say). i have heard responses to this song and most of them are disapproving. they articulate that “ooh, i won’t do such stupid/unreasonable/futile things” or “what stupid things to do!”. ladies and gentlemen, before we expostulate and designate such vituperative attributes, perhaps we should be reminded that we indeed do stupid/unreasonable/futile things for people we love, whether they deserve it or not. but just because finely chiseled Bruno Mars puts our foolish endeavours in vividly gory details, shazzam, it is thus unforgivingly labeled.

we have met people who kiss their boyfriends’ hands at the end of every rendezvous; isn’t that putting the boyfriend at the same pedestal as parents? i am not being preachy but as observed by my sister, people declare (on FB, where else) to the whole wide world that they love their mom and dad very, very much (xoxo, if you want). and then it is these very same ones who play truant to go gallivanting with their boyfriends/girlfriends. considering their nerve to call “Grenade” stupid, you’d wonder whether they actually understand language. we also know of friends who starve, no, scratch that, use their monthly allowance from the government and/or parents to lavish on the beaus. if these imbeciles lament that they have no money for books, perhaps it is best to severe their tongue and/or jugular vein. i think a little gift here and there is okay - we are mere mortals after all, we constantly want - but a 500 ringgit Fossil watch? if you treat your family that luxuriously, then it is justified to a certain extent. there has to be some balance, good sirs and madams.

ergo, before we oppugn “Grenade”, let’s just look at that person in the mirror, eh? it’s a wonderful song, anyway, which is scarce nowadays.

eine liebesgeschichte

2011-01-17T14:06:00.004+08:00

my love affair with macaroons started in my second undergrad year. i had to read Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House for one of the classes and the protagonist, Nora has a scene of macaroon eating. but because i didn't think macaroon was available in Malaysia, i put it off. to read it in a Freudian line, the desire was suppressed. tch, such tragedy.

until last year, when the desire resurfaced. i saw some macaroons on someone's blog. darn pretty dainty macaroons had me salivating for weeks until last Saturday, i found some exquisite macaroons at Pavilion's Godiva outlet. sold at two pieces at RM14, it was every bit priceless. later in KLCC, they are sold at RM15 for 6 pieces at Harrod's, which is at the same range with Godiva since Harrod's are way smaller. but Godiva has mango and pistachio flavours, while Harrod's only has the usual like blueberry and chocolate. the mango flavour, now the mango flavour, alas, where are my words when i need to describe it. shall i say that at the point of sinking my teeth in such splendour of the result from meticulous dessert making, my senses exploded into a firework so brilliant like a store full of those had been lit with fire? or shall i say that as the flavour and the texture of the dough melted it my mouth, i felt like a restless wanderer who has finally found the way home? i shall not, because it doesn't do justice to it. love affair thus resumes as usual. you shall have to bite one to experience such paradisical joy (i am not sure whether 'paradisical' exists).

on a different juncture, i am going loony with my thesis writing, having to argue with myself all the time about the topics and everything that comes with it. it is such a solitary process and i am usually very good at being a loner but thesis writing is tweaking my brain in an entirely different manner. the only people i see and speak to are Kak Eda at my department, the makciks at the cafes, my supervisor for the weekly meeting, and a couple of friends here and there. other than that, i talk to the laptop, the iPod and the wardrobe. i get so loony to the extent that i have acquired an imaginary dog named Boffo whom i walk every morning and evening. i might get one of those pachyderms this week, preferably an elefant as splendid as Yusof Gajah's. after that, may be a giraffe who can sing.

i am thus looking forward to the semester break, because Prof Q has decreed that i should take a break and relax. ergo, i shall obey. yaaaah!

saviour vs. the other

2011-01-12T22:44:00.004+08:00

watched Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. there's the issue of American gallantry again. when dealing with the Other, here comes white Americans the saviours. i compared Gran Torino with The Blind Side. good stories those two, although Torino is a bit bleak while Blind Side is warmer and all maternal. but both entertain the idea that the white Americans will always save the day. yes, they overcome prejudice, they welcome the immigrants into their home and then they will always save the day.

the next time you watch those movies that have coloured people being treated nicely, watch out for the saviour. it's getting too stereotypical. ah, but i adore Eastwood's swearing streak in the movie. it somehow fits. but then again, i have always had an affinity for Eastwood. teehee.

dream a little bigger, darling

2011-01-10T18:22:00.004+08:00

i recently had the fortune to watch Inception. i am not a cinema person. i always wait for downloads from Syafiq. it is so good, so good that i wish it were a book. i have one little complaint. i kept waiting for Ariadne and Arthur to test their totems - a chess pawn and a loaded dice, respectively- but the only totem on test throughout the movie is Cobb's. or perhaps i missed some scenes. on the other hand, i admire the allusion of the character Ariadne to the Greek goddess by the same name who had something to do with a labyrinth. apt, ain't it? Nolan certainly knows his Greco pantheon.

and after Robert-Fischer-Greek-god-dashing appeared, i kept thinking which movie i had watched him in. it was Peacock. a tad sluggish, heavy with issues but Cilian Murphy did a convincing job portraying a disturbed man and his alter ego, a timid but brave woman.

Inception got me the sobs. that's a really good story. and issues. although perhaps a bit more conviction from Ellen Page would not hurt, being juxtaposed in a movie with Dicaprio and Watanabe whose emotions are intense. perhaps Page's character decrees so. watching Levitt in filthy boring 500 Days of Summer made me wonder if he could actually act. i know Levitt was hilarious in 3rd Rock from the Sun, so in Inception, i am finally convinced. Inception has now officially toppled the reigning champion Shawshank Redemption. i wish someone would turn it into a book.

words and kin

2011-01-04T21:49:00.004+08:00

i once read in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper that the English vocabulary has no word/s for parents whose children have died, as a corresponding morphological item to the word ‘orphan’ which refers to a child whose parent/s have died. in this sense, the vocabulary thereof is inadequate. apart from being a brilliant literary element and such an insightful observation, i was actually struck into realizing how true this is that despite the very fat dictionaries sold in bookstores, there are so very many things unnamed yet, probably because they have not existed yet and probably because there are things that we just make do with “you know that thing that squeaks and is in bright orange but if it falls on your toes, you could end up with gangrene” instead of creating a word like ‘phililop’ to name such item, had it existed.

in a similar vein, there are words for people who divorce. with a scrap of paper that nullifies their marriage, they have shifted from man and wife (in sickness and health and all that wedding vow’s brouhaha) to ‘divorcé’ and ‘divorcée’, or if you would opt for fancier, street-wise terms, ‘ex-husband’ and ‘ex-wife’. but there is no word for children whose parents have divorced. well of course it is unnecessary mostly, considering the fact that husbands and wives become attached (or trapped with) to each other by a vow and some scratches of unintelligible signatures on papers - for all you know you could actually be married to ‘banana’ or ‘mustangs’ or worse, ‘kidikidiburuburudog’ as scribbled at the signature points, instead of to a Robert, an Ali, a Cinderella or a Zainon – and children become children because they are bonded by blood to their parents. so while vows and papers could be burned and nullified, blood bonds are for life and extend to death. but sometimes just for the sake of a simple explanation for difficult questions, some people just wish that they could say perhaps “oh, i’m a jasringsley” to mean that they are children to parents who have found it wiser to be without their spouses and thus would spend Eid, Christmas or Rosh Hashana in two separate parental houses.

but here’s such a luxurious word that i find fascinating while reading Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys (again); grandchildren. we seldom ponder about the ‘grand’ part when it is fixed to children because, well, it’s children. grandfather or grandfather clocks would connote an element that is old and/or magnificent, possibly with a sense of authority and wisdom (although wisdom could be questioned) and if you’re lucky, heaps of money and overseas property. grandmother or grandmother clock (this thing exists, i kid you not, ladies and gentlemen) would equally be of the same stature of the male counterpart, perhaps with the addition of top-secret gastronomic delights in some best-case scenario. but grandchildren, just where exactly the 'grand' could match the grandness of grandparents? i’ll tell you how.

being someone’s grandchildren equates to forging an entirely opposite side to your parents. i read somewhere (i note with dismay that i have forgotten the source) that when you are a parent, you are always the enemy to your parents and your kids. take an example in the occasion that your parents want a golf club membership and your kids want the much-coveted Wii thing (take note, kids, Wii is now sold at less than a thousand ringgit) but you, as nature would dictate, would have to say nope, no way, nuh-uh because, well, because you secretly find it amusing to deny other people’s pleasure at your expense. you could have a round of applause now because you have successfully gained a battalion of adversaries, depending on how many kids you have plus your two parents (if your father has only one wife). and then you know that in most cases, your kids would go to your parents wailing that you do not buy what they need and in a split second, your parents would march to the next gadget shop in KLCC and purchase the Wii set for your kids. and that is revenge for not getting them the golf club membership. do you see how grand it is for grandchildren? makes you shudder, doesn’t it?

while my grandmother doesn’t need a golf club membership, i do forge alliance with her when it comes to my father. consider the occasion when he once left his wallet in her house after she had locked every possible door and window and given the key to her relative and she had to go back to the relative’s house and retrieve the key, babbling half in Malay, half in Javanese at my father all the way. the emotion that i felt having my father babbled at was… priceless. (you know how your father babbles at you).

like i said, blood bonds are for life and extend to death. i quote with wonder what Cubbins, a character in Gregory Maguire’s A Lion among Men says, “it doesn’t hurt to have a family, you know, even a troubled one. at least i know where i am” (page 56). ain’t that apt? so the next time your dad refuses you something, call your grandparents. they, would be honoured.

grey - season finale

2010-12-30T16:12:00.001+08:00

“Not necessarily. I have always liked it, way back before I died. Told my dad I wanted one. Small, gloomy and sitting there, wings in full span. Saw it in some funerary architecture books. I guess he remembered it after all.”
I was silent again. I was standing beside a person who had died and then been brought back to life because her father did not have the heart to tell her mother that their daughter had died while she, the mother was having a heart surgery.
“You’re telling me because…?”
“I don’t know. So you wouldn’t mojo your daughter?” She laughed softly.
“That’s a good reason.” She nodded.
“So, you go and have a good life, okay? If you get angry, well, I don’t know, go take pictures or, visit some graveyard since you like it. Just don’t let the anger ruin you.”
“I still think this is a sick joke. C’mon.” But what did I know about running graveyards, its craft and/or occupational hazard? She smiled and shook her head. I blinked. I was a man of tangents and T-square, my life so far spent sketching and measuring things on papers and then bringing in to life with bricks and metal. My life did not put me in a position exposed to mojo and matrimonial catastrophe. My life so far had only been about me and me and my anger about not getting my father’s inheritance. Which now seemed so trifle.
“I gotta go now. You take care.” She turned around and pulled her horse along at the rein. Dusk was settling in and this was the last time I would ever see her, if she was really dead. Was she was she was she? I was still asking in my head.
“Hey.” I said and she turned to look at me. I believed that the next time I came, she would still be here with her horse and I could take more pictures but my hands and my mouth believed otherwise.
“Can I give you a goodbye hug? I’ve had a good time here.” She looked at me, eyebrows knitting. “Least I could do.”
“You’d hug a dead girl?”
“As you said but you’re a cool dead girl. That’s an exception.” Because she didn’t look like she believed me and just stood there, I took a step forward and then another until I reached her and then pulled her into my arms.
Quiet was the sound as her skin touched mine and I forgot for a while that she was dead, that there were sorrow and storm in this world. But just as well, there were also joy and calm after that.
As we let go each other, she smiled and then walked away with her horse. I watched her go for a while and then I turned around and walked to my aunt’s house.
When I browsed the photos that night, I had only noticed that her pictures did not have her in it. When she showed me the name on the gravestone and her ID, I was so fixed on it I didn’t notice she wasn’t there. There were only her magnificent horse and everything else but not her. That was when I finally believed that what she told me was not a sick joke.
And that she was right when she said I should have a good life and not give in to my anger.
*
In the beginning, she and her horse had caught my curious eyes.
“Is that your horse?” She turned and saw me.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know horse riding is allowed here.”
“Oh, well, actually, I’m patrolling.”
“So you work here?” She looked about just fresh out of high school or maybe a freshman at college somewhere. She had that vibrant look in her eyes.
“Kind of. My dad manages this whole thing. I’m just helping out.”
“Whoa. The whole acres of Cardington?” That was the name of one of the biggest burial grounds in the world, dating back to the 18th century. I used to roll the word in my mouth, craving to visit it someday. And here I was talking with the daughter of the owner.
“Yeah. Family business.” She gestured to my camera and said, “You take pictures of graves?”
“Graves, among others. Its landscape, its trees, the gravestones. I like graveyards.”
“I have never met someone who likes graveyards.” She said, eyebrows raised, getting off her horse, her riding boots clicking against the pavement.
“I on the other hand never knew anyone whose father owns a graveyard, let alone this big.” I looked around in wonder. I wished I had a graveyard business. She smiled.
“Someone has to do the job. Can I see your pictures?” She said. I nodded and handed it to her. “You can ride my horse. Do you want to?” She offered and I almost jumped to say ‘yes’ before I remembered that I had no idea how to ride a horse.
“I don’t know how to ride a horse.” I told her.
“Come on, ride with me. I’ll let you sit at the front and hold the rein.” She slung my camera around her neck and got onto her horse. Holding out her hand, I was hoisted up and soon was trembling silly but later was enjoying it.
“Do you have a name, graveyard patrol?” I said while I ballooned with pride, riding a horse in a graveyard. She chuckled.
It was Audrey.

the first decade of the 21st century

2010-12-28T13:41:00.006+08:00

i note with dismay that at the end of 2010, a year-number that should connote improvement and higher intelligence considering the type of gadgets and information technology available, students at tertiary level still vote girls who are cute to be on the management board of their society. no wonder they can't even write their own assignments or can't even tell the difference between linguistic and linguistics. must have been absent on the day brains were handed out. perhaps meritocracy should be practiced in lieu of being just another proposal. these people, because they know they would get a place at the tertiary level with relatively easily acquired education loan, put 'taking things for granted' to shame. they simply do not care to strive. it is saddening. but perhaps we could find comfort in those few who study with such diligence that is hard to find nowadays.

on a less serious juncture, i also observe the politics of singing in the 21st century with utmost interest. (please, ladies and gentlemen, before you assign a twinge of prejudice, 'politics' has other meanings too.) one of the questions that would bug me when i am driving is 'how could those winners of reality shows win?'. sms put aside, i admit with a frown that singing nowadays does not require a good singing voice. if you sing things like what lady gaga sings, you do not need a beautiful voice. instead, flamboyant hairdo and costumes with a touch of questionable libido would suffice. just to prove this, listen to gaga's 'speechless'. if constipation has a sound, that is it.

same goes to stacy. her dancing skills is applaudable. voice? zero bordering on negative. that's not even a voice for singing. adam lambert? again, hairdo and costumes. were live-singing-with-a-voice-unfit-for-live-singing a crime, adam lambert would be doing time now. taylor swift does not sing well but thanks to catchy tunes and clever lyrical arrangement, she would be around for some time. justin bieber has a lucky strike with usher but if that boy doesn't start acquring dancing skills or composing skills, by next year, his name wouldn't even ring a bell, let alone his songs being made a ringtone.

but then again, logically, if you're singing upbeat songs, you really don't need a good singing voice. k-pop artists for instance can survive with some pubescent looks, sultry eyes and innocent eye make-up. but if you're singing something melodious with brilliant lyrical and music arrangement like nat king cole's "L-O-V-E" or something excellently melancholy like celine dion's "my heart will go on", then you cannot survive with just dancing skills or a number-8 body figure.

ah but then again (again), shit happens. and so will commence another decade of the 21st century in a couple of days. here's my new year's resolution - 18 megapiksel. i wish you, people, the best of luck in trying to get over the past.

grey - part 4

2010-12-27T16:07:00.003+08:00

“When that happened, I was on the way home. I was driving from the neighbouring state, went to check a college there. My dad phoned me and he was panicking and all, yelling on the phone so I… I hurried home. I was speeding and there was another car from the opposite direction, it was overtaking a van in front of it. The driver didn’t have time to get back into his lane and I was speeding, well, you know, we, uh, we crashed.”

“This was what, two weeks ago? Did you escape unharmed? You don’t look like someone who had a car crash two weeks ago.”

“No. I died. On the way to the hospital. I had brain hemorrhage.”

I blinked. “You died? Did you just say you died?” I stopped walking. We were in front of her house, a mansion styled in the Elizabethan architecture with some very convincing lion gargoyles at the roof and a splendid fountain.

“Yeah.So because my mom had to have a bypass, my dad figured he couldn’t tell her that I had died while she was in the surgery, I mean, when she came out. So he, uh, he did some mojo on me and brought me back to life. For a while.”She was telling all this slowly, as if she was expecting me to burst out laughing or calling her insane. I couldn’t even find a word to say. An eternity passed.

“That’s a sick joke.” I finally said.

“It’s not even a joke.”

“Wait, wait, so how did he decide for how long he is, uh, borrowing you?”

“Well, at that time he thought he might have me until my mom was well again and then get her to see me one last time but my mom went into coma after the surgery. Her doctor doesn’t think she’s waking up. Her heart kind of gave away. They’re talking of pulling the plug.”

“Whoa. I can’t believe this. People don’t do this mojo stuff anymore, do they?”

“It’s a craft, sort of, at least on my dad’s side. An occupational hazard sometimes, if you fling it on the wrong sort of person.”

“So what now?”

“So, since they’re pulling her plug, I told my dad I wanted to go back to being dead. He said he could make me stay, with a few arrangements…”

“What arrangements?” I said in horror but regained my composure. In vain.

“Dude, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to stay, remember?” She paused and then said, “I’m going back tonight.”

“Why don’t you want to stay?” Would I stay? I echoed myself.

“The world is too much for me. When you’re dead, you get plenty of time.” She replied in a distant tone that sounded like longing, like death was a better option than life and all its perks. But perhaps it was.

“It’s still a sick joke.” I said stubbornly, my denial in full bloom. Who could believe this stuff? We weren’t doing Sam and Dean Winchester. This was real life. She smiled a half smile and took my camera from my hand. She viewed the pictures of her and her horse that I had taken.

“Look.” She said and pointed at the LCD screen. Fancy taking photos of a subject without really paying attention to details around it. Without paying attention to what was written on the gravestone.

“That’s my name.” She took out her wallet from her jeans pocket and showed her ID to me. Same name, same birth date and I convinced myself that it was still a sick joke.

“What about the staff in there? And the people at the hospital?”

“Well, most of them are my dad’s kin, so they’re familiar with this kind of thing. Know some mojo themselves. I died in another hospital, so it’s no problem here. My father brought me back in the company’s hearse. Nothing unusual there, same shit, different corpse.”

I was silent for a moment. In my head I was rewinding the days I had spent with her but nothing, nothing gave away the fact that she was on borrowed time.

“Is that why you like that gloomy stone angel the most? Because it’s your grave?”

grey - part 3

2010-12-23T21:29:00.002+08:00

“Can we take your horse today?”
“Sure.” She left me at the front of the administration building and went to the stable at the back. Her family had five horses for riding and also patrolling the graveyard. It was a trademark of the family’s trade. To me, patrolling a graveyard on a horse was downright classic. To me, it was a statement of art. Like the graveyard itself, beautiful in all its quiet, somber ways, some kind of poetry in stones and silence.
“Can I take pictures of you? With your horse and your favourite stone angel?” I asked as she hoisted me up onto the horse, its hazel fur so soft to the touch. She let me hold the rein while she browsed the pictures I had taken.
“Let me think.” She said. She patted the horse three times and it took us to the said gravestone. I wondered how long she took to train her horse for the signal.
“Cool. The horse knows it.” I said in amazement.
“You don’t know the baskets of apples he had training for it.” She said.
“Can I still come and see you the next time I visit my aunt?”
“I won’t be around but you can still come.”
“You going to college?” I said as we arrived at the grave with the gloomy stone angel. She got off first and then helped me off the horse.
“You should just take the horse and the stone angel. I suck at having my pictures taken. I always look like something else but me.”
I thought for a while. I wanted her in the picture. She seemed always at ease with the graveyard and the way she knew the whole landscape fascinated me. She fascinated me.
“Pretend that I am not here.” I said and began turning the dials of my camera, composing a few test shots. She just stood there and stared into the horizon, her hand holding the rein of her horse while the magnificent animal thoughtfully nuzzled the stone angel. She stood in a fully relaxed stance, sometimes she checked her nails, sometimes she flicked a stray hair back at her ear, other times she just stroked the horse’s mane. I snapped away, changing positions, changing the exposure, playing with the evening light and colours, fully aware that this kind of setting would not present itself a second time. This moment, these kinds of colours and all the ways the somber moods just fell into place in the background; these made up this chance in a lifetime.
As I was confident that I had captured every possible way a photo could be captured, I raised a thumb-up and announced with a flourish,
“And, we’re done.” She breathed a sigh of relief. I was going home, back to my job and my busy city in a couple of days and I wanted to know if I could always come see her for company - something new would always appear at graveyards; a fancy gravestone, a new stone angel, some landscape embellishment perfect for this other side of life- or, may be invite her to my city of capitalism and heartache.
“So, where are you going? You said you won’t be around. You bailing out of here?” I said, wondering if she had given up on her parents.
“No. Look, I’m going to tell you something you wouldn’t believe.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“Because it’s true.”
“What?”
“Remember when I told you about my mom collapsing with a heart attack during a fight with my dad?” I nodded and she continued.
“When that happened, I was on the way home."

-to be continued in part 4

summer on campus

2010-12-20T11:44:00.005+08:00

changes can be good (klik untuk paparan sebesar gajah dan/atau denoso).

coming?

2010-12-17T21:29:00.001+08:00

when i grow up i want to be justin bieber.

grey - part 2

2010-12-16T16:05:00.002+08:00

“How does it feel like?”
Eyebrows furrowed, looking for the right words to say, she replied “Like walking through mud for a thousand days.”
“Can I summarize that as difficult?”
“Difficult, yes, but just as I feel like I’m getting the hang of it, shazzam, something always hits me by surprise, a scandal, some old affairs unearthed and then it gets back to being difficult all over again. On the other hand, on days that nothing happens, no yelling, no broken plates in the kitchen, I couldn’t be at peace until something bad pops out right in front of me. The pressure kind of pushes me forward; I did well in school. It’s sick the way I am so used to the ugly thing that I can’t function without it, almost addicted to it. Like a drug, can live with it, can’t live without it.”
“Quite.” I said. She nodded, agreeing. I had come in the morning to see if she was free to take me on a tour on the old side of the graveyard that dated back to the 18th century but she was not free. She said she could ask another staff to take me but I enjoyed her company and so I said it was okay, I could come back when she would have the time.
“You can come in the evening if you don’t have anything planned. I’ll be back by then.” That was fine with me. I could just go browse the other side of the town and take pictures. There was an old bridge that I had been wanting to visit.
“Where are you going?” I asked as she walked down the steps to a waiting car.
“The hospital. I’ll see you around 4?” She said as she reached for the door. I nodded. The car zoomed away and I set off to look for the bridge. Later in the evening, I walked to the graveyard and when I arrived, she was waiting for me at the administration building.
“Are you sick?” I asked, my voice muffled with my lips pressed against the LCD screen of my camera as I skimmed the landscape through the viewfinder.
“No. I went to visit my mother.”
“She’s sick?”
“She had a heart attack two weeks ago. They had to do a bypass.”
“What gave her that attack?”
“They were fighting in the drawing room upstairs. She collapsed. That’s no surprise, really, considering that she already has a heart disease. And they both have very bad temper.” She was saying it so casually I thought I had misheard it. I said “Pardon?” and she repeated the answer, casually. It sounded like a movie so I asked if it was indeed like a movie with parents fighting and a lot of nasty stuff. She laughed and said ‘yes’ and when I asked “How does it feel?” being in the middle of a daily matrimonial catastrophe, her answer was the first of its kind. I had to admit it, this kind of thing was common; a number of my friends had their lives wrecked by their parents’ divorces but not one was addicted to it. They were glad to be out of the house and have minimal contact with both sides as a result of deciding not to take any sides so as not to offend the other side.
“A good friend of mine said I’m twisted.”
“Were you offended by that?” I asked, snapping away at the old gravestones.
“No. I’m just surprised at its sheer truth.” Working in the arts industry, I met all sorts of personalities. “Twisted” could be another person paving his/her way to a golden future. We were who we were. We made use of what we had, good and bad, to just live.
“If you had a choice, do you want some other happy parents?”
“No. It’s okay. They might have World War III everyday but at least they could afford things for me, to put it bluntly. I mean I never have to worry about clothes, books and stuff.” She paused and pointed to a grave with a beautiful gravestone with elaborate carvings and a long epitaph blurred now by rain and sunshine throughout the years.
“Rumour had it her rich lover bought the fancy stone because her poor husband couldn’t afford one.” I had to admit it, I was amazed. Infidelity went way back with human history.
“We don’t get everything, do we.” She made that into a fact, a statement instead of a question and looked into the far horizon.

grey - part 1

2010-12-14T22:09:00.005+08:00

The end. I’ll start with the end. In the end, the photo that I took with her and her horse standing at the grave with her favourite stone angel won an international photography contest in the monochrome category. It won because, as stated by judges’ comment, the somber black-and-white shades brilliantly captured the somber melancholy mood of the composition, with the horse nuzzling the gloomy little stone angel sitting on top of the gravestone, its sad eyes full to the brink with longing, the shade of a tree forming a middle ground between the foreground of the horse and the stone angel and the background of a thousand other gravestones lined up like toy soldiers.

But no one except me knew that the pictures were actually composed with her in it. She just didn’t appear in the picture. All that I had was the memory that I did compose it with her as one of the primary subjects, that she was really there with me, her words and every move that she made that last day I saw her stayed glued in my head constantly playing on loop like a movie, its after image like fireworks across the night sky that made you wonder why it didn’t stay longer.

Years after that, I still came to visit, to spend a while just looking at her favourite stone angel. There was no more of her in the physical sense but if I listened carefully, I could hear her laughter in the wind and there was her presence all around, like a cool blanket that you put around you on a hot day to escape from the scorching heat.

“So did you Google it up, found this graveyard and decided to come take pictures?”
“I read it somewhere, been wanting to come but I got caught up with work. My aunt recently took up a job nearby and invited me to come. She sent me postcards of this graveyard.”
“What’s this job that you’ve been so busy doing?”
“I push drugs.” I said and looked up to the sky, browsing the colours and the minimal light splattered across the vast plain of smoky lavender grey and red with bits of orange sherbet, the lines between them all smudged now. She was taking me on a walking tour. I wanted to see the stone angels at dusk. She shook her head and laughed.
“Is that a dream job?”
“No, my dream job would be a pole dancer.” She laughed again. She laughed so much sometimes I thought she seldom had the chance to laugh. And when she laughed, it rang through the air in the graveyard and presented such a stark contrast to the grey stones and its epitaphs, its serene sward and trimmed greenery, its wind in soft gusts across the terrain.
“I know you’re an architect.” She said and looked like she very much enjoyed my surprised look. I rubbed my forehead.
“Is it written on my forehead?” I said and she laughed again. Said she once read an article on a hotel and its architect. That must be the one in Norway that won an award two years back. At that time, I was actually under a probation following a suspension from work thanks to my anger mismanagement during which I had attacked a client and almost stuck a pencil in his eyes, I told her. My superior assigned me that project and I would get my job back if it was approved. It winning an award was beyond my expectation but it delighted my boss to no end. I got my job back and I had been keeping a conscious mental note in my head not to lose temper at work. That and the fact that my boss sent me to an anger management counseling. Fancy being remembered for something that sprung into life from my demons.
“Is that why you haven’t asked my name? You already knew it.” She nodded. It was a couple of days after I first met her and her horse. I went to look for her at the administration building. Someone replaced her at the counter and told her to give me the tour.
“You read architectural materials? That magazine, Architectural Digest?”
“My dad subscribes it. He’s a landscape architect too and runs this cemetery, its landscape, primarily.”
“Cool.” I said.
“Is that your favourite word? You say that a lot.”
“I think it’s automatic ,when something cool comes along.” She smiled and stopped at a grave. She leaned closer and fingered something at the top of the graveyard. I couldn’t see it, concealed under her fingers in the dusk.
“Here’s my favourite stone angel.” She said and removed her hand away so I could see it. It was small and dainty, sitting at the top of the gravestone, its wing in full span but
“It looks sad.”
“Is it supposed to look happy?”

I wasn’t sure. The stone angels in graveyards that I had been to so far looked serene, almost sublime at times, as if they were at peace with the whole business of death. This one’s melancholy was so apparent you could rub it in your hands.
I forgot to ask her why she liked it the most as my cell phone rang and my aunt was at the other end inviting me to her friend’s dinner party.

who are you

2010-12-10T10:10:00.004+08:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?"

--W.E.B Du Bois in one of his speeches.

(for dyu who has just gotten her first dean's list. good job, booger!)

jump in

2010-12-01T21:20:00.003+08:00

here's a song for the occasion: "jumper" by third eye blind

exoskeleton

2010-11-27T14:58:00.003+08:00

is one of my favourite words. its relevance to this post remains to be questioned, overruled and doubted.

yann martel is one of my regular reads. you can read one of his stories here. in his anthology The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, i like the titular story. i even like the name "roccamatios". the story is wonderfully heartbreaking. and then of course, i like Life of Pi. it makes me laugh and think. it makes my hair stand on ends.

the thing with martel is that, it is always a representation of something; an issue, a flaw in humanity, a daily logic, a cosmic confusion, a truth that we refuse to acknowledge all this while. his stories are realistically dark mostly, sometimes i forget that i am actually reading a work of fiction. but then again, doesn't art imitate life? if you are new to martel's wonders and you think his stories are dark, unless you're a martian, then i don't know which world you have been living in.

he has a new book, released in april this year. the title is Beatrice and Virgil. i know titles can be deceiving but it is not a love story, god save me. beatrice and virgil are a donkey and a howler monkey, whichever is which.

and p/s, piscine molitor "pi" patel, you're one of those religiously eccentric men i have loved. like rushdie's aadam sinai.

dan sebenarnya (come on, kau ingat yuna je ke yang tau guna frasa ni?)

2010-11-22T17:55:00.008+08:00

pernah ditanya pendapat tentang parents yang tengok porn. jawapan bernas mengatakan tidak patut. dan sebenarnya waktu itu aku lupa yang mak bapak pun manusia.

dan sebenarnya lagi, fakta itu memang selalu aku lupa. cuma baru-baru ini ada hakikat yang boleh aku terima yang perkataan sempurna tak patut wujud. ingat masa kita kecil dan membanding bertanding sama kawan-kawan tentang ayah siapa lagi kuat, mak siapa lagi cantik? mungkin dari sekarang budak-budak patut diingatkan yang mak ayah bukan sempurna, bukan ma'sum, bukan hebat perkasa. mak bapak pun patut berhenti memahukan anak-anak jadi wondergirl/superboy/wonderpet. tak ada yang menarik tentang menjadi sempurna. perfectness is a stagnant stasis.

yang sebetulnya, we are perfectly flawed. and in these flaws lies the secret to being better for all days to come. changes are necessary. (and stop thinking that just because you fucked up, every other descendant of yours will, too. let them live their life and you mend yours.)

dan tapi sebenarnya lagi, kita semua sudah biasa diminta menjadi sempurna - dari dapat markah 100 untuk ujian matematik hingga ke jadi superhusband/wonderwife. bila buat salah, bila fucked up, kita selalu lupa yang orang lagi satu pun manusia, sama macam kita, dari zat mencipta yang sama. kau bukan lebih baik dari kawan kau yang mungkin usung boyfren keliling pinggang.

isn't truth better than comfort? makanya, aku lalu berhenti mencari sempurna. aku patut cari duit. boleh beli satu dunia. (and don't give me that lame shit that not everything can be bought with money. because everything that can be bought, needs money. why the hell do i need money for things that can't be bought anyway?)

here's one for the ocassion: sum 41's best of me. i dedicate this.

parched for words

2010-11-15T16:50:00.009+08:00

“A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you.”

- margaret atwood.

"and if i sing you're my voice."

- e.e. cummings, from "hate blows a bubble of despair".

"Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. "

- neil gaiman, from anansi boys.

most of the times, splitting up is the only choice left although we often forget the fact that it is only after utter destruction could new things grow. c'mon. bring it on. and then start anew. only to realize that there's no one in this world who could love you that much. or that less. but perfectly nonetheless.

one of the best costumes in movie: rachel weisz's dresses in the brothers bloom. damn sleek.

to buy or not to steal: amitav ghosh's the hungry tide, tayeb salih's season of migration to the north, chinua achebe's things fall apart.

omgiffy

2010-11-10T11:49:00.018+08:00

you could trust giffy to have something marvellously extraordinary that comes in just the right size as a present for a loved one or for yourself. you can choose from and splurge yourself silly in a vaaaast range of :

dainty buttons
(cute as buttons, pun intended)

frustratingly fluffy plush toys

magnificently trendy greeting cards,
and

ribbiliant ribbons of all colours and sizes.

and that's just for appetizer. there's a lot more, from posh fridge magnets, crispy wrapping papers to raw materials such as pins and studs. and rest assured that the shop assistant will always offer to help you with your goodies; from gluing pins to suggesting ideas for individually made greeting cards. then they would put your goodies in plastic bags with a strip of paper with the 'giffy' logo in it. to me, this is the 'x' factor that makes giffy stand out. other than the fact that everytime i go there, something new (and undeniably thrilling) is always in the store.

now, now. goodness giffy me. what are you doing here? run to giffy at wangsa walk mall! :)

-pictures are courtesy of giffy

surprised by joy

2010-11-05T21:21:00.003+08:00

Surprised by joy -impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind -
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? - That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn,
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

-william wordsworth

p/s: for the day when i wake up and remember that the one person who knows me (and my demon) well and still could love me is no longer there with me to share what only that person could understand.

tentang nenek

2010-11-01T11:22:00.003+08:00

dinding papan rumah kecil nenekku bersemat fotoku di dalam bingkai
penuh dindingnya dengan fotoku yang besar
dan sengih lebarku di konvo tahun lepas
waktu diberi hadiah pelajar terbaik
sudah kubilang pada ayah
jangan dipamer fotoku di situ
lumrahnya aku tak gemar bergambar
balas ayahku (yang macam shah rukh khan)
nenek mahu fotoku demikian di rumahnya (special request, man)

apa banggakah dia tak pernah disebut
tapi nenekku bimbang kalau-kalau aku ke 'amereka' sambung belajar
dilihatnya dalam tv
'amereka' huru hara
hati orang tua untuk dimengerti
tak diajar kepada aku dalam kitab-kitab postcolonialku

sayangkah dia tak pernah berucap
tapi bila diminta berbagai itu ini
bantal kekabu berbau rumahnya (3 bijik habis)
buah cili di tepi parit (sampai togel pokok nenek)
ayam kicap jawa
kuah lodeh tempe berjuta
kerepek pisang paling enak sedunia
akan diberi apa adanya

apa lama lagi nenekku diberi pinjam padaku
supaya sempat aku khabarkan aku takkan ke 'amereka'
dan aku takkan mau diganti dia dengan orang lain
jika ada kaitan kitab-kitab postmodernismku
aku sudah belajar yang bila berkongsi flesh and blood
baik buruk tak ada dipilih-pilih,
semua mesti diambil terima.

rendezvous

2010-10-25T22:26:00.003+08:00

Audrey:
On days like this, my whole being is telling me that the train is moving too slowly, as if it is caught in mud trying to slosh its way through. But of course it’s my impatience talking. Of course if it is granted upon me, I would like to just wish myself there, to the place I am heading.

To the person I am heading.

Nothing on my iPod seems to be of much fun. Fancy how 8GB of audio files could never compete with the bliss of seeing the other half. But again, it should be noted that this is my impatience talking. The train is moving. I would definitely get there. I just can’t wait. I don’t want to wait.

When I say the other half, I mean my better half.

Outside is a flurry of raindrops pelting against the window, turning it into a canvas of translucent spots of temporary magnifying glass. The sound of wheels grinding onto the railway shapes itself into a grand cacophony. If I concentrate hard enough, I could hear each stone and rock colliding into each other underneath. It drowns everyone around me. All I want to hear now is his voice; deep, rough-edged with a resonating manly vigour, another token for my acoustic archive.

Nearer now to where he should be waiting. Slowing down now before the train comes to a halt, I crane my neck to look outside the window and scan the crowd. In a flicker of second, I think I see him, standing in a queue, arms folded across his chest. As the train stops, I skim the people flooding in, looking for that familiar pair of eyes, the one in which my reflection always looks better.

Where is he now? He should be entering through that door, a couple of feet away to my left. He was standing there, wasn’t he?

It’s the waft of perfume that first nudges me, and as the person slips into the vacant seat beside me and edges closer to me, his warmth seeps through his shirt through my shirt and swiftly settles on my skin in rhapsodious sensations devoid of all flaws. Here he is; the familiar touch of his body, the landscape of my affection, a territory I keep coming back to again and again after every fight and every split, always full of wonder, never with a regret. I turn to my right.

“Hello.” He says and I smile.

Charlie:
As I quickly slip into the vacant seat beside her and edges closer to her, her warmth seeps through her shirt through my shirt and swiftly settles on my skin in rhapsodious sensations devoid of all flaws. Here it is; the familiar touch of her body, the landscape of my affection, a territory I keep coming back to again and again after every fight and every split, always full of wonder, never with a regret. She turns to her right.

“Hello.” I say and she smiles.

My wife. My better half.

concise to the core

2010-10-23T21:33:00.002+08:00

"I love you because I choose to."

-andrea m. kulman, via quote boo k.

-wow wee 500 posts. cool la konon. haha.

nv

2010-10-21T21:04:00.004+08:00

envy comes, wrong, envy engulfs me in flame everytime i open a book and read the page that the author writes his/her dedication. i'd read with the envy for the fact that this person has the power, the space to dedicate a whole book, a remarkable work of determination and efforts to people that matter to him/her. the sweetest one simply says "to (a person's name)". sleek, isn't it?

strangely enough, apart from the ending, the dedication page is also my favourite part of a book despite my humongous green envy. these authors dedicate their books to everyone; from their pets, grandparents, gay partners, a bus conductor who has inspired them, an old flame, an ex-wife, another husband's wife, and needless to say, to their immediate family members. prof quayum for example, having written/edited many books, has dedicated his books to his dad (abdussalam), his mom (rawshan lily), his wife (natasha), and his daughter (sasha). see, i know his family just by reading the dedication page.

years from now, i hope you'd find yourself swelling with pride and an enormous urge to tell the whole world and beyond infinity that i have dedicated my book/works to you. well you know who you are, i don't have that many 'you's anyway :)

Afterwards

2010-10-19T16:22:00.000+08:00

Afterwards, after all had been screamed and done, with you and I standing at opposite sides of the room having run out of hurtful words to inflict on each other, you would just look at me and shake your head in regret. But you never said anything after that point, after shaking your head. You would just change into one of your dresses for going out, grab your car keys and walk past me. A moment later I would hear your car zooming away, an imaginary fury that I have come to understand after years spending my life with you. When you came back later, you’d come and sit with me, and still without words you’d kiss me on my head, amidst my hair and all the anger that I got for you and all the world fell away.

Afterwards, when whatever movie they played on TV had finished and we sat there staring at the credits because you wanted to know the songs, all I could remember was the way you hummed the music, the words running on your lips and leaping into the air into a symphony a rhapsody that I tried to grab with bare hands. When there was just the two of us, I forgot the list of a hundred things that I wanted, the world waiting to crumble outside. There was only you and I and this was my treasure that I selfishly kept from others.

Afterwards, when my flight had touched the ground and I knew you had come an hour earlier just to be safe, I would impatiently wait for my luggage and grumble to myself. At the moment that I saw you, waiting for me, that familiar look on your face garlanded by the years we have spent together, all that I wanted was to hold you in my arms, the curves of your body, your spine and flesh so close to my skin, your head at the nape of my neck and realized all over again that it was such a perfect fit that no one else could contest. As we walked to our car, you would take my arm and loop it around you and I never wanted you to let go of me.

Afterwards, lying here with you so still beside me, lying here in my blood your blood in a flood and all this wreckage was starting to make so much noise I had to strain to hear the beat of your heart when it was clear there was none, I thought of all the important ways you knew me and ways I never thought before. I heard all your words that you used for me alone and I was drowning in this sorrowful din, begging for all the power that be to let me go with you. For all my clumsy ways, my gloom and my dark days, who would want to know and still love me now there was no more of you.

backbone without andra

2010-10-19T10:27:00.001+08:00

"cermin
bagaimana
tulang belakangku pagi ini?"

latif mohidin, "cinta dari sebuah kamar"

p/s: please. ni bukan yang buat movie merepek2 tu. this is a renowned malaysian poet-painter.

them kancils

2010-10-04T12:16:00.003+08:00

ayah kancil nurul kancil mak kancil

took me looong but i have come to realize that despite all the catastrophe, this is my home, this is what it means to love unconditionally. that i am of these two halves and i am doing okay now. i know this much is true.

p/s: apsal ayah macam vokalis indie band, ish3.

unconditionally season finale

2010-10-04T11:44:00.007+08:00

“I’ll see you after the surgery, okay?” She said to her father.
“Sure. Audrey.” He paused. “Audrey, you don’t have to, you know. I’m almost 60 already. It’s not like I have to go to work eight days a week.”
She smiled. “Don’t argue with me this time. I can’t take another fight with you.” She patted his hand and nodded.
“We fight so much.” He said and looked down to his hand, as if he was ashamed of this.
“Dad, has it ever occurred to you that we fight so much because we’re so alike? I shout, you shout, nobody's listening. And then we spend months not talking to each other...”
"Trying to remember what we were fighting about. " He said and smiled. Audrey bit her lip and then grinned.
“You’re my favourite kid.”
“Dad, I’m your only kid.”
“If I had ten or ten thousands, you’d still be my favourite. Do you see?” He softly said.
“That’s good to know.” She pointed out, kissed her father on both cheeks and left to her room. I followed Audrey.
“You two are really alike.” I said. Audrey gave me that half smile. Her eyes were moist.

*
The next time I saw Audrey was after the surgery, which was a success. She was coming out of the drug and the first thing she said to me was
“How’s my dad?”
“He’s good. Vitals all kicking.” She laughed softly. That was when something clicked in my head. I said ‘shit’ under my breath.
“Hey, I sort of have to take you away.”
“Okay.” She said. I thought she had misunderstood me.
“Audrey, you’re going to die in a minute!” I said urgently.
“Yes, I heard you.” She said. “Man, it’s okay, I’ve said all I have to say.”
“You haven’t said goodbye to your dad!” I said in horror.
“I don’t see the point. I’m always his favourite kid, ten or ten thousands, yesterday or always, alive or not. Do you see?” She pointed out.

And as I touched her and her last breath went, I did see what she had pointed out to me.

Audrey’s dad lived for another 15 years. He cancelled his retirement and went back to his partnership in the company he had been working with. He went to visit Audrey’s grave every Sunday. He never spent long, he never brought flowers. I guess he didn’t see the point of bringing flowers when it was evident that he had already come. And he would just come, his hands in his pocket, lingered for a while as he looked down at the gravestone which simply read “Audrey Isobel Summers, favourite kid”, smiled and then returned to his car.

I still marveled at how alike they were- in the raise of his eyebrow, his half smile, his thoughtful opinions, the ear at which he put his Bluetooth device, how he said "Do you see?" when he was explaining something, his eyes looking out the window when he thought of Audrey. And especially the way he said “I can see you, you know” when on a Sunday afternoon, something clicked in my head and it was Audrey’s father time to go.

unconditionally part 1

2010-10-04T11:26:00.008+08:00

“I can see you, you know.” She said, fingers still fluttering about on the keypad of her cell phone, eyes locked on the screen, its colours were a rhapsody of soft glow reflected on her face.

“I mean you.” She turned and looked at me, eyebrows raised. And I thought she was talking to that Bluetooth earpiece, considering that she was perhaps making a video call.

“Hi.” I quickly said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I sort of work here.”

“Oh yes, of course.” She nodded. She shifted her look to the figure lying on the hospital bed, his chest making obvious efforts in breathing, even with the breathing mask strapped over his face. Then she looked back at her phone.

“Why do you always come when he is asleep?”

“I’m working.”

“Today’s Sunday.”

“Okay. Let’s just say I don’t want him to know that I come to visit.”

I pondered about this. “Why?”

“We aren’t on good terms.” This was not new to me. I had heard about this. When you worked in a hospital, you got to hear about family secrets, chaos, dynasty, legacy cascading amongst the tubes and wires and the smell of medicine, between the rush of doctors and nurses and the patients’ charts. People seemed to hold reunions in hospitals; at bedsides, outside the operation theatre, huddling together for comfort and hope. It was humanity as its most raw.

I was about to say more but something clicked in my head and I had to go do what the click meant me to do.

“Duty call.” I said to her as I got up, left the room and went to look for the room I was supposed to be. Another death in sleep. I was getting really bored of death in sleep. I was always worried that whoever related to the deceased had not had the chance to say goodbye. But I did what I was supposed to do and returned to where she was.

“Do you really use that thing on your back?”

“Naaah. It’s just accessory. It’s a scythe, by the way.”

“A scythe. Nice word. So how do you know who’s going to be next?”

“Well, actually, I don’t know. When it’s time, they’ll just beam me a message into my head and I’ll know there and then. But not before that.”

“’They’ as in?”

“My superiors. I’m at the bottom of the food chain. I receive orders. Do the messy job. Run around.”

“Is it difficult? Killing people?”

“I don’t kill people.” I made a face.

She chuckled good-naturedly. “I know, I was kidding. What do you call it? Taking life? is it difficult?”

“We term it as putting an end to life. And I wouldn’t say it’s difficult. I am trained. I have a license.”

“Cools.” She commented. Shifted look again to the figure on the bed.

“If you want to say something to him, I can go so you can have some privacy.” I volunteered.

“No, stay here. You’re good company.” She paused.”My words always come out wrong. I’d rather say nothing.”

“Why does it come out wrong?”

“I’m always angry at him. He left me when I was a kid, there was a nasty divorce. He came back but the memory never lets me go, you know, being left like that. So we’re always like this. Fighting, and then we get back okay and then he or I say something, and then we don’t talk for months.”

“But you’re his favourite kid.” She turned to look at me.

“He told you that?”

“Your father talks in his sleep. Mostly during the day when you’re not here, between his other visitors.” I told her. “You’re just like him, aren’t you? Words coming out wrong.”

“Dude. I’m his favourite kid.” She said and smiled a sad smile.

I had seen her everyday for a week. She would always come after her father had fallen asleep. But yesterday was the first time that she said anything to me. At night, I listened to her. During the day, I listened to her father, deliriously mumbling in his sedated sleep or when he was writing on his sheets of papers, I sat beside him and read the things that he was getting off his chest. I knew that her name was Audrey. I knew the hurt that her father had caused, the abandonment, the guilt. Judging from the things he said, it was not easy being them.

“But how could people hurt the ones they love?”

“It’s not that clear cut. I don’t mean to hurt him when I do, but like I said, my words come out wrong. It’s circumstantial, mostly. Sometimes you have to do something even if it’s wrong. Or may be we’re not doing enough to understand each other.” She paused. “Or doing too much.”

“Does the anger just go, like one day you just wake up and think, ‘Oh, I’m not mad at my dad anymore’ or you take your time?”

“I could be mad for months but I always come back, you know. I don’t usually wait for him to yield. Because I’m his kid. And he’s my favourite father.”

“You have only one father.” I pointed out.

She smiled a half smile and leaned back into her seat. “Not really. I spent my whole life borrowing fathers, like some kind of medicine that I take when we’re not on speaking terms. My friends’ fathers, my lecturers, my senior staff. But I always come back to mine, always find that despite his flaws, he’s still my favourite. His hands held me when I was small, his eyes saw me grow, it’s just that sometimes I think he has forgotten that I’m an adult and I have my own opinion. But he’s mine, it’s his name that comes after mine, that completes mine. Do you see?”

I did. I began to see what it meant to love someone unconditionally. Unconditionally did not mean you loved them no matter what, it did not mean that they were perfect to you. I think it meant that with you, they were sort of allowed to make mistakes, to do the unthinkable, to drive you mad and you were allowed to hate them too but when you had ceased of your anger, all that was left was the things that you shared, the way you understand them, that exclusive place in their heart that they enthroned you. And perhaps love was on overrated word. It was the affection, the fondness that came from knowing someone for years, you even loved that person even when you did not love him/her.

Did this make sense to you? Not to me at first but I listened to her father everyday. If only the old man could tell Audrey what he spoke in his sleep.

“Why do you hang around my dad’s room? Is he going soon?”

“I have no idea. I’m here because of the cute nurses. Here’s one. And because you can see and talk to me.” I announced as one of my favourites came in to check Audrey’s father blood pressure. She smiled politely to Audrey and did her job while I watched. While I ogled. The girls in my line of job were all my superiors. Tough luck.

"There are like what, 50 wards in this hospital and this is where the cutest run around? Surely you did not..." Audrey said when the nurse had gone.

"I did check." I assured her. She crinkled her nose at me.

“He needs a kidney.” She said. it disturbed me that she made it sound as if her father needed a slice of cake.

“Is he on the list?”

“Man, I’m giving mine. He doesn’t have to go on the list.” She said.

“Despite all the hurt?” I was testing. Of course it was.

“Not despite all the hurt. It’s for all the good things.” She said, her eyes looking out the window. I wondered what she was trying to see in the stalwart night sky, the light of a tower blinking at the horizon running in parallel with the beeping of the machine connected to her father.

Two days after that she came during the day. I was away on a duty call so I was not there when she arrived. I was quite surprised to see her and because her father was awake, I could not address my curiousity to her. She smiled at me. I smiled back and given the fact that this was the first time she did this, I went out to give them their privacy.

At night, she came back but earlier than usual, before her father went to sleep. They talked for a while and when he had slept, I came back. There was an overnight bag beside her seat.

“Is he going back tomorrow?”

“No, I’m checking in. For the surgery.”

“Oh.” I said and sat down beside her. “So, on good terms now?”

“Yeah. He knows that I have been coming.”

“I didn’t tell him.” She laughed.

“I know. It’s my perfume.” I marveled at this.

“When’s the surgery?”

“Tomorrow.” Something clicked in my head but it wasn’t the usual duty call.

“Hey, check that top drawer.” I said, pointing to the small cabinet beside the bed. She raised an eyebrow then opened it. There were the papers that her father had been writing.

“He writes.. what’s this?”

“Confessions.” ‘Oh’, she said and then started reading.

suppose

2010-10-03T12:22:00.008+08:00

i think i have figured it out. i think i have figured you out. i have been testing this knowledge when i see you in the company of others.

i suppose.

linkin park's 'a thousand suns' on loop. a sleek fusion of 'hybrid theory' and 'minutes to midnight'. favourite-on-repeat: "burning in the skies" and "when they come for me". download-recommendable (read: download now!) .

after 16 years

2010-09-30T20:35:00.002+08:00

i still bite my nails at the wrong places [--]

baru perasan

2010-09-22T12:59:00.003+08:00

britney spears' "hit me baby one more time":

my loneliness is killing me
and i, i must confess
i still believe...(ko sambung la sendiri)

britney spears' "stronger":

but now i'm
stronger than yesterday
now it's nothin' but my way
my loneliness ain't killing me no more
i...i'm stronger

tak pasti

2010-09-19T20:35:00.000+08:00

hidup untuk apa.

searching

2010-09-10T20:06:00.005+08:00

one step after another
walking without thy shadow
heaven and earth by my side
but the sun never once sets me free
i burn without thy shield against it

one day after another, i am still waiting
for thee to grace my life
dismay hits me when it's impossible to run
but my faith says i will find thee

i'll never try to stop
looking for thee
all i know is, for me
i'll keep searching till the end of the world
for i know i'll find thee
and i'll go through my dreams over again

i see smiles all around
when they find thee
my smile yields only tears
when i want thee with me

beloved, hide not
i can't see well with all this searching
come into my life
beloved, stay, when i'm running to reach thee

(azfar's "akan ku jumpa", ost syurgamu ramadan)

tak puas hati

2010-09-09T15:13:00.003+08:00

huh! westlife, anda tak cukup rocksta for this song. please.

forsaken

2010-09-01T10:05:00.000+08:00

The first time her mother moved out of the house, she smashed all the photo frames on the walls until there were only those tiny black dots of the nails that used to hang them. She was mightily angry at the pictures; those happy faces of the whole family frozen in time, now ruptured, now crumbling sent a furious electric down her spine. She took the steering lock from her car and swung it around like a sacred weapon, the sound of glass shattering bouncing off the walls and the debris, a kind of peace in its solemn, consistent breaking and shattering. The walls looked so white now, so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look. On the floor were shreds of glasses and woods, all the pictures blurred under the cracks, like violent lightning on a night sky, only that this one was here to stay. Anger hurled about in her head and she was boiling every minute, engulfed in a fire so scorching it melted every notion of hope. To her, her world revolves around her mother. What do you do when the point that you are constantly gravitating to leaves you with a space so empty empty empty you could fill it up with the seven skies and still have more than enough for another seventy?

A week after that they reconciled and her mother came back. For a while, things were back to normal. Routine. Mom dad daughter. Except that it was a time bomb waiting for the final tick.

She woke up one day and there was no more of her mother. The closet was bare of every trace of her colours and scent, her shoes no more lining up in the shoe room downstairs. She ran up and down the house looking for a sign, a note, anything to inform her that this was all a joke (although it was not funny at all) or a mix up, a mistake. Or perhaps she had woken up in the wrong house. Which was impossible.

She sat by the phone all day, waiting for a call, waiting to hear her voice, waiting to see her car enter the porch. She did not want to go to the kitchen. That was her mother’s territory. She would not would not go there just in case she might change something and that would only delay her return. She did not reheat anything, did not cook anything lest she got it all wrong and there was no more of her to make it right. She sat at the door waiting, shooting up to stand and crane her neck to look every time a car zoomed by. Waiting hurt.

The second time her mother left, she set the whole house on fire and then went to sit by the phone just in case she would call there was thick thick smoke everywhere fire was pullulating in sheer pandemonium having a good time a party a blast and while her lungs screamed to be let go of this misery, she simply waited and thought of knell cerement epitaph.

Do you look like your mom or you’re dead?

in eloviee with salman rushdie

2010-08-30T21:02:00.002+08:00

"...that mouse, that duck, and what is the name of that bunny. maybe the cat that never catches the mouse, the other cat that never catches the bird, or the other bird that runs too fast for the coy-oat."

-salman rushdie's the moor's last sigh, page 150

"Vasco Miranda's 'Indian variation' upon the theme of Einstein's General Theory: Everything is for relative. not only light bends, but everything. for relative we can bend a point, bend the truth, bend employment criteria, bend the law. D equals MC squared, where D is for Dynasty, M is for mass of relatives, and C of course is for corruption, which is the only constant in the universe..."

-salman rushdie's the moor's last sigh, page 272.

love is an awkward word

2010-08-25T12:31:00.000+08:00

I'd rather say
I like your
lean spine
or your eyebrows
or your shoes.

-margaret atwood.