Ambling Thoughts

The So Call Sciences

It is funny sometimes that in trying to answer a question, students are limited to an exposition based on the course itself. I remember some political science modules where coming out with an answer from a power perspective was the most important aspect, even though the real reason could be otherwise. I guess this apply to nearly all the social sciences, where in trying to aggregate human behaviour in order to objectify it to a certain extent, we have to blind ourselves to the truth. Is this what knowledge is?

A Divisive System

With the latest announcement of university allocations, the brou-ha-ha has begun, mainly about the inequity in the difficulty of the STPM and matriculation papers. While I would not debate on the toughness of each of the paper (however I'm apt to believe that STPM is tougher), I certainly am irked again at the divisive nature of the government's educaitonal policies. And once again the divide seem to be based on race.

This division line seem to have encrossed every single educational path which one takes in Malaysia. It goes back to even primary schooling, and to a certain extent is perpetuated by the opposition as well. While I concur with the DAP, that people should have access to mother tongue education or a religious education, I think more should be done to streamlined those fringe schools with national schools. And that's the worse part of it all, chinese schools are not really fringe schools in terms of student enrollment. How did government policies manage to disillusion such a large proportion of the chinese population with national type schools?

Are chinese parents sending that children to chinese schools because they believe that their learning should be based solely on their mother tongue, or is it to achieve fluency in the language? If its the former, arguably, then nothing much can be done, however, I do believe, that it is more for the latter reason that parents are doing so. Thus, with DAP's Malaysian Malaysia ideal, shouldn't they seek to address this by ensuring that students who would like to learn their mother tongues have proper access to it within a national school framework, instead of perpetuating the racial divison which they say they are firmly against.

A Tune I've Heard Before

Sometimes, after listening to an awesome album, I feel inspired to compose my own looney tunes. And as I strum my guitar, I can't help but notice how my melodies all sound like something which I've heard before. The chord progression is a rehashment of some past inspiration by some other person. And with thousands of songs released every year, I wonder is it possible to actually create something new in this day and age?

What new stories can be captured when there are pillars of films stacked reel to reel holding up the firmament of finite ideas? What new ideas can be paint on canvasses, when every colour between ultra violet and infra red has been wet, splashed, dried up. A book holds a million words, a million books holds a million millions words. The alphabet has only 26 letters. Is there any new story yet to be written?

Arguably, both religious creationism and scientific big bang theory postulates that nothing new has been created for a long long time. Everything physical is a transmutation of some past physical form, every new idea an innovation of a past innovation. It is sad, is it not?

Leaving melancholic metaphysics behind, I can see that my logic above is faulty. It does not follow that materials can earth the skyful possibilities of the mind, neither would 26 letters be able to unpen a writer's vast wit, nor do limited colours bind a painter's visual perfections.

I propose that even with all that has been created and given limited materials, there is still a vast creative space left, an infinite one probably. So it is an irony that in trying to search for my own, since that would better substantiate my point, words for this argument, I can't seem to better this 2500 year old one,

'You can't step twice into the same river.' - Heraclitus

Let me start with a basic C major progression and I'll see what flows.

The End of a Blog

There are some writings which move you, which tell you that the anonymous populace of the web share things in common, no matter how distant they may seem at first. So, one feels slightly sad when they stop writing. A wake for screwme, who recorded a piece of himself for all to see, and decided he had no more to share.

What should one say at a wake? Nothing much, a short reminiscence perhaps, a sincere thank you.

Thus, I thank you crashdown. I know all good books have endings, all fulfilled lives must die, it is only the unfulfilled which longs for more even with the knowledge of the inevitable. Though all good things must come to pass, for their mortality defines part of their goodness, some manage to inspire new beginnings in others. Yours was one of them.

Writing Hiatuses

'For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.' - Paul in Corinthians II

Farish Noor announced that he would take a temporary hiatus from writing in Malaysiakini. The reason is unclear, but he alludes that it is due to the negative responses from some of his critics. This is rather surprising as Farish Noor's comments on the failures of the Reformasi movement are equally as critical. Neither do I find this critic's reply to be entirely unjustifiable. He was afflicted by a letter, which to my eyes, was nothing but a fair reply. Humans truly have different sensitivities.

Our sensitivities tend to be sturdy, hard to remove, hard to numb. They are however, built on fragile emotions and desires like love and hope. And as we love and hope for different things, so too do our sensitivities differ. We become sensitive about the paintings which we paint with the greatest passion, not the most expensive. We take the greatest affront at a slight disapproval from a love one, not a foe. Perhaps, he despaired because he holds the Reformasi movement close to his heart, that he contributed his efforts into it, and that he is now being criticised by the members of a movement he bravely believes in. Would he have reacted the same if the criticisms were meted out by PUM? Sometimes, the messenger is as important as the message.

Although my exposure to Farish Noor's writings have been restricted to the free excerpts provided by Malaysiakini, I have found the few paragraphs to be insightful and I will certainly miss his column. I too should be taking a hiatus as my exams approach.

Within The ]Box[

]Is modern art indicative of an age spent of creativity? A single black line struck across a white canvas, is deemed a revolutionary minimalist meditative work. A messy teenage bedroom is painstakingly recreated and showcased as a think piece. Experimental films capture mundane daily events, and are presented much to the delight of engrossed art house fans. Martin Creed's The Lights Going On and Off which is essentially lights going, rather literately, on and off won the Turner Prize 2001. Why are the going ons of daily life suddenly deemed beautiful? Why the hyper-realism?

And while my opinions on the aesthetical value of these works vary, I think they are important because they all show that creativity is multi-faceted, that indeed to think out of the box, we sometimes have to think within it.[

Dua Puluh Sen

"what's the name of the word for things not being the same always...the thing that lets you know time is happening" - Delirium in Brief Lives

Change. A small amount of money, a big difference. I stand on a threshold. My life as a student is about to come to an end. It's so close, yet it is a big step. I have always pride myself of being an avid adventurer, but I do not feel enthused now. Working life should be an exploration for me, a something-new, but why do I feel like I've been through it, like I've already retired because my liver can't take it anymore.

Them Barnacles

Pimples seem to be a modern phenomenon. During one of my tutorials today, while being bored by the other group's haphazardly put together presentation, I started picking at my white spots. And as they continued droning about the inconsequential consequence of some less developed country's balance of payments deficit, I ruminated about the surpluses on my face, them pimples.

Read any books of yesteryears and there is no mention about it. Where are those wimpled medievel maiden rants in ye olde English about their pimples? Where are those lithe Little Women, giggling while squeezing their pusses out?

Neither have I seen any period drama with any lines about pimples. And you would think they would be filled with it, considering their affinity for trivial tattle and small talk. Perhaps it is not the thing to chatter about in high society. Is there no great authority whom they could hear a pimple story from?

Zits truly is a child of modern times. Teen flicks would have at least a segment devoted to it. Read a teen diary and there must be a story arc about the writer's battles with the clinging barnacles. It's never been more exposed, well, maybe less exposed than when it popped up right before Prom Night.

It all sounds very teeny and adolescent like, which makes me wonder why I'm still having them.

A Piece of Paper

Channel 4 showed the plight of this Palestinian student who was hindered from attending registration day at his university. He said that he would have no future if he did not go to university, his family would not have a future. I was quite irked with his statement.

Being a university graduate does not automatically sets you up for life. Many say that it shatters glass ceilings in employement, that it is a necessary social status symbol indeed to advance in life. The only glass ceilings which have really existed is within our own minds. I admire those who have taken the riskier path in life, working only with their own certificate of passion to drive them on. After 2 years in university, I have learned that a degree is no measure of a person capabilities. I learn to recognise the multi-faceted aspects of intelligence, a degree probably only captures one.

Perhaps it is in my going to university that I am able to see this fact. To learn, only to realise that you have not learned much. I thought the Palestinian student living under the Israeli regime, would understand the feeling of being marginalised, and would thus not simply sidelined his non-graduate peers. Perhaps, after he graduates he will realise this.

Lat

Today, while surfing for Malaysian comic stores which sell Neil Gaiman's Sandman trade paperbacks, I accidentally bumped into a site about Lat. My mind instantly associated that name with images of a short man with afro-mopped hair, and a fat funky-glassed chinese aunty in cheongsam. When I was younger, I remember unearthing my parents' extensive collection of Lat cartoons and fondly reading them. Needless to say, I was a little more than pleased by my discoveries both yesterday and today.

I clicked on the old cartoons offered and was surprised at how well I have remembered them. It was like a game of snap, with every image on the screen, my mind searched through my own memory banks and I would go 'ahah, I remember that. Snap!'

His best works were definitely the ones about his younger days. They all had a slightly melancholic feel which I guess is a quality prevalent in most memories. However, what I like most was how the drawings portray a different Malaysia from the one I know. It was not only his experiences of growing up in a village which I thought unique, but also how different Malaysia was at that time. His drawings told of a keener Malaysia, a more inclusive one, a country more open to diverse thoughts and ideas. Although my interpretations of the drawings may be wrong, but it did seem like the kind of Malaysia I would like to live in.

ChunSyiok-King Express

Part One
Everyone loves reviewing things. We like to take a step back and ponder over something which we have just seen, heard, tasted, felt. As you walk out of the cinema after a movie, you can hear a whole barrage of opinions. Not only is there a diversity of opinions, but there is also a great diversity in the way opinions are expressed. The boisterous ones would just blurt out their usually uninsightful comments about the movie. Some have to be coaxed by their friends, 'So, What yar think?', although in truth they can't wait to give their opinions about it. There would be the shy boyfriend, mumbling his opinions to his girlfriend. I'm sure even the silent ones have a review in keeping. Beneath the silent exterior is a review broiling into a broth, just waiting for the crowd to disperse before it is sputted out.

There also seem to be some standard phrases used. 'Not bad lar', used when one thinks the movie is mediocre but also frequently used when one thinks the movie is great, but need to keep their cool about it in case others thought it was cheesy. Notice how chun or its crasser counterpart 'damn chun lar', is never used to describe the whole movie, but just certain parts in it. If you thought the movie rocked, it would be a 'damn good lar', chun or syiok is reserved for those kick ass kung fu stunts, or for those pretty babes and hunks.

Part Two
I was surfing the other day, when I clicked into this blog. It had a pink wallpaper, the title was in various shades of pink with purple (very close to a pinkish hue kind of purple, actually) flowers strewn all over the webpage. Oh, not to mention my cursor turned into a wide-eyed bunny as well. Thankfully, I survived the rare brain debilitating condition of visual diabetes. Slightly captivated by its gaudiness, I read a little of it. Also, she had this section listing down her favourite things. And although our tastes in 'favourite things' slightly (euphemism) differs, I thought it was a great idea.

Thus it is born, my new reviews section of my 'favourite things'. Funny how we sometimes find inspiration in the most museless of areas.

Thor's Anvil

After watching Comic Relief, I can not help but feel a little moved this morning. This tinkling of the heart has nothing to do with the small hours, although that's when my reflections and ruminations of life usually abound. Interspersed between the comedy sketches and parodies, were clips of a land where the people are as resilient as Thor's Anvil. Although some may find the videos trite and dressed up by the BBC to purposely evoke sad emotions from the viewer, I can still feel at the very essence of it, it is all heart. Minus off the sad adagios and the melancholic acoustics, the raw footage is a story unto itself, a visual lament of human torment.

The best clip was the story about a Rwandan Tutsi woman who saw her husband killed alongside other family members. Only she and her daughter survived by hiding under the dead bodies of their relatives. Having been shot in the arm, the wound soon developed gangrene and indeed to prevent the infection from spreading she pulled off her arm. After the massacre, she took a loan provided by AVEGA and began to build her life again. She looked after her child. She took into her care six of her murdered neighbours children.

I admire her for her courage when she pulled her arm off. A normal being would have struggled with the bloodiness of it all. I admire her for her courage to hope and to build a better life, her willingless to help others, even after going through such experiences. But what I admire her most for is her sheer resolution. The face of the woman was one of acceptance for events past. A woman who was afflicted and yet took things into her stride. Trauma quashed not with resignation and submission, but with a glimmer of hope for better things. Here's someone who was able to put things into perspective, when all around her was a blur of suffering.

A Little Prod

It's 3.20 am. I have just finished my homework. Yes, homework. Doing bonafide juvenile homework in university. These are not one-off assignments, these are exercises to be handed in, ticked and marked on a regular basis. I have not had homework since I left secondary school. From college to the penultimate year of university, my lecturers have committed to their announcements made at the beginning of each semester, 'you are all young mature adults and it is your choice whether you want to do the tutorial questions'. Joyful, joyful.

My new homework giving lecturer certainly stands out, like luscious hair among the professors.

Strangely, while I would usually mourn through the lectures like how a bored attendee at a funeral mourns for himself, I now listen to what the 'preacher' has got to say. All for the simple reason that I know what is going on after doing my homework.

To hell with the notion that we university students should be responsible for our own actions or inactions, I need to be given a little prod. Self-motivation? Bah, not good enough. 'I'll put a note next to the name of those who did not hand in the homework', I'll instantly scramble to the library to borrow the necessary readings.

Which is why, instead of lying plopped on my bed after coming back from the pub as I usually would, I sat straight up on my chair and started thinking and typing away, though with a slightly slurred mind and confused fingers. 3.30 am. Plopped!

Camp Pencil Boxes

The world of fashion is an exclusive circle. Designers swathe themselves in the elite, the sophisticated, the glamorous, the youthful. They certainly would not hang out with my primary school mates and me.

In my primary school days, I remember how bedecked with stickers our pencil boxes were. Our pencil boxes had a menagerie of Country Flags animated with Cartoon Holograms crashed into Angled Pics of Ferraris and Porsches and kicked into Action Shots of Football Stars. They were not mere rectangular metal objects to keep stationery in, they were easels to work our collages on, our sleek models parading the latest in haute couture. We eagerly awaited the arrival of new collections of stickers at the school's stationery shop. And once the word was out, there would be a long line of students during recess time, gleefully awaiting new materials to work with.

Then, the introduction of the aerosol spray sent shockwaves through our world of pencil box decoration. A revolution. A whole new way of dressing and living our pencil boxes up. I tore away the stickers leaving a wounded red rusty layer, eager to use this new material. The funniest thing was, no one used solid colours. We were all aspiring Versaces with gaudiness and tackiness being the epitome of taste. And as the sun shone in the classroom, the metallic boxes glimmered on our desks, while reflecting the light unto the ceiling and the walls making the classroom look like a disco filled with underage patrons.

Of course, the metallic shine of our pencil boxes which so glittered our eyes began to fade, and so did our interest. By the time we got into secondary school, everyone had pretty much dumped the fad already. Secondary school pencil boxes were all generic types, compass sets boxes, boring monolithic beings. And if the owner did 'upload' anything on to it, it would probably be just scribbles of a phone number or some homework to do. I do not even use a pencil box now. Pen and ruler chucked alongside lecture notes in a rush for early morning classes.

The aerosol spray probably did our designing interest in. It was the final material used for decorating pencil boxes. No one could possibly revert to stickers after using aerosol. I did not know it then, but when I sprayed over my pencil box's stickered past, I was in a way dividing two epochs, the pre-stickered and post-stickered, I was growing older.

My Cyclop Friend and I

Treasured Possessions are usually old, worn, beaten. Through years of use and abuse they become familiar, even to the point of believing that you have imparted a part of yourself to them. They are as familiar as a pencil box covered with stickers bought with your own pocket money, a stool which remained through your growing up years and survived your house's IKEA revamp, a friend.

My camera, on the other hand, have roots far more modern, far more crude. Its history is as exotic as Mcdonald's. It is an earned entity through menial office work done through the holidays. Like sex for a slave at the end of the day, an oasis for a legionnaire after a perpetual desert trek, a friend.

As a hobby, I love photography best. We do not need to think much indeed to take a good picture. It is art at its simplest. All we need to do is to look around and recognise beautiful things for what they are. To analyse beauty is to destroy the very innocence which makes it charming in the first place. That is the other reason why I treasure my camera, for it enables me to acknowledge beautiful things. The irony is, my camera is an ugly one. Nothing like those sleek silver shining digital cameras, it stands out being big, bulky, and terribly 80s looking. 'The Beast', a friend.

The Tell-Tale Animal

What makes a person want to publish a journal? Are journals not hidden vaults to place our Thoughts and Experiences, never to be perused by anyone except the writer? Like how truths are kept from parents, opinions held from friends, and small penises tucked quickly into pants?

However, in spite of how fearful we are of the consequences, we want to shout them out, to stand on the rooftops of the world and whoosh out our very own barbaric yawps. We want to hear our inadequacies and fears echoing back to us and not to feel ashamed nor fear it, knowing that they make up a part of who we are as much as our better selves.

A Late Beginning

I have never been a pioneer. Never the first. The starter? You have got to be kidding. This is my little late addition of words and thoughts in an era overflowing with information. I don't believe there's too much though. If anything, we live in an age which feels omniscient and yet, so much is still unknown. Surely all the most important questions in life have yet to be answered - life after death, the meaning of life, the home of happiness - these are still great puzzles, it is to me anyway. Of course to some, life is a lot less puzzling. There are those who have steadfastly and confidently assured me that the answers have been found - ''it's in the Bible'', they carolled my death fears away, ''the answer to the meaning of life ? Why, it's forty-two of course!'', drone Deep Thoughtists, ''Wahh, after get UK degree, sure can get good job, can be rich, get good wife, then can be happy'', the cheery Aunties blasted as they hand me Ang Pows.

I guess this is what this blog is about, a personal journey of thoughts and questions, in search of answers, and although an absolute one may never be found, i do hope to be a little closer to it when the sun sets and the evening comes.