Mead will be the death of me.

I ingested 50 pages of George Herbert Mead's Mind, Self and Society today and was totally numbed by the end of the day. If anyone's interested to know I still have 150 pages to go. I don't think I'll be able to make it by Friday. I'll just have to fake it. The problem is, Friday's class has a student population of 2. I. Am. So. Screwed.

Being completely numbed I walked home at a very slow pace tonight. While my mind wandered as my feet trudged along, I reflected on how amazingly predictable life is, given that it is so easy for anyone to act unpredictably. While jaywalking I could have just stopped right in the middle of the road, turned around and faced the traffic. It could have meant my death and life-long trauma for the bus driver. Why does no one do that? It's so easy. Just walk, turn around, and stare at the headlights.

I am not suicidal. I just harbour strange thoughts sometimes.

I reached home and slumped on the couch. Turned on the TV and stared at it with my glassy eyes. Slowly life trickled back and I could feel again.

That's not gonna last though. After watching Glee I'll have to go back to reading. You know I enjoy reading. I enjoy learning. I love being offered a slice of what it's like being in the head of a genius. I just wish I wasn't always so last minute about my reading and that he didn't speak funny. Let me show you a small paragraph of what I am supposed to digest and I still can't fully grasp it, even after reading through more than five times.

"Gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse in an individual making them the same responses which they explicitly arouse, or are supposed to arouse, in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are addressed; and in all conversations of gestures within the social process, whether external (between different individuals) or internal (between a given individual and himself), the individual's consciousness of the content and flow of meaning involved depends on his thus taking the attitude of the other toward his own gestures. In this way every gesture comes within a given social group or community to stand for a particular act or response, namely, the act or response which it calls forth explicitly in the individual to whom it is addressed, and implicitly in the individual who makes it; and this particular act or response for which it stands is its meaning as a significant symbol."

Notice that there are only two periods in the entire paragraph of 147 words. And then, after about 3 pages, he starts to take back what he just said. I think. I mean I'm not even sure if that was what he meant. Did he take it back, or did he modify the concept, or did he order beer in German?

Deep intake of air is necessary at this moment.

I just realized that I don't understand the material. And I don't have time for this. This is only a class that I'm auditing. I have to continue writing my lit review for the confirmation report which is supposed to be my highest priority at the moment. I have to get a pair of new hiking shoes tomorrow after I completely thrashed mine at the Black Rock Desert. I have some other errands to run by the end of the week. I am leaving on Sunday to Kuching. I'm really looking forward to it, to Val, but I -

Sigh. I have to go now.

Five for Yasmin Ahmad

One.

I have a copy of Yasmin Ahmad's Talentime, original DVD, that I want to give out. It's not subtitled - I've watched it before in the cinema and I think the major languages used are English, Malay and Tamil (logical deduction - could be Hindi for all I know), perhaps with a slight smattering of Mandarin. So if you understand English, Malay and Tamil, or know someone who does who will enjoy this movie, get in touch with me (june dot tan at gmail dot com) and I'll make the arrangements to send the DVD to you. It's a great movie and I don't want the DVD to go to waste with me because I can't understand parts of it, so I'm going to send it to you for free. Consider it as a gift from me.

If no one contacts me within a week of this post, I will put up a notice on the Couchsurfing forum and give it out through there (since the forum has more than five readers). So do be quick if you're interested =)

Two.

Muallaf is now screening in Malaysia. I watched it in Singapore first, last year, and this trip back to Malaysia I watched it again at GSC 1Utama. Catch it before it stops screening!

Three.

I bought this book called Yasmin Ahmad's Films, by Amir Muhammad, yesterday. I find it a delightful accompaniment to the movies as it highlights some details that I missed in the movies, and the commentary is very useful for foreigners who may not understand some of the cultural references that are uniquely Malaysian. RM30 at major bookstores.

Four.
photo credit

I teared when I saw this. It's graffiti art drawn at the Klang River, Pasar Seni, by two local artists named Jeng and Kioue, after Yasmin Ahmad's death. Sigh. Damn sad.

Five.

I've created a new label called Yasmin Ahmad and there are 12 posts that I've tagged with the label. I didn't realize that I had written so much about her before. Here are the previous posts that I've written on Mukhsin, Sepet, Muallaf.

Dear dear Val,

Typing this as I am watching a drama series with my sister, right now we're waiting for it to load a little =)

Things have become much better since we last spoke, I hope that your migraine did not give you too much trouble. Headaches are no fun =( Was it the type that you got when you were in New Zealand, where you saw dark spots and stuff?

Well things have become better, largely because I bought a book about spirituality and am currently reading it. I feel that suddenly things have become so much clearer, I feel so much more at peace with myself, and it's a good preparation for me to approach my new bosses to explain my position and to figure out a solution that will work for me and for them.

The title of the book is "Conversations with God" - and I can see your eyes rolling right there, haha! Well firstly it's not bound within any religion, it does not endorse any religion, not Christianity, not Buddhism, not anything. As I had suspected long ago, it is possible to be spiritual without being religious (in a bigoted, exclusive sense) - and I feel that this book supports my beliefs that there can be a direct relationship between me and a supreme being (I hesitate to use the word God really, it just seems that some religions have caused so many non-believers to stigmatize the word), without any major religion being the middle man.

I don't really know how to explain my thoughts, they are very clear but they are also very complex, suddenly what I've been doing so far makes a lot of sense, and it's a relief to know that all my principles and way of life fit into a spiritual framework. I think I like the God in the book, he seems like a really cool bloke, and he supports everything that I've been doing, because he says that the purpose of our life is to rediscover experientially what we already know conceptually (i.e. your conscience, your sense of morality, the voice within you that tells you what is right and wrong, because your soul KNOWS)... and that aligns directly with my philosophy of life, which is "every experience is a learning experience".

In this book we are encouraged to be creative, to create the reality that we want, and have faith that things will turn out - and turns out that faith is the thing that I've been lacking, therefore I feel fear and confusion and chaos. And no thanks to all the messed up interpretations of religions which only can succeed in pushing us further and further away from a spiritual core, which I personally would like to have, but who can convince me to pray to an omnipotent, vindictive and fear-inducing God who only rewards those who think the same way that some religious leaders do?

It is when religion shuts your mind that it is dangerous. When religion opens your mind, encourages you to explore, encourages you to question everything (even God) and learn from every experience, but have faith that everything happens for the purpose of your discovering your true self and your purpose of life - that, I feel, is a religion that I can subscribe to. And it feels like, from how I was literally nodding to some lines in the book, it is indeed the religion that I have subscribed to so far, without even knowing it, and that itself is amazing.

I hope that I'm not sounding like an overzealous religious fanatic at this point, but trust me when I say that I feel that I am much more enlightened now than I was, a couple of days ago, when I talked to you. The uncertainty was engulfing me and I felt helpless - but now I feel that everything will be fine, I will have some earnest talks with my new bosses and explain to them the importance of travelling is to me and to my personal growth, and hope that they will understand and support me. If they don't, or if what I'm asking is in conflict with their professionalism, well, the next hope is that they will be cool enough not to obstruct me; but if they do, I will only be more determined to draw upon my creativity to blast the path to Europe.

This will be an interesting experiment, to see if I will get to Europe this summer, if I do believe wholeheartedly in what I'm doing and go all out in achieving it. If at the end I still fail, I will not be disheartened because I'd have learnt a whole lot anyway (of what you should not do in order to get to Europe =D), and I know that I will keep striving for it until I get it, maybe by the year after.

The book, titled "Conversations with God", is written by Neale Donald Walsch, and is a three-part series. Silver had told me about it in Singapore, and since I chanced upon the series the other day when I was wandering around a bookshop in KL I bought them. I am still reading Part One. I am still nodding (in agreement) to it. It is the most moving book of its genre that I have read so far, and that's not really saying very much because I don't really read books on religion and spirituality =P But it's good. If you come across it in any book stores in Germany I highly recommend that you give it a try.

I suddenly feel that I should put this on my blog. I wanted to blog about it but words wouldn't come out, but somehow it became so much easier when I was writing this email and speaking to you. So I will =) and I'll send you another reply on your last reply to me soon.

Big hugs and love,
Jun-E

Saturday Ramblings

Lazy Saturday and I am spending my time pondering about reading the humongous text of Francis Fukuyama's Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. It seems like a perfectly readable book, if I don't think about the thickness of it.

This morning when I was flipping through TV channels while eating eggs and garlic bread for breakfast, I caught a small sliver of a programme about Samurai Bows. The advice dispensed by a master archer was intriguing. He says that one should not focus on the bull's eye when one shoots the arrow. The more you focus on it the more distracted you will be. You will just have to practise until you hit the target without thinking about hitting it. Fascinatingly counter-intuitive. Maybe that's the same case with the research that I'm doing. I should just enjoy reading and writing, hosting and meeting people, without putting so much pressure on myself. And at the end of the day, voila, there's my thesis all written and bound, and I wouldn't know how it happened. I wish.

Yesterday I had Jia Ling over for dinner and cooked two dishes for her, which she absolutely loved. And Jia Ling's not the type who would give false compliments so I feel extremely gratified. And it was a vegan meal too, score!

The first dish was brocolli + chick peas + tomatoes in a pot. I came up with it purely by chance the other day, as I was planning to heap some pasta sauce on random vegetables that I had in the fridge and a can of chick peas (aka garbanzo beans, which is such an ugly name) for dinner. Everything was simmering nicely in the pot when I found out that I couldn't open the damn pasta sauce jar, so I simply had to have it without the sauce, and I found that broccoli and chick peas go pretty well together by themselves. Jia Ling heaped high praise on this one, although I thought it was a little overcooked, but since she liked her broccoli soft I was in luck.

The second was mushroom tossed with pine nuts, extremely simple, and it was the first time that I've made it. Pine nuts are yum, even when they are burnt. I had a stroke of genius and put in a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in with the soy sauce for seasoning, inspired by a mushroom salad that I had once with balsamic vinegar which was really good. I personally like this one better than the broccoli and chickpeas. We had hash browns and bread as sides.

An inventory check of my fridge shows that I have an eggplant, two green capsicums, tofu, mushrooms and some Chinese vegetable which I don't know the English name of. I also have some baby potatoes. It is mysterious that an entire bag of carrots has disappeared. Maybe I dumped them into the rubbish chute while sleepwalking because I secretly hate carrots, or maybe Housemate David ate them all to avenge his stolen bread. In any case I don't have carrots now. I am looking forward to putting together random stuff tonight again.

My parents brought me this vegan recipe book Veganomicon - The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, when they came last week, and I will try out some of the recipes in time. Although I do enjoy working without recipes it is probably better that I learn through some guidance. I feel like making hummus this weekend, with the recipe that Val gave me some time ago, but it remains to be seen if I can get my hands on tahini (sesame paste) at Fairprice Xtra. Or if I can actually drag my lazy butt out of the house to get it.

I also feel like experimenting with wine. According to The Veganomicon, the vegan cookbook for Transformers, "there's really nothing like wine when it comes to drawing out the flavours of seared and sauteed vegetables (particularly mushrooms), herbs and oils." It recommends white wine, red or sherry. I think I'll get a bottle of red the next time I go to Fairprice. Will also get a couple of wine glasses just in case =D

Ah. Leisurely Saturday afternoon just thinking about nothing in particular but cooking. At some point I'll have to pick up the big fat Francis Fukuyama, but now I shall be content with just sitting at my lounge corner typing absently, wondering what Housemate David is up to in the kitchen with the clanging and banging. We're getting along great, by the way. He's amazingly cool and very supportive of my academic needs (i.e. to host strangers in our home in the name of research). I put up a calendar on our fridge showing when my surfers come and he never questions anything. And we give each other loads of space, which is something that I appreciate very much. Half the time it's like living alone. Great stuff. About 40% of my stipend goes to my rent and utility bills but it's worth every penny.

Raining cats and dogs out there, like it does, every afternoon. Hello Mr. Fukuyama.

How aptly he puts it

"If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily on twenty-five shillings. If the men wore scarlet trousers, like I said, they wouldn't think so much of money: if they could dance and hop and skip and sing and swagger and be handsome, they could do with very little cash. And amuse the women themselves, and be amused by the women. They ought to learn to be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems. Then they wouldn't need money. And that's the only way to solve the industrial problem: train the people to be able to live, and live in handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can't do it. They're all one-track minds nowadays. Whereas the mass of people oughtn't even to try to think, because they can't!"

Another excerpt from Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I have finished. I loved it. I found the emotions portrayed very poignant, very complicated, and very real. No hiding, no glossing over, emotions as they are, raw. And a lot of observations from that era too, after WW1, the effects of industrialization, the deterioration of the upper class, etc.

Ah so. What's next?

The Brag and Misc.

Suddenly remembered that I should brag about cycling about 36kms in the presence of crazy taxis and monstrous trucks from East Coast Park to around Commonwealth and back, from about 10:30pm to 5am. Inclusive of food stops.

I, who have not biked more than 10 times after being taught by KF's little brother (then 12) four years ago (along a busy street with tons of curious onlookers - was not a proud moment for me), and I managed to pull it off without scraping any skin. Bruises however I have aplenty, result of sudden brakes and near misses of pedestrians. What were they doing awake at 2am anyway?

The only person who bled was Skinny David, the best cyclist among the four of us actually, who walked into a drain after the bikes were returned. Hence proven that good cyclists may not necessarily be good walkers.

Research has again met a bottleneck. Other aspects of life range from simple to complicated. I love my sociology lessons. Housemate David has not moved in. In fact I haven't heard from him in a while. Is it healthy to not hear from your housemate for a while, especially when he has not moved in?

The decoration of my room is almost finished. We will be holding a party there next Saturday bersempena Yuen's birthday. The theme is fruits + alcohol (but of course) and Yuen has named it "Toxic Fruit Theme" and there will be board games too which I am going to loan from our Boardgame Society. It will be great. I have not started hosting CSers yet. I thought that I might wait until Housemate David settles in, so that we can get used to each other first. I hope he shows up soon.

Am reading Lady Chatterley's Lover in lieu of academic reading in my room, since the loo is too far away. Here's a good quote for whoever who's been dumped or is looking for his/her other soulmate, who gets bludgeoned on the head by the cliche about all the good fish in the sea:

"There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea." Amen to that, D.H. Lawrence!

The morning after.

I wanted to blog yesterday, but I could only think of one sentence -

Pagi ini saya menduduki peperiksaan yang terakhir dalam hayat saya, dengan sambilewa.

And if I were to pad it up a bit, it would look a bit like this:

Pagi ini saya menduduki peperiksaan yang terakhir dalam hayat saya, dengan sambilewa. Sambilewa! Sambilewa! Sambilewa! Yo yo yo! Sambilewa!

But still that's only two lines so I thought I wouldn't waste the space anyhow. This blog has better things to talk about than pseudo rapping in Malay.

Raining outside! Accompanied by Blackmore's Nights, in my unlit office, with a piping hot mug of Chinese tea - ah, perfect ambiance. Chatting with LL also. I have lots to do today, I need to make a list, but I'm just chilling a bit till... I don't know. Till I stop chilling I guess. Sambilewa! Sambilewa! Sambilewa!

I'm going out tonight with some Master's students, ladies' night, and tomorrow I'm going back to KL. I finally read something of Salman Rushdie yesterday (right after exam I went to the HSS library and borrowed an armful of fiction), Haroun and The Sea of Stories, and it was pretty good, I finished it by this morning.

I almost typed "today morning", which irritates the hell out of Kukui. Actually I had never thought that "today morning" was wrong until he pointed it out. I guess it's the language influence from Mandarin (今天早上）, but then if you see it in Malay it is "pagi ini", which translates to "morning this". Morning this, bitch! (Was just testing if it sounded like an insult. It does.)

The next book up is Alan Bennett's The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady In The Van, a thin book of two stories, I started reading it a little already when on the loo, and it looks very promising indeed. The first story is about how this couple returns from the opera and find their flat stripped bare, like totally bare, of ALL of their possessions. The fur coats, the pie in the oven along with the oven, the toilet paper... everything. Then I ended my loo session, but I'm sure I will finish the book on the way back to KL.

Oh yeah, Chindi, Snow White and the Seven Samurai by Tom Holt was rather disappointing. I didn't like it much because I thought the storyline was rather chaotic and the theme wasn't very original, like it was trying to emulate The Matrix but with fairy tales. And not elegantly done too. Some details were clever and sometimes laugh-out-loud, but the overall plot was just too haphazardly thrown together. I finished the book but that was only because I had nothing else to do on the loo.

So anyway, a list of what I need to do today, so that it would inspire me to get off my lazy ass and start.

1. Renew library books
2. Get money from ATM
3. Reply some emails
4. Attend to one admin thing
5. Print map to bus terminal back to KL
6. Send a paper to my supervisors
7. Laundry
8. Pack my bag before going out tonight so I can party late and wake up at an ungodly hour of 7am tomorrow (only to be awfully early - but that's a better alternative to being late, given my extremely off the mark ability to estimate timing) to the bus station

So the month of May will be spent going to and fro KL and Singapore, I'm moving in my new place officially at 11th May (the last legal day I am permitted to stay in Graduate Hall), then go back KL again. Then at some point when I am tired of KL (T_T or when guilt motivates me to come back, more likely), stick around in Singapore till mid July when a crazy stretch of activities will be unleashed:

• 13-17 July - Some Forum in Singapore (don't want people to end up here by googling)
• 17-25 July - Indiaaaaaaaa
• 27-31 July - Some Course in Singapore
• August - Don't know if Boston conference will be on or not, if yes... nyehehehehe... crazy plans to be conceived later, but fingers crossed for the moment!! (waves away jinxes!!)
  

Coming up, to revise paper for submitting to Some Forum, and do extensive extensive extensive reading to buff up my theoretical foundation for my thesis, for I have no more coursework to fall back onto or blame, research work goes full speed ahead! Can't say I'm sorry about that though.

Also I have this craving for Penang food. I'm not talking about the Penang food in Canteen 2, which I have not stooped down to yet. A trip to Penang may be in order. O jiannnnnn.

I think I should probably end this post here. 2 hours later and I've still not done anything useful. Such is the life of a PhD student who has had the last test of her life.

Finally, the answer to my loo reading call.

So I've been stuck without loo reading for a while, having finished The Kite Runner, and I was beginning to get agitated because I never, never read academic reading on the loo where I live now. It's a boundary thing. The boundary used to be my room, but that was thrown out because for some reason reading academic stuff on the bed works for me. So you could say that the loo is the final frontier, and that was quite threatened for the past few days when I've been really busy and when I found myself thinking that I could use the time on the loo to read about development journalism in Africa. I almost relented. Almost.

That was before today. I went to the HSS Library today to borrow some books on the March 08 General Election - and guess what I found! Two whole shelves of novels and such, books that normal people read! Familiar authors like Terry Pratchett, Nick Hornby, and etc - and stuff that I've always wanted to sample but never bought because I wasn't sure if I would like them. Like Virginia Woolf, Tom Holt and Salman Rushdie. Stuff to broaden my literary horizons =D

I've only borrowed one book, after all the library will be there for a while, and it's light reading, Snow White and the Seven Samurai by Tom Holt. Found myself chuckling away at the first few pages, it will be a fun read I'm sure - it's about how some hackers shut down The Wicked Queen's magic mirror (Mirrors 3.1) and corrupted the database, hence creating havoc in the fairytale world. The mirror even has error messages, like "Bad command or file name", hahahahahaha.

I'm so looking forward to loo going tomorrow. For now, it's putting away the book reluctantly, and starting to read March 8: Eclipsing May 13. Joy.

I am not procrastinating.

After a long and fruitful day I am finally back in my room, in KL, sipping green tea after a good oily dinner, seated in front of my 19-inch monitor. Ahh. The simple pleasures of being home.

Long day because yesterday I didn't sleep too well on the train. I was reading The Kite Runner lent to me by Kukui, who, upon my rejection to read it, sneakily left it with me, so when I was hard pressed for loo reading I picked it up and since then I took extra time every morning to be on the loo and to get depressed even before breakfast. Looking back it wasn't that the book was that depressing, but because I was expecting to get depressed, it kinda became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So anyway I decided to end the madness once and for all and finished the book on the train, bawling my eyes out on upper berth #27, carriage L1, silently because I didn't want to freak out the ill kid sleeping at lower berth #28. Was about 2am when I finally slept, woke up 3 something, went back to sleep and woke up at 6am when the KTM folks walked around waking everybody up to get ready to alight. It wasn't till 6:35am till we reached KL Sentral.

Breakfast with mum and dad, good char kuey tiao at Damansara, got home about 8 something, gawked at sister's new boyfriend with interest, had a quick nap, took a shower and went for my first interview of the day - I am doing a term paper on editorial decisions on the reporting of ethnic issues - got good material, had lunch with mum and dad, nailed my second interview of the day to be held at 4pm, went to do the interview at 4pm, finished interview at 5 something, got back home, went out for dinner, nailed my third and fourth interviews to be held tomorrow hence meeting my quota of at least three interviewees, and I got a diverse set of English, Malay and Chinese dailies, so I am happy.

If you look carefully the above paragraph only has one period.

If you look carefully again, the above paragraph only has one period as well. And no commas.

Yeah so now I have two interviews to transcribe, the material is quite rich and I'm pretty satisfied how things turned out, and that I did not waste this weekend coming home. Not that I don't want to come home, but I am quite up to my neck with work, and travelling home always disorients me badly. Two term papers due next next week. Term Paper #1 I have been trying to complete since ever, and I have only succeeded in coming up with a bee analogy to what I feel about it, which is I am the bee stuck in a glass jar in a beautiful meadow and I keep knocking my head on the glass to get out.

*knock*
*knock*
*knock*
*knock*
*knock*
*knock* are we out yet?
*knock*

Yeah the bee in the analogy is not very bright. But we'll get there. Out in the meadows among the daisies and the pesky butterflies.

Oh and I have yet another insult that I learnt in class. If a person is libel-proof, it means that he has such a low reputation, that he is not defamable. It's just not possible. He's at the lowest rung of the Loser Ladder, that if you threw an indestructible rock down a well that houses the Loser Ladder in an island off Greenland it would travel through the centre of the earth and pop out through another well in the Antarctica where the last rung of the Loser Ladder is at. And strike the libel-proof person clinging onto it.

I hope it is not apparent that I am actually procrastinating from doing any real work by blogging, yet again. Data collection for Term Paper #2 is making progress but I still have a fair bit of work to transcribe and analyze all the findings that I've got, and that is something that I don't fancy doing right now, although my conscience says that I should, since I am sitting in front of my 19-inch monitor, sipping green tea and entirely poised to work.

I think I shall go to bed instead.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Ah what a delightful insult, such room for imagination! Oscar Wilde is a genius.

I am back in The Land As Big As Lake Kenyir. Homesickness struck last night but I am back to my old indestructible self now. Am focusing full time (kinda) on my work, this paper has to be out by this week I swear, so that I can work on other papers in the pipeline. Just found a good paper so I am sprightly.

Chinese New Year found me coughing and hacking and not having any CNY tidbits, which is a horrid pity because that's reasonably the only time of the year when you get to have all the junkfood you can eat without the guilt, and I'd already missed it last year because I was in NZ. Ten thousand woes. Well there's always next year.

The lack of real food was supplemented by soul food. During the holidays I read Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) and half of Emma (Jane Austen), which is still my loo-time reading now. Hooray for books you bought when you were young but never appreciated because when you get old and contemplative and boring you're bound to like them somehow. I suppose classics are classics for a reason. I still can't bring myself to read Great Expectations though. I think just by holding the book my cool factor would degrade by ten. Maybe another five years down the road. In the meantime I shall hunt down more of Oscar Wilde's books, I find his flamboyance really delightful and Jane Austen just pales in comparison.

Also I saw 2046 by Wong Kar Wai and I liked it. I liked the ambience, the storyline, and of course Tony Leung who was in it. I didn't like Happy Together (by same director) ten years ago when I saw it. Maybe I should rewatch it with my older, more contemplative and more boring soul.

Sharing with you this music video of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. Love the travel vibes it's sending. My thoughts go out to Val who's right now wwoofing in Italy, lucky bastard, wish I could do the same but I shall keep focused and continue trying to get funding to travel.



OK back to academic reading, cool stuff on media and conflict.

Ramblings.

Times like these I want to write and write and write but I don't really know what to write. For instance I could talk about my book launch yesterday, where only less than 30 people turned up, which was good for the butterflies in my stomach but not so good for the forum in general. I sat at the panel and felt secretly mischievous as the whole thing felt so much like a fake stage, a rehearsal, because of the empty hall. I looked at the people who came and wondered why they did. Not that I don't appreciate their attendance, I do. And then I remembered previously that I would also turn up for forums like these, just for the heck of it. So apparently yesterday the gods in charge of the just-for-the-heck-of-it lever to the world only dispensed a little of the good stuff so not many people came.

Weston. I wanted to blog about Weston so bloody much when I got back from KK. Then I was busy with the book launch speech, which was crap, and then Gayo my Filipino classmate from NTU came to visit and I got us gloriously lost in the labyrinth of Kuala Lumpur, and then I worked on the speech some more, and then I got lost in an awesome book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. When I grow up I want to write just like him. And then there was the book launch. After that was now, and later I am going to the mall with Jen Hui to catch a movie, maybe Kinta, which is the first martial arts Malaysian film, or so I've heard. I'm also going to buy a set of PJs. That's because tonight I'm holding a pajamas party. Noone knows what's going to happen besides pajamas or lingerie (yeah right) are mandatory and it's going to be held at my house. As one of the hosts I am too lazy to ask the other host YJ what we plan to do. I don't think we're really good party throwers.

Wow, I just discovered this really neat feature of Google! I put in "Kinta", because I wanted to see the showtimes, and then there's this field that you get to put in your postcode. With much sceptism I put in 51200, my postcode, and was brought to this page, with all the showtimes of all the cinemas nearby! Batman is superbly impressed.

Tomorrow I'm leaving KL, going back to the Land of Queues in the evening. As much as I am reluctant to - and believe me I am very, very, very, (infinite loop) (break) reluctant to go back - I have to, because I am a good responsible adult and I have work to do, money to earn and travel plans to fund. I had this burning desire to travel and write a travel book again, yesterday. I hadn't had this desire for ages already. I mean, travel, yes, but to write about it, no. Good books inspire people to read, wonderful books inspire people to write.

Prof W says that I shouldn't take more than 3 years to finish my PhD, because I have the capacity to. Mum says that I should just take my time because my scholarship lasts 4 years anyway. I am undecided. But inclined towards 3 years. I think if I put my mind to it I will be able to do it. But what next then?

I should go. Jen Hui's waiting for me.

So I was reading.

I was in a current of words, which brushed against me, I could almost feel the friction on my skin, the slight resistance, stronger than wind, weaker than warm sea water, somewhere in between. I didn't always understand what the words meant, although I understood what the words meant. It's like listening and hearing. Sometimes you hear, but you don't listen. Or was it the other way around?

When there was comprehension, I was carried in a whirlwind of emotions the words afforded me, I saw what he wanted me to see, I was in his body, I became one with him. I cried, I laughed, I heard his voice accompanying the current of words. Sometimes it was heavy, like thunder - not loud, startling crackles, but slow, uneasy rumbles in the distance. Sometimes it was light, like tinkles of bells, like children laughing, and I was happy.

Sometimes I lost track of the words, they were rushing at me in torrents, so I contented myself with skipping through the pages like bouncing on rocks in a stream, absently looking at the meaning trickling in between the words, consciously taking care not to pay too much attention, in case I got ahead of myself and discovered too much of what was in store. It was like being a fortune teller. Sometimes I glimpsed good parts coming up, at times bad. When I saw bad parts I would read extremely slowly, trying to prolong the inevitable downfall, while hoping endlessly that I had misread the crystal ball and it would be good after all.

Never, never would I skip to the end. That would be sacrilege. It would render The Book meaningless, everything from the page that I'd stopped halfway till the last page might as well be blank because they didn't matter anymore. The end had happened in spite of all the expanse of pages in the blank. And I love The Book, I never want to finish it. I love how it makes me feel, parts of my soul that I had forgotten that I had. I want to prolong this open window of looking at precious little corners with some childhood left in it.

Like a lingering scent that you want to smell for ever and ever although you know you have to stop breathing in at some point or your lungs would burst, and then the scent would be lost. For a while you might remember how it smelt like, how beautiful it was, till it fades away, even in your memory, and there is only one line of words left in your head - "It was a beautiful smell, a little like cinnamon, a little like freshly laundered bedsheets dried by the sun, a little like him." Then even that line would shrink, slowly becoming "I smelt a smell. It was good." to "Singapore sucks, I hate my life."

Then and there the window would be closed, and you have to wait till another time when you get a whiff again, and remember how beautiful it was, how lovely your soul can actually be, and the amazing things you could do if you held on to this moment and continued to dream like how you did, before the world came into the picture and messed you up.