if you’re reading this,

tell me now!

where was that sandwich from?

i was looking at pictures from Tali Tenang, which is the latest Random Alphabets project. so many people were wearing the I <3 KL t-shirt (i have one too!). i spotted a handful of familiar faces in the gallery, i.e. the usual ones who attend Random Alphabets events, folks i bump into at shows in KLPac, writers, poets, student leaders, entrepreneurs, greenies... and at the same time the crowd was so huge and so full of unknown people that i couldnt help but wonder what each of them stood for, or enjoyed doing, or spent their saturdays. the thing about KL is that it's such a new city and so bogged down with social problems, but KLites, and Malaysians, are just so cool. we do so much stuff. i was talking to Joe about how working in Hanoi would be so good for his soul, and that if he had free time during the weekends he could sit by the sidewalk and paint, just like the Hanoian artisans do in the afternoons. but i wonder if people from other countries tell their friends the same thing– that working in KL would be good for the soul. if a KLite could dissociate herself from her entire history and background with the city, and live anew like a stranger to KL, how exciting that would be. it’s quite like how people always talk about being just a face in Tokyo, being completely immersed in the neon lights, the moving streets, the hidden ramen shops underground– living the silently adventurous life.

i worry about a lot of things surrounding KL. i fear that my favorite marmite chicken haunt wont be in Pudu the next time i go back there. i fear that Brickfields will morph into an unrecognizable gentrified park of glitter. i’m scared that i’m growing up too fast and that by the time i graduate, there will be no more old people in KL left to talk to. and i’m scared that i may one day not want to go back to malaysia. right now i feel so strongly about needing to go home, but maybe by 2030 people will live on the moon, and i’d want to be there too, because all of my friends are there. maybe by the time i find my footing, everything will have changed, and we will need to find our zion.

the city has always been such a big part of me. whenever i return home from NYC, i look forward to reuniting with KL more than anything else- even friends and family. its streets, its doors, its windows, its parrots, its coffee shop uncles, its clubs, its pasar malams… how can these things be replaceable. what if people just keep getting younger and younger and we’d want to eradicate all of the ashes that we were born from? there’s this place, on jalan loke yew, that sells only bolts and nuts and it is the most wonderful and awe-inspiring place in the world. and there’s a nearby cemetery shrouded in wispy flowing trees that i promise you is the best place to sit with your favorite person in the wee hours of sunday morning, to just talk. also, a shop, on the shores of bukit bintang that deals in ‘bamboo chicks’, whatever those may be, that has beautiful chipping turquoise-painted window frames, on which the lady boss always idly leans, while she smokes her cigarette. then there are the infamous motels with the dingy pink corridors. i was lucky enough to once get a tour of such a motel from the owner’s son. he told me stories of the KL sex trade — where to go, who to find, how much to expect. and the clubs… i felt such pain when i heard about the jalan p ramlee clubs. everything will be quiet when i go home next. my family and i moved out, and i miss my old crime-laden suburb. that den of vice. i lived dangerously when i was there; now i’m just another grown-up in just another peaceful, clean, flowery gated community.

2009 was the year that i thought i found myself, but had actually lost my way. i emerged from the old year startled, sleepy, confounded, and most of all, very sad. it’s a little akin to waking up and realizing you’re in a different body and a different life. i made so many decisions the 17 year old me would have been ashamed of, and worst of all, i didn’t realize these decisions were bad for me until it was too late. i trusted too many of the wrong people, then stopped trusting altogether for a while, and forgot how to numb myself to things that just weren’t worth it. i believed in the wrong side of myself, and suppressed the right side, thinking it worthless and irrelevant simply because someone told me so. i fell in love and out of love. earned some scars along the way from literal and figurative barbed wire– huge gash on leg and heart now. spent a lot time doing things i hated doing and little to no time doing the things that were good for my soul. i even spent the dawn of the new year slightly wrong.

i was trying to fill out that new year’s meme that i tend to do most years. but the strange thing was that i could remember nothing. i couldn’t — and still can’t — remember my happiest moment, or my saddest moment. i cant remember anything at all, and that’s really strange considering how 2009 was the year i’d lost myself. i think i should be able to remember it if i lost myself. but i suppose the mind works in strange ways, and now i don’t remember anything. which, i think, is a blessing. i’m lucky again.

the first weeks of the new year have been very emotionally tumultuous. lots of have things have unfortunately been affecting me in ways that they shouldn’t be. it’s the same old stuff — frustrating people politics, the looming fear of failure, the peter pan syndrome, and being gashed at by people whom i trusted with my entire heart — only in measures more than i could handle. but i suppose it takes stuff that is this overwhelming and this torrential for me to say, i’m out of here. i’m done with this. i’m done with this completely awful trade. it was the wake up call that i really needed, and i think i’m stirring from the ashes as a newer and stronger person. i’ve found these well-hidden brooks of confidence. and i’ve found …

so the new year is looking really, really good. i dont have a plan, but i like it just the way it is. i cleaned out my room and it feels so free. i bought this jar of aromatherapy oil from Sabon and got a lot of new music which i’m now shaking my shoulders to. i’m taking classes i love (okay lah there’s still some math). loving people i love. had pancakes by myself and the new yorker this morning. for the first time ever i think i’m glad i’m here. i could learn to love this school and this city. i think the hugest wedge in my 2009 was that i was so preoccupied with trying to find out what the world needs. it was a set of blinders that threw me down a direction that just wasn’t meant for me. but now i’m doing things that make me come alive. and i guess that old quote is right– the world needs people who’ve come alive.

pardon the brevity but i have some catching up to do with life. talk soon! :)

No, I’m not gonna talk about the allah-tuhan-hantu suci issue that’s going on in Malaysia right now. In fact I think religion is the cause of so much of the world’s problems that the less airtime we give it the better. God is fully capable of defending herself. Instead we should dilute religion’s influence by talking about more pressing issues, like human rights, charity, the environment and cats. That’s right, cats, god’s beautiful creatures, are a subject of equal spiritual weight with religion.

A cat, in particular a kitten, is not an easy creature to cohabit with. It’s sulky, arrogant, self-serving and to say the least, reckless with its relationship with you. Believe you me, it is prepared to die rather than let you have your way. Behind that innocent exterior is a mind scheming to murder you and needing love at the same time which presents a dilemma of formidable proportions.

So why own a cat? Because, let’s face it, we are needy and specifically we are needy to be in companionship with beautiful creatures. A cat is a beautiful creature. We are also intrigued by a cat’s mysterious ways. Its sweet purring and mewing, its enthusiastic pursuit of fur balls, are stuff that keep us awake at night. It keeps us guessing about where we stand in their eyes and when they finally acknowledge our existence and accept our love it gives us the validation we crave. The rare bestowing of conversation, laughter and warmth by your cat gives credence to your own vain existence. We are not the antithesis of feline behaviour, we are in fact, its mirror image. It is not an exaggeration to say that the cat we love is also our enemy.

First and foremost, the basis for having a good relationship with your cat is to deny yourself. This is only superficially the case due to the fact that you have resigned your sorry self to love a cat: denying yourself is the most fundamental strategy for self gratification when seen in the light of its instrumentality in extracting cat love. When you feel the need to kiss, hold or caress, resist the temptation to do so or at least do so in measured amounts. Your cat will come to you when it is ready.

This self-abnegation also takes a conversational dimension. You are not to talk about yourself while conversing with your cat save to chat about the canned food you have procured from the pet store. While talking, expect to be treated like you’re secondary or even non-existent. Channel the conversation instead to itself and agree without question. Occasionally, you may be spectacularly rewarded with an enquiry into your day.

So you know the drill- don’t be your normal self. Don’t crave to express yourself as an individual. Don’t get worked up like you normally do if you don’t get a response. Don’t overexpose your enthusiasm. Don’t have a mind of your own. Agree, support and sacrifice. Don’t hope to get love and respect whenever you want it. Only be grateful and happy when you do get it. Be calm, generous, accepting, cool and composed. The person to emulate is Bond, James Bond, the suave, debonair spy who has a line and gadget for everything, and if all else fails, there’s still martini.

There are times when a cat will get into trouble or do something to either your or its own detriment. Eg. choking on blades of leaves, toppling fragile household items, chewing off your cushion etc. In such instances admonish it gently if you are courageous but not too much. If you have less guts or if you are made up of bottomless magnanimity, just choose to let it go. Give it all the love you can in a gentle, encouraging voice. Expect it to commit the same misdemeanours over and over again, but it is not your place to get angry. You will see trouble coming. But don’t be righteous and say “I told you so”.

Give it space. Don’t overwhelm it with your supposed love when all you are doing is just looking for fulfillment of your own desire for beauty. If it wants to hide in an obscure corner, let it. You will have a sense of loss and longing in your heart but that sacrifice is going to be worth it. What will make you more attractive is to mirror the cat’s carefree and cool attitude and soon you will be rewarded with cat fur brushing against your skin.

Entertain your cat. The quantity of toys that can be bought for a cat is infinite in breadth and expense. Colourful feathery stuff in particular are very pleasing to cats’ eyes. So are subtly mobile objects like balls and the occasional rodent if you want to reflect a degree of class.

One instance where you have the upper hand is in the case of feeding. As a cat has great propensity to eat, overfeeding it will only do injustice to your advantage. Giving in to every plea for food will only make it lose respect for you. Therefore be sparing in the number of feedings to maintain your purposeful standing. A night of mild starvation will pay off in the morning when they will be bright eyed and begging for nourishment.

With this I wish you and your cat a life happily ever after.

everything is moving like whipping winds. i’ve been back in new york for about 24 hours now, but in thirty minutes i have to leave for the airport to catch my flight to Honduras. i’ve been excited about this trip all semester, but now that it’s here, i wish i could have a little bit more time to be alone before plunging into all the work, laughter and camaraderie. there are so many things to think about. i just spent about forty five minutes hurriedly writing down all my thoughts on the church burning issue that’s going on at home, but i didn’t finish the post because there’s just too much to say and i have to go soon.

but the gist of what i want to say is that there is a difference between a muslim issue, a malay issue, and a political issue. why don’t proponents and opponents of the matter at hand stop to ask, exactly how does this new ruling or the removal of it benefit my race and religion? nothing else really moves besides the position of the party that quickly rushes to represent the change in law. before we accuse another religion of being hypocritical and violent, we should examine how exactly it is that we represent non-hypocrisy and the love of peace if we are so quick to judge, form assumptions, and badmouth (and not just in recent times, either). and before we accuse another religion of stealing what ‘belongs’ to us, perhaps we should understand what exactly the other side of the argument is before blindly stating ‘what’s ours is ours’. what exactly is this ‘what’ that belongs to you?

as always, this seems to be less of an issue surrounding the love of god than it is an issue about power trips and the need to have special rights above others. let us remind ourselves of why this culture of loving special rights (and on the flipside, hating these rights) is so endemic in our country. the fact of the matter is that it is NOT just a word. it’s a very legit battle that needs to be understood before we start taking up firebombs or going onto blogs and screaming that certain races/religions should be wiped out because their religion is more hypocritical or more violent than ours. the question that has been floating around but has yet to be answered: why is it that only malaysian muslims have a problem with other religions using the word Allah, whereas muslims in indonesia and the middle east do not? what exactly does Islam gain if other religions do not use the world Allah?

so much to say but no time. talk soon, folks. it’s sunday tomorrow and i’m particularly interested in knowing what the messages in church are going to be like. keep me posteddddd.

see you in a week! i’ve asked someone to guest blog, so hopefully he will, if he’s not too lazy. he’s got lots of things to say about the church issue i am sure. :)