A Bit of Home, A Bit of Fortuity

i am lucky that i came to know this guy:

20 comments April 8th, 2010

Things That Make Me Smile

it’s midterms week on this side of the planet, and because i have a huge propensity for distracting myself with frivolous things during times of high stress, i did some brief excavating in my email account today. there are always such cool fossils to stumble upon in my inbox. the below exchange is one of them, and i came across it while searching for a future finance minister (long story). the context is that this person X and i ‘met’ for the first time via email when he sent me a really cordial message introducing himself. so every now and then i like to send him an equally cordial email introducing myself with my new persona of the day. this is just one of many such silly emails.

it made me smile so :)

10 August 2009

Dear X,

We don’t know each other, so I apologize in advance if this is too abrupt. I’m Su Ann, a friend of Chen Chow’s and am currently studying in New York. I’ve just completed my freshman year.

I’m having some issues regarding my major, and Chen Chow reckoned that you would be a good person to get in touch with. I really hope you don’t think this is too random, but I am truly quite confused and in need of advice. I’m thinking of getting my degree in the same combination as yours — applied math and computer science — and am seriously considering a career in options trading. Which firm isn’t important, but I suppose the bigger the better.

I’m currently one year into this plan. I love Economics, but Columbia’s econ program is a lot more quant than I’d bargained, and I’m flunking all my math-heavy classes. However, I heard that one doesn’t have to take a single course in Economics to secure an options trading position. Is this true?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m hopeless at math. And I just want to do cute things, but I’m receiving pressure from every angle to remove all cuteness in my life and tend towards a more practical route. Did you ever feel like this? Did you ever feel completely prickly and just wanted to hide away from the world and eat duck rice and ice cream (sequentially; not simultaneously) when you decided on your major and career path?

I would really appreciate it if you could impart whatever advice you have with regards to my questions. Chen Chow said you’d be nice — sweet, even :)

Best regards,
Su Ann

(this apparently needs a disclaimer, albeit at the expense of the joke — i don’t actually want to be a trader at the ‘biggest’ firm. this email isn’t even serious!) anyway. his reply:

Dear Su Ann,

Good to hear from you. First off, I must commend you on your successful completion of freshman year, especially at Columbia University, which is a reputably challenging institution. Congratulations also on choosing your major and career path so early on — it is surely reflective of considerable thought and maturity. I assure you your chosen track will be replete with setbacks and adversity, but will nonetheless enrich and inspire.

I suppose Chen Chow thought it useful to get in touch with me as it would seem we share the same proclivity for duck rice and disdain for mathematics. Truth be told, though I majored in Applied Math and Computer Science, I can’t even integrate. I have been able to conceal this embarrassing fact quite well, save for this one instance I tried impressing said non-ability upon a really cute but prickly girl — but that is another tale for another time. But the fact remains that work ethic, a pleasant demeanor, a good attitude and an unparalleled passion for the financial markets are really all you need to get your foot in through the door. I assume you grew up in Malaysia as well? If so, we are both able to bring our bi-continental experiences to the table; employers truly value that.

As for a firm, I highly recommend Firm Y. If you have no qualms about devoting long hours to a cause — and a firm — you truly believe in, there is truly no other financial institution that invests so heavily and genuinely in its troops.

And yes, it is true that you need not take a single course in Economics, but you need to beguile and charm the socks of your interviewers. As such, I would advise you to doggedly work at retaining all cuteness — it will surely be a key quality in the days to come.

I’d be very happy to discuss more in person. In fact, I will be in KL later this week if you’re interested? I’m not a fan of crowded spaces and Malaysian humidity, so if you’d like, why don’t you come over to my place? We can maybe take out some desserts and watch a dvd? Of your choice, of course :)

Best,
X

/giggle! what a toucan.

35 comments March 9th, 2010

Thinking About Yasmin

so here it is finally–

i was sitting in my 9am class the other day, and my mind wandered to a place where people talk about christianity, islam, and the word allah. glibly, i made a mental note to myself to finish writing that piece on the Allah problem that has been sitting on my desktop for almost two months now. then i felt tired. perhaps i won’t bother. it is, after all, an issue that has been debated to such a pulp that i’m not sure what fresh insight i can add that won’t sound naive. and then, and then — before i could catch it, the careless thought burst forth from my head like some disorganized rebellion: i wonder what kind of advertisement yasmin ahmad would make out of the allah problem.

in that instance, and who knows for how long now, i had forgotten that she’d passed on. there is a panic to this sort of realization when you catch yourself. there is a viscous anxiety that fills your mouth as you realize the gravity of the situation, months later, unknowingly free from the emotions of the sensational and the assault of public mourning. then, you come to mourn privately, and finally see the real question- what do we do now?

i think i took yasmin ahmad for granted when she was alive. i was 16 when i happened to walk past that awkwardly placed pillar in front of the box office at GSC Mid Valley. i was with waimin, and together we stared at the sepia soaked poster of a malay girl (no tudung) and a chinese boy squatting on a wooden bridge. eh, Malay movie. why is it screened under International Screens? what does sepet mean? who is Yasmin Ahmad? is this going to be a typical Romeo & Juliet story? har, but it’s a Malaysian movie you know…

despite all the uncertainty, we finally went to watch Sepet one day, in our school uniforms, not expecting much or anything at all. and in that little Mid Valley cinema, we were introduced to Yasmin Ahmad and her small world with big feelings. Sepet was a story about so many things– ipoh, chungking express, malay cinema, an ah beng who reads poetry, gang life, JPA scholarships, adidas shoes, race, family, responsibility, love. everything was so Malaysian and yet different; but above all, the movie was so optimistic. i left the cinema feeling like i had grown 20 years older, and there was this ruffling in my sensibilities that i couldn’t quite place. who is Yasmin Ahmad? she must be young. she must be this young, up-and-coming director who has just returned to Malaysia after studying film abroad.

when Aira’s mom told me who Yasmin Ahmad was, and that she was responsible for the Petronas ads we often watch in silence with an awkward lump in our throats, it was as if this whole world had unfolded suddenly before me. everything moved so quickly after that. in a very compressed span of time, Sepet was all over the place, in every newspaper and magazine, and everyone was the new expert on Yasmin Ahmad and her “indie film” messages. it’s quite like how you learn a new word for the first time, and suddenly after that you see it everywhere and you wonder how come you never noticed this alien word before. people talked about her so much because she touched the Malaysian heart like no filmmaker had ever done, whether Rabun, Sepet or a Petronas ad from the early 2000s was one’s first emergence into Yasmin Ahmad’s creative and emotional space. i remember how excited i was when her next film, Gubra, was released in cinemas. and the first time i’d ever gotten tongue tied while talking to someone was when TV Smith introduced me to her at the press screening of Mukhsin. i wanted to ask her so many questions. how do you do it? where do you find room in your heart to be this forgiving? did you know that you inspire so many people to have hope in Malaysia? did you know that you remind us all that our country’s problems are so real, but still so very manageable? did you know that you made Malaysian cinema cool again? of course, i asked her none of the above and just stammered my name. i shook her hand, and saw up close her crooked teeth and her kind smile. she was very busy that day, but never too busy to let forth that kind smile. and then she wrote me a comment on my blogpost about Mukhsin. how lucky i am, that she so briefly read what small and puerile things i had to say about her prized movie, and actually said something back to me in return.

i was out partying when the news of her death broke. the first thing i saw when i drunkenly checked my Twitter in the middle of the dance floor was– RIP Kak Yasmin. and that was it, that’s how she left my world. i’d never really had someone close to me die, but if anything felt remotely like it, then this was that. she’d been unwell for days then, but that one day, she just died. this is why life is unfair. everything about it is unfair if such an. important. person can die even before she’s finished what only she can do. of all the malaysians to take away, why did it have to be Yasmin Ahmad?

and now it’s been almost a year since she died, and beyond Talentime, there is nothing that we have to look forward to. nothing at all, because people can try to be like her but no one comes close to being that soft, that dark, that hopeful, that emotionally perceptive, and that intelligent. we screened 15Malaysia here on campus last week, and while it was possible to watch Chocolate without skipping a heartbeat, it wasn’t as easy actually seeing her on the screen, in her utterly disarming makcik-with-an-edge manner, in the short titled House. thank you, Linus Chung, for that last and unexpected goodbye that you allowed us here at this university to have with Kak Yasmin.

now that i’ve realized how awfully true it is that she is gone, i don’t quite know what to do. it’s like anything to do with ‘harapan’ seems so fakely forceful and hard-edged now, and i need to watch the latest Yasmin Ahmad film to be grounded once again in the softness of the things that matter. all these crazy politics, crazier politicians, injustice, corruption, awkwardly latent racism, social stigma — they all make sense and they all become malleable only if you watch them in a Yasmin Ahmad movie, lovingly and fastidiously set in perspective for us by a talent whose art can never be replaced.

The making of Chocolate– a small insight into her very frustrating genius

Hokkien Aunties– an absolute work of art

Reunion Dinner– utterly arresting

Dinosaru. this came from the Tan Hong Ming series of ads, with Tan Hong Ming of course being the most wildly popular ad, but this one was actually by far my most favourite ad in the series.

Tan Hong Ming

do you know how unfair it is that Yasmin Ahmad died? what, really, do we do now?

50 comments February 23rd, 2010

21.3 — Actually 21 Now

so i’m officially 21 and oldddddddd.

it’s been a pretty awesome birthday despite the back pains, joint aches, blurry vision, and grey hair that have been creeping into the edges of my life. :)

my birthday in malaysian time (but still 12pm on the 5th here in the US) began with me falling asleep in my macroeconomics class, while grumpily wondering why no one had called or texted me yet. and then i realized that i forgot to bring my cellphone with me, which meant that i wasnt going to get any birthday love from back home (or the eastern hemisphere) for about 7 hours :((( but i went (skipped like a kid) to the mailroom to collect some gifts that came in the mail for me!

Tall Brother’s gift was the funniest — he sent me a John Grisham book that looks like it came from my dad’s bookshelf. his card came in the form of a piece (strip) of notebook paper taped to the front cover. haha! <3 Short Brother got me a pillow with a sleeping cow on it -- am not too sure if there is an isi tersirat there. and my parents gave me a pendant of a key on a necklace... with the receipt still in the box -_- i called my dad to say thanks, and mentioned that they forgot to remove the receipt, but then he said, ‘aiyah that’s your mother’s doing lah’. WTF. so i called my mom, who got all defensive and said that if she didnt leave the receipt in there, i wouldnt believe that the necklace was real -_- but quite funny also in retrospect. and i also got a vase of roses from Smartypants, and a FlipFlap plant from Kevin! both are soaking up sun on my windowsill now.

and then i ushered in my US-time birthday by storming into a cab after a lot of yelling, and even leaving my birthday cake (and splinters of heart) behind. how typical of me. it was almost 6 in the morning of my 21st birthday, i was feeling completely miserable and didnt want to talk to anyone, so i stopped the cab outside the library and went in alone to attempt some work. and that’s where i saw in my email inbox a username and password to a picasa account.

it was a picasa account filled with videos of birthday messages from my friends. T_____T

a humongous, teary, full-hearted thank you from every inch of my soul to the following loved ones:

voon, who was sporting that Voonish british accent that i find so cute and funny. in his first video, he said, “everyone HATES YOU cos you’re cute, popular and SO PINK”. and then i think he felt bad cos he made another video (from another day, but with the accent intact) saying that he was just kidding. :P still love you, voonie!

tocklet, who made a very emo video and also reminded me of how i once smashed an ice cream cone into his face. HAHA :D

chen chow, who didnt know how to record a video so he sent a powerpoint slide instead, with one of the slides being THAT picture of himself with the purple background. you know lah, that picture. quote: “sorry, no video. i tried, but i dont know how to record video online… so i use 18th century way of wishing you happy birthday!” haha dont bluff lah chen chow as if you dont know how to record video!! funny quote:

my very own elmo backpack ^____^

lali, who LOOKS HOT EVEN WHEN SHE’S SICK!

carol darling whose video was the first one that made me cry :( she spoke over a montage of the many pics that we took together, starting from the first one at MSLS where she was apparently intimidated by me T___T why kehrole why!! i’m so nice…..

dominic, whose black & white video was sooooo WTF. he sat around in a hoodie, stared at the webcam with his big expressive eyes, didnt say anything and shook his head from left to right to a damn ridiculous twangy birthday song with lyrics that said i was fat, among many other things :(

ezra, who played Hey There Delilah on the ukulele and sang the song in an overexaggerated Indian accent :D oooooo is watchu doo to meeehhh! i like anything that ezra sings.

freddy, whose voice couldnt be heard over the wind in chilly chicago, but he looked SO CUTE in the beanie he was wearing. doesn’t he?

audrey and stewie, whose video started with the words “Brace Yourself. Seriously.” this is why –

audrey, at that point in the video, was doing something like a rabbit biting on a carrot. hahaha i laughed SO HARD. funny quote in a second video: “in the haste of doing the first video, in case you cant recognize or dont know who this is, this is audrey and timothy! (insert more rabbit teeth)”

tara, who’s feeling the collegiate workload already, and apparently has no winter clothes. tara, i survived my first NYC winter with no real winter clothes, so if i can do it .. you can do it too!!! /encouraging fistpump!

songjun, whose video also made me cry cos he acted cute and sang a birthday song for me T__T and then to “remind me of home” he showed me packets of prawn mee and curry mee paste -_- he also put in a slideshow some pictures of us … look! we looked so YOUNG!:

vicnan, who was so cute in his video that i felt like reaching into the screen to squeezeeee him. i wish i could post it here so that everyone can listen to his RIDICULOUSLY SNOOTY british accent!! funny quote: “21 is quite an age, you know, you cant play the cute card anymore — no more plunging necklines and all that shit. maybe you need to start having a perm, curly hair, and maybe a girdle to keep that tummy up after all that eating”. and then he also put slow-motion takes of local food (cheong fun being spooned open, close-up of siew mai being dipped into sauce, slow pan of char kway teow………) /wipes drool

sueling and chaoying, whose video was about 35 seconds long, but their message only took up 2 seconds and everything else was silent text with really long intervals. haha too cute!

suet li, who made a really arty montage at the start of her video and then it failed halfway, so she launched into her usual suetliness (sweatiness?) that i’ve missed so much!! a funny and SO SUET LI quote: “i have like a bunch of things i want to talk to you about!! *ruffles sheets of notes around* oh actually all empty wan hehehe. (blablabla insert more talk) okay i dont know what else to say, let me consult my list .. okay the most important thing is.. *ruffles notes again* ya it’s still empty.” WTF!!

john + jet plane, whose perpetual smile has not left him. this is a guy who when angry or insulting someone, does it all with a smile, so you never really know if he’s really angry or insulting you. :D

andrew, who pulled a What Would Pinkpau Do in his video, kidnapped his brother’s soft toys and made them say hi to me, and was sitting on his chair with one leg on the seat like an ah pek. and this one also taunt me with Malaysian food, and also told me to start acting my age :( i miss you androoo <3 why do you still talk like you're public speaking when you make birthday videos!

Martian, whose video was seriously all of 1.2 seconds long, and consisted of him adjusting his hair. -________-

enghan, who pretended that he was sleeping in the first part of his video cos he was apparently imitating me during my internship!!!! YOUR HEAD LA ENGHAN!!!!! (the worst part was that my bosses were actually included in this video project................. BossGoat, dont believe enghan!!!!)

aira, who played Blink 182's All The Small Things as background music <3 AIRAAAAAAAA did i tell you that i actually did pretty decently on my last calculus midterm!! /cling

kenny, who didnt really do anything funny like he usually does, but i dont know why i laughed super hard during his entire video. and he also gave me an official tshirt from his new gym! via the webcam! and called it the Lim Su Ann Tshirt! but he held it up so low that i couldnt even see my own birthday present!!! hahaha oh kenny. i accept your paw!

valerie, who's still looking and sounding pretty since the last time i saw her, which was almost a year ago. gold mine / four seasons soon! :D

emily, who is down with Dom Flu and apparently sounds shitty, so she held up placards in her video ala Love Actually. funny quote -- “wearing skimpy clothes and being late isn’t as fun when you’re doing it alone.” and wait, what do you mean ‘prop’! the cameraperson? :P if so, his hands are super steady…

sieutheng, who threw me a two-people party via webcam even though we’re far apart :( this video made me cry like a fool :(((((((((( she even made me a party hat :(((((( sieutheng you look like the 1998 Aaron Carter in your video. i miss you :(

mesut, whose video made me smile cos it started out with him showing off his linguistic capabilities as always by wishing me happy birthday in 24938950 different languages :P and then he sang me a songgggg. oh and apparently his video was a whopping 2 gigs when he sent it in. HAHA 2 GIGS! mesoot goooool what did you dooooooo

dom, yihui and wunmin, who made a video that was something like a circus slideshow of them doing stunts and the most adorable things. it was such a precious and creative video :D

amanda, who had the video background music on SO LOUD that i couldnt hear AT ALL what she was saying, but i think she said something like “i hope my hair is straight in the video, i spent almost 40 minutes making my hair straight for the video.” or she could have said ‘hand’ with regards to holding the camera straight, but i think if she’d said ‘hair’, the quote’s so much funnier :D

timtam, who did a slideshow of flipping pages in a notebook with messages written on them (tamtimjak i recognized your writing from the FIRST PAGE how good am i!) funny quote: “Life begins at 30. Not at 21. So doing the math you’re really only 14.” and then at the corner of the page– “not old enough to drive,” with a little doodle of a car. haha tamtim <3 i couldnt drive anyway even if i were old enough -- think of all the road casualties. I MISS YOU :( thanks for taunting me with mooncake in your video. am i still getting a cute birthday present???

wongwenqi and her friends from "a fucked up music school" (eh eh according to her, not me ah), who played the piano and sang an original birthday song for me. HAHA. WENQI YOU HAVE NOT CHANGED AT ALLLL. funny quote: “limsuann, do you know this is actually the 4th take of video that we were doing. first take, my head was chopped off coz I was moving too much apparently, and I also kinda fell down the chair while getting ready to sing to u wtf. this is the end product!” wongwenqi how come i NEVER KNEW you could sing so well!!! and please do tell your friends i said a super big thank you for making a video for someone they dont even know <3

hanson, who had no video, but just a picture of himself in a ridiculous green hat and this message: “Hey Su Ann – here’s the deal. I had prepared an elaborate backdrop with a well-versed script, when my laptop crashed on me. Seriously. FML.” SURE OR NOT HANSON!!! but nvm the photo is very cute :D

benjamin, who made a really cool stop-motion video of Doraemon farting out a birthday message. i swear :P wait, actually, i dont even know if it’s stop motion or some nifty computer effect…

waimin, who made a video of her papier mache frog (whom i named Jean Bob) with a voiceover of her in a very convincing haughty french accent. haha! it’s so funny. LOVE YOU TOO WAIMIN! her video ends with:

sigh. i just rewatched all the videos and now i’m all emo again. i have to run for dinner now, and i think i may just be late — but what else is new, i guess age doesnt really change any habits — sooooo byebye! thank you SO MUCH to everyone who sent me videos, called, texted, emailed, facebook walled, plurked, tweeted, or hugged me a happy birthday, whether you were in the middle of the jungle, were sick, were busy, on campus, in a meeting, fell off a piano stool, near or far. i love you all :””) thank you for making my 21st birthday so special.

and thank you to carol, and the very wonderful roborovski, for getting my friends together for this beautiful video project :))

on a final note, nobody is allowed to say i’m old!!

64 comments October 6th, 2009

Thank You For Everything, Michael Jackson

i woke up today to find out from google news that michael jackson is dead.

i grew up knowing and loving MJ. some special sunday mornings at my old house, my grandmother would throw open the sliding glass doors and someone would put on our laser disc of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous album. we would all sit around the living room table eating kuaci, joking, laughing, as MJ’s energetic tunes and crisp voice filled the room. and instead of playing crashing and clanging festive music during Chinese New Year, we would always opt for our MJ laser discs. the kids (ie me) really loved dancing to Black or White and Thriller. at one point i knew all the words to the rap portion of Black or White, and would irritate my Cantonese-speaking grandmother to bits whenever i jumped onto the dining chairs and started rapping english gibberish at her.

where your blood comes from / is where your space is / i’ve seen the bright get duller / i’m not gonna spend my life being a color!

the Michael Jackson concert in Stadium Merdeka was the first and only concert i’ve been to with my parents. i dont know why my parents decided to bring me, cos i was really young and couldnt really have appreciated the show very much, but i’m glad they did. i feel so lucky that that they did. for my own personal reasons, that night was a really glitzy and special one for me. what a night. i was sandwiched between my parents clutching one of those concert souvenir plastic mugs, staring down in awe at MJ, all the way up there from the bleachers. maybe he will do the moonwalk, my mother nudged me and said, and i remember asking, what is a moonwalk? issit like when he slides backwards on the floor? yes yes, it’s like that. did he do it at the concert? i dont remember. but i do know that to this day people still go, wah, moonwalk, whenever they see an old video of MJ doing his thing, even if they’ve already seen the moonwalk an infinite number of times.

i was really angry when i logged into twitter to see some really insensitive remarks about MJ’s death. “RIP MJ’s nose” and “be happy everyone; our dreams wont be haunted by MJ’s nose anymore”, and the most repulsive one yet, “farrah fawcett went to heaven and asked that all children on earth be safe, so god killed michael jackson”. disgusting and so disrespectful. just because he put up with a lot of media shit and public humiliation does not mean it’s okay to further ridicule him at his death.

and then there are those who passed comments along the lines of, “oh last time everybody make fun of MJ, and now they all miss him, stfu lah”. really? who is this everybody? the only people i know who made fun of MJ’s nose, skin and alleged crimes are the ones who are making the same jokes about his death, and these people didnt care about him or his impact in the first place. someone tweeted this incredulous comment agreeing that MJ fans are hypocrites because “it’s too late to miss him anyway”. isnt it always too late to miss the dead? would this person rather that people didnt pay tribute to MJ?

take a look around — people are gathering in public places to pay homage to the king of pop, buying out his CDs everywhere, playing his music at the office and at home, writing tributes to him… and a couple of random people who dont care about MJ decide to take it upon themselves to declare that the world actually doesnt care either, and are all just faking their sadness. please lah okay. there are many of us fans who never once believed the allegations about him, and even for those who did and consequently made fun of him, you cannot tell them they dont have a right to pay tribute to MJ. relationships to music and its inspiration is sacred and personal; who are you to say that paying tribute to an idol — a musical genius, a virtuoso, a world-changing artiste who always stood up for humanity and charity — is hypocritical? many of us grew up staring at the ceiling after school, listening to his crooning that always made us feel better and taught us new things; many of us derived simple joy from watching him dance.

this all reeks of people who dont give two hoots about Iran and choose to believe that no one else actually cares about Iran either, and that everyone is just playing up their concern to sound educated. why do people always resort to such odd justifications when they simply just dont care about something the rest of the world cares about? if you dont care, dont; just dont imply that no one else cares — or thinks about — these things.

(i really hate myself for getting angry today. sorry. i really shouldnt have.)

MJ MJ MJ. we have so many memories of you. in standard 6, Syafiq used to twirl around the classroom executing perfect imitations of your dance moves, and we used to shriek in laughter whenever he did the crotch-and-tiptoe thing.

in standard 1, my classmates and those from 1 Dahlia did an awesome pirate-themed dance number of Beat It at our annual concert, which incidentally was the last annual concert our school ever had. some seniors in secondary school taught us and our class teachers the dance moves in the old 4th floor studio that was soon dismantled. Johannas was the evil swashbucklin’ pirate! i wish i still had the tape of that concert.

my cousin Eva and i used to sing Heal the World before we fell asleep after a long night of little girl chat. our aunt had these Michael Jackson cassettes that we would slip into the radio and sing along to when our aunt left the house. simple joys.

everybody in Starbucks used to dab at their eyes with tissue during Christmas season, when the carolers would go around the cafes of Bangsar singing an absolutely beautiful and sincere rendition of We Are The World. sometimes we would run up to them and sing along with them too, taking pictures and laughing.

once, we went to a home for disabled children in Teluk Intan to paint them a beautiful mural to brighten up their home. when it was a time for break, the homekeepers put on some music so that we could all dance with the kids. everybody went wild when MJ’s music came on. hands flailing, hip swinging, egyptian-move-making… MJ, i guess that’s how we do your moonwalk.

everybody loved you in their own little ways.

i found this picture online and thought that it would be an apt dedication to MJ:

from here.

everyone knows that MJ is a manchild. i often wonder how scared and lonely he must have felt in the midst of all the accusations and cruel press coverage, whether they were true or not. i guess it’s a good thing that he’s free from all the speculation now; and i suspect that he’s having a great time moonwalking and going, “ow!” wherever he is :)

rest in peace, Michael Jackson, king of pop and my first love. thank you for the music and the inspiration.

49 comments June 26th, 2009