Hello Freedom

I've been pretty free this past week and have once again taken to the leisurely hobby of reading. Finally managed to finish up those books left over from the Big Bad Book Sale. A few days ago, Gadiy emceed an event at his uni to promote Amir Muhammad's book called Yasmin Ahmad's Films.

When I first heard of it, I thought "Great, way to go. One more person exploiting the death of another tokoh." But I guess Gadiy thought something of the man while hearing him speak, so he got me a copy of the book, autographed no less.

I read the entire prologue and up till page 25 of the content the night itself that I got it. The book is structured as sort of a running commentary of her films and her life. It is clear that the man was a good friend of hers. He comes across as earnest and unpretentious and I could easy breezily have finished the book that night itself.

But I stopped myself from doing so. I decided to save it for Australia, you know, in case I get lonely or something. In case I need something easy breezy to read that would remind me of home.

Anyway, I've found housing after lots of drama with uni accommodation. The long and short of it is that they didn't have space for me on campus even though I applied quite a long way back. So after billions of emails, a friend of a friend of a friend managed to get me into contact with a landlord. The place he's leasing is a large shared house in the suburbs of Mowbray, Launceston. Launceston is a city on the north of Tasmania by the way. If you look at the map, B is where my house is on Plumer Street. It's actually close to the main campus and the architecture library. But... the architecture faculty clever-cleverly decided to put their campus within the city itself. So even though my house in Mowbray is really close to the main campus, it is 5km away from the school of architecture, marked by A.

If I wanted to, I could fly there and check into a backpacker's hotel while I look for a place in the city. But I'm rather uneasy with the idea of flying to an unknown place without a place to stay. So much for being adventurous huh. So heck, I chose to take it. After all, it was at a reasonable price with kitchen and full furnishings plus washing machine. I could always take the bus or cycle to class. Ideally, I should cycle since the road is along the River Tamar and it would be really cool and picturesque. And then I could burn my fats daily and not have to worry about gaining weight. Woohoo.

Wish me luck!

2 budak menconteng

What colour do you want?

"What's your favourite colour?" is a question often asked as part of getting to know someone. Over the years, I've tried to pinpoint my own favourite colour and I have found that I simply can't. It's like choosing between my precious perfect babies, each housed in their tubes, ready to be squeezed carefully out of their tubes onto the palette.

In university, I learnt that the joy of colour is in comparison and contrast. I mean, why have a room in shades of a single colour when you can have rainbows and depth and joy?

As a wee lass in art class, part of the joy of painting was opening a new box of paint and reading the labels on the tubes. The colours had the most fanciful names. The colour of Gasing Hill's forest floor on a wet and muddy day was called Ochre, dark blue was called Cobalt. I found out that Titian red was named after Tiziano Vecelli, who used it a lot in his paintings, I think. Teal is a bluish green and Turquoise is a greenish blue (and if you mix it up, I get really anal retentive). Mauve is a dusty pink/purple that came to symbolize the 1890s because some chemist found the dye for it just as the gay movement came about.

So this whole roundabout story has no point other than to tell you that I love colours and that I love their specific, splendiferous names. Fuchsia! Aubergine! Salmon!

Sounds like a mighty fine meal.

0 budak menconteng

As we go on, we remember...

It's hard to get over the fact that I never have to step foot on the god-forsaken Limkokwing campus ever again, if I wanted to. It seems so long ago that the counsellor opened the door to my first studio session as I stepped in late, the multi-national class gazing at my awkward self. I was a mere child and I did not know what I was getting myself into.

So I'd like to thank Limkokwing University of Creative Technology for bringing me up into the person that I am today.
I'd like to thank it for its false advertising, and for teaching me to look beyond appearances.
I'd like to thank the bursary for being abysmal, and for teaching us to fight for our rights whenever they demanded for our money or denied us scholarships that we earned.
I'd like to thank the management for giving us leaky, windowless studios, so that we would learn first hand what not to do when designing buildings.
I'd like to thank some of the lecturers for cutting us down and killing our self-esteem when all we needed was constructive, kind, criticism. You have made me cry in stairwells until it didn't matter any more what you said.
Thank you for breeding us to be strong, tenacious and single-minded.

God knows I could have given up a thousand times. But it was the hardship that made me what I am today.

Bye suckers! I'm outta here!!

0 budak menconteng

Our Hearts Are Married, But We Are Too Young

OUR MINDS are married, but we are too young
For wedlock by the customs of this age
When parent homes pen each in separte cage
And only supper-earning songs are sung.

Times past, when medieval woods were green,
Babes were betrothed, and that betrothal brief.
Remember Romeo in love and grief—
Those star-crossed lovers—Juliet was fourteen.

Times past, the caveman by his new-found fire
Rested beside his mate in woodsmoke’s scent.
By our own fireside we shall rest content
Fifty years hence keep troth with hearts desire.

We shall remember, when our hair is white,
These clouded days revealed in radiant light.

- George Orwell

Published in 1918, under Orwell's birthname of "Eric Blair" when he was 15-years old.

3 budak menconteng

A Ditty on Self-Involvement

A lot of people don't want a conversation. They just want an audience.
Lights, sound, action!

I'll Talk Over You (sung to the tune of I Will Follow You)

I'll talk over you...
I'll talk over everything you say
You think that I'd listen but nay!
You don't get to speak, not today
I'm flushing away
The life from your bones!

I'll crush you, I'll crush you, I'll crush you
And all your words you'll swallow, you'll swallow, you'll swallow
I'll always be the loudest, the loudest, the loudest
And inside you'll feel hollow, feel hollow, feel hollow

I'll talk over you.

0 budak menconteng

Contentment

"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential—as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them."

- Bill Watterson

0 budak menconteng

Tradition, tradition

Traditionalists are sometimes the most hypocritical of people. We Christians preach a gospel of grace and we pride ourselves of being free from regulation. "Look at them", we say "They pray five times a day and put so much emphasis on outward appearance and veiling". But how different are we from them? Whether to veil or not to veil. Whether women are allowed to speak during service. Whether drums are allowed during singing. Hemlines low enough so as not to 'stumble' our brothers in Christ. These very issues that seem so petty have torn churches apart. Since when has religion been about form and not substance? Ask ourselves first whether we have been ministering to the poor and neglected, whether we have been seeing to the needs of the abused and jaded amongst us. Christ always told us to extract spirit and principles from the law instead of taking law for law's sake. For example, when his disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath and the Pharisees scolded them, Christ said that the Sabbath was for man and not the man for Sabbath.

The Bible says 'man looks at outward appearance, but God looks at the heart'. But how many times have we looked at outward appearance? How many times have you heard an aunty say "This boy is smart, but it's a shame he doesn't study hard", or "This girl is so hardworking, what does she see in that boy", or "that boy only knows how to waste his parents' money"? Gossip goes on and on about other families. That woman is too overbearing, that man is lazy, bla bla bla bla bla. Must we look down on people because they migrate or have decided to attend another church? When will we have a kingdom mentality about things? We all still worship the same God! How many personal conversations have we had with the subjects of our speculation? How can we sound so authoritative about people we hardly know?

I have learnt that man is more than the sum of his abilities. I would know that because I've spent most of my life being taught to be defined by my abilities. "Wah, Crissy can bake brownies, can play the piano, can cook and clean, can draw and speak well, she can do this and do that. Crissy learned to read at age 2 and a half and will become a successful rich architect!" Big fat freaking deal. I was never happy pursuing all those things anyway. If anything, the more I learnt the more depressed I got. The empty praise never satisfied.

The joy, I finally realized, comes from the relationships that I share with others. It comes when I teach my students how to sing a Michael Jackson song and we're happily plinking and plonking at the piano. It comes when they tell me about their hopes and their little sibling squabbles. It comes from long conversations at the mamak. When will we stop talking about each other and instead talk to each other? If you believe the speech of others, I can be either portrayed as a slanderous, gossipy, touchy emo bitch or a self-sufficient do-gooder hardworking saint. What will you believe?

If only people would just look up for a moment. Look up from the muddy mess of legislation and look at the heart.

“I wept recognizing that no one was perfect, and that if we expected to be loved for all our imperfections, why are we so reluctant to accept and forgive the imperfections of others?”

Yasmin Ahmad

0 budak menconteng