Love, from SP

All in all, it’s been a crazy, but undeniably fun.

I forgot the excitement of going home. It’s been 9 months! (Yikes, as long as a woman is pregnant) Ah, the joy of catching up with friends over dim sum at Dai You Bin. The happiness of driving through clear roads. The thrill of having refreshing sugarcane, O-teh and char kuey teow without breaking the bank.

But of course, time is short so it was extremely brief. But it’s still a vacation nonetheless. But my favourite moment of my holiday is…to curl up in the sofa and watch Marley and Me with dear, with yummy char kuey kak and two mugs of warm water. It might not seem much, but it means a lot to me.

No pictures because everything was so rushed…and regardless, I like this trip to be privately documented with memories and not pictures.

After a brief respite, it felt like a complete recharge once I returned. I found cheerfulness filling me in again, because there is a change of scenery, a change of environment. I like being constantly on the move, breathing new air, experiencing something new. Travel is like a balm to the soul.

Of course, if you travel too frequently, it isn’t great especially if it is for work. But if you travel for leisure, breathe in new air, walk among new streets and observe new things, wow, it does amazing things to your mind.

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I love airports. I don’t know about you, but I think airports are the place where love is, as it is ascertained in Love Actually. There is always laughter and tears, reunions and promises to meet again, it’s where love congregates. And so, I look forward to my next step into the airport!!!

Wordplay

thresh·old: The place or point of beginning; the outset.

I remembered one day, when I was twelve, I told my father I wanted to be a good writer. My dad responded by buying me an Oxford dictionary. “Try memorising every word in there.” So I did. I went through every page, memorised each word. But I never understood them. I just felt the word roll in my tongue, stared at the definition…let it simmer, and then it dissipated right into the top of my brain. Mechanically, I did it until I reached E, and I stopped. There was no joy. I was ashamed, upset that I cannot grasp this. Writers use good English. They understand every word, nag the voice in my head. But now I see why I did not, the word did not resonate.

Isn’t that how he we learn words? The word…be it happy, sad, hungry, sushi, bed, sunshine, all of it are experienced. Each word, stripped down to the very core means very differently to different individual. I recalled I struggled so much to understand some words, words like threshold, calamity or cavalier. Now that I have truly experienced the words above in my life, they resonate brightly, beautifully, like a glow in my soul and spew forth from my hands or lips with ease.

I recalled once, in one particular day, after school, when I had a bad day. I came home like any grumpy teenager, locked myself up in my room and reached for my A4 pad. I wrote a short story in a quick flourish, my hand moving as if I was in a state of mind. When I finished, I put it down, and thought of it no more as sleep came. The next day, I read the story again and found the words were alien to me. It was as if there was a person pulling off the lid off my vocabulary and words unknown to my hand started pouring out. I submitted that story to a writing contest in school and won.

So now I still struggle with words…using them when it does not fit, or struggling with them. But now, ten years later from when I gobbled up words from A-E to learn, as I am twenty-two I realise that choosing the right words does not mean you pluck it out of your mechanical memory. It means letting the word come out from within you, shaped and polished out of experiences and may I say it, instinct, and therein lies the jewel of language.

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Short and sweet

Train rides are always fantastic when there is a good book.

As it happens, I was equipped with one today: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I admit (as I did before a few entries before), I am falling heads over heels in love with short stories compilation. As I was growing up, I admit I enjoyed reading novels that continue….on and on. From the stories of Enid Blyton’s boarding schools to Harry Potter etc, the entire never-ending saga intrigued me more than short stories.

I am very ashamed to admit this but as I grew up, I was quite the elitist. I only read Western literature and did not even glance at literature written by Asian writers. My mind was narrow, eyes closed.

Then I read Haruki Murakami’s ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ and everything went to a standstill. In a short period of time, Murakami rose up the ranks into one of my favourite authors in the whole wide world.

Then I recalled purchasing ‘Wives and Concubines’ by Su Tong, which I still have in SP, a good read that entranced my imagination about ancient China. I loved ‘The Good Women of China’ by Xinran Xue. I read Neil Gaiman’s short stories, ‘Fragile Things’ and Wena Poon’s ‘Lions in Winter’. I ventured to our local short stories in the Silverfish collection and recently Body 2 Body. And now I found another gem in Unaccustomed Earth.

There is a sense of beauty in Unaccustomed Earth. In the hands of a master storyteller like Lahiri, there is poetry in every word, speaking of displacement, bonds of family of immigrants, of love. I always admire writers who could capture the complexity of human relationships well, its ambiguity.

I’m in love. Gonna savour every word until I reach the very end. Toodles!

My Baby is here!

My baby is a girl. I absolutely adore her, she is so purty. Every parent thinks their baby is pretty, but I particularly love mine. I love touching the texture of her skin, stroking through her folds of her spine and just staring at her.

No, I did not get pregnant and magically hid my tummy from the rest of the world. I am talking about my ‘baby’ at work, the magazine I worked so hard to complete with my colleagues. Even boss said its my baby and seemed amused at the joy I felt when she came into my arms..

Ta-da!

Okay, so its ambigious in gender, but I declare it is a girl.

LOL. GMT XXL is available in newsstands, priced at RM25. Steep, I know, but its pretty! Don’t believe me? Flip through it and let me know. I’ll be waiting for your opinion on the fashion spread that we worked so hard for!

If you will excuse me, I am going to go and read my baby now.

A Plea

I woke up today,

No light, no rays,

Only a void of empty air,

I don’t know if I can bear,

Having my life change,

Moving so quickly out of range,

Losing myself every day,

Continuously lost my way,

I can’t breathe,

Dear God, won’t you give me some air????

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Cynical

Today I made a cardinal mistake that I feel ashamed of.

I judged someone. And of course when I found out he is not what I thought, I felt so ashamed. How could I think of someone like that? I was so cynical about him and I don’t even know him.

The thought of my narrow-mindedness just makes me cringe.

What made it worst was how nice he was…treating me with niceness and sweetness without realising I made an internal blunder. I am so sorry. I won’t say who he is, but he will serve as one of the biggest lesson on the person I have become needs to be kept in check.

Sometimes when I am sad, I read Wena Poon’s Addiction again and again….it somehow soothes me. The poetic language, the rawness of the emotions, the acute yet objective criticism of the society which I recognise. Balm to my soul.

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I did not know when I started to enjoy short stories but now I truly fell in love with it. I believed it started with Murakami. After Murakami, I enjoyed the short stories from Silverfish, from Wena Poon, and now the Body 2 Body A Malaysian Queer Anthology (thanks to Pochi). Every prose sang to me.

Musings of a Creature

It takes a lot to live in the city.

I can hear a ton of you who are from the city going around indignantly. “Where got!? Easy only ma!” Sure, you wouldn’t think so. You are used to calling a place half an hour away near, everybody wakes up extra half an hour early just to squeeze in makeup so that they can clock into the office. Busy, busy, busy, they will say.

There are so many lives captured in the city, which makes it so colourful. Some wake up at 6am, squeeze in gym, pilates and makeup before leaping into their car to navigate to the mad traffic for work. They spend RM15 for a healthy meal of sandwich and fruit juice, wander back into office and do more work. When the clock strike six, some will be still in the office, waiting the jam to die down. Some head straight home, where they have dinner with friends and family before zoning out at the TV. Some head home, change clothes and go out to the city that never sleeps for some drinks, dinner and dancing. City people work hard and play hard too. Some sleep early to start the cycle again, some don’t sleep but party away till dawn while some would be awake playing DOTA on their PC.

It made me think of my small town people. Those who rise early, make their breakfast from scratch and lunch and pack and go to work. They do their own chores without maids because office is only reachable by 15minutes with traffic jam. They go back home for lunch if its nearby. Even if they eat out, the receipt is only RM5 maximum plus drinks unless they take flashy city business partner out to eat. After work, they drop by the supermarket for some fresh groceries and go home and make a contented dinner. Then they spend time with their family members and sleep early. Its quiet, simple and relaxing. There is nothing else to do but watch TV, spend quality time with loved ones and friends.

You know I can imagine people of old age, who are feeling disconnected in the city, but hide their pain from their children, their grandchildren. Coming from a different mindset, it is simply easy to just dismiss them as old-fashioned and get with the times. No doubt there will come a day when we are old and our grandkids will tell us the same, while we pine for the nostalgia of our ‘golden days’.

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There is a creature inside me that is lurking to get out. It is shapeless as of yet, but day by day, it gains form. And it is getting clearer in my mind and soon I know it will break free and guide me to where my destiny wants me to be

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