Jason Mr-AZ Should Teach Me Some A-Z

It's been 4 weeks that I'm left without prose, leaving this blog abandoned without a single decent topic to talk about. Or rather, I have been formulating entries in incomplete circles, for I come up with something to talk about and lose interest in the middle (to use someone's phrase, ha ha), all in my head.

But sometimes when you're left wordless, you tend to see things in a different light. You see that with or without words, we're doomed. Sometimes what is unsaid hurts more than what is uttered. A person who leaves you hanging gives you more shit than a person who fucks up your life with cruel words, am I not right?

Talentime, one of the many testimonies to Yasmin Ahmad's brilliance in film-making portrays the truth about the power of words, or rather the power without words. Mahesh, a lad who's speech and hearing impaired (and who, I must say, is extremely hot that he makes me salivate the whole 2 hours in front of the TGV screen) punches me with the staunch truth that sometimes we speak too much and fail to listen to what the universe has to tell us.

Alas, living in a world without words and speech can be devastatingly difficult. Emotions are wrongly read, especially with those who are EQ-ly unsound, and messages are lost, in the middle. Anyone who's ever been to a team-building seminar or whatever kind of workshop would know what I'm talking about if they've played "Chinese Whispers" or some game that requires non-verbal communication or blindfolds and all that jazz.

What would a sigh be if one is voiceless? There is no signal for "eh" or it's English counterpart "you know". Tell me what kind of gestures would substitute our playful "tsk tsk"s? Writing, you say? Of course, to write, solves one problem.

But then again, when both written and spoken words fail me, I do it with pictures. 4 weeks of joy, sadness, camaraderie, learning, love, growing, realizations and absence, all rolled into 5 collages. Maybe then you'll understand there is so much to talk about, but too little is the capacity in me to cough it all up. Pictures, pictures would keep you company for the time being.

p/s: Here's a thought--Instead of just exclaiming "Happy 52nd Merdeka" on Facebook and tweet about the stupidity of the newly-coined Salam 1 Malaysia, next time let's take a ride down Merdeka lane, trace some old national landmarks and teach your kids some stories they'd want to keep for their kids.

From Petai To Bagel: I Go All But One Way

I'll let you in on a little secret. My transition to the foreign norms and different cultural setting in this land called Chicago, and more generally America, wasn't as plain-sailing as I preconceived it to be. Upon my first infusion into this Western life and living, I surprised myself with my immediate disfavor for some things very American.

Bagels would be a good subject for me to take off from. I wasn't a fan of bagels until this recent year. Yes, it took me one whole year to acclimatize myself to the culture of eating bagels--a substance I once deemed so hard on the jaw, and tasteless to the taste buds. I could not quite fathom my sister's attachment to bagels and agony over the exorbitantly priced bagels carried by select supermarkets in Malaysia.

To me, it was what is was: a tough piece of bread that was even tougher for the jaws. With time and trial and error over the right flavor, I presently find myself settling on Asiago Cheese bagel and Jalapeno Salsa spread at least once a week.

Time and again, I also find myself actually preferring the three-hole papers and three-ring folders prevalent here. My father can attest to my initial detest for this matter, when I--obviously distressed by my first encounter with this three-hole enigma--ranted to him about America's stance on being different from the rest of the world. I hated with fervor, this whole notion of America setting itself apart from the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, since I bothered about these trivial points of adapting.

I went wild with displeasure that I could not use folders, papers and punchers interchangeably between America and the rest of the world. Besides, my ultimate chagrin (at that time at least) was what was I to do with the puncher I proudly brought with me from sweet home Malaysia that actually keeps up with the rest of the world? Of course, this heart is malleable and I soon learned that the three-hole and ring system creates much less heartbreaks over torn ruled papers for OCD students like yours truly.

Nonetheless, no aspect of assimilating into the American life is harder than the conversion to English units. Why must I be subjected to pounds, bushels, doors, miles, and (god-forbid) the ever obscure Fahrenheit when the globe has advanced to the universal standard? Alas, six academic quarters and societal pressure have imposed upon me the need to speak their lingo, and I am sadly coerced to rest my case against this.

As the Malay adage goes, "Masuk kandang kambing mengembek, masuk kandang lembu menguak", I have slowly but surely assimilated into the American life. However, from petai to bagel, from tapai to Oreo parfait, from A4 paper to US letter paper, from "watter" to "wader", I would go all but one way.

What is this one thing, you ask? Let's just say I'd never enter a restroom without a filled bottle, or at the very least, wet paper towels upon paper towels to my discretion and satisfaction; even at the expense of being conceived as a lunatic Asian with serious issues.

What comes out the A-hole--in my most humble and honest humanitarian opinion--should NOT be cleaned with nothing but a dry, coarse paper towel. Someone should perhaps teach Westerners a thing or two; beginning perhaps, with the word melecet and the terse expression "geli, sial!", don't you think?

The Prophecy

Malays and Malaysians are fast exerting their presence on Facebook in the recent months, it seems. Empirical facts speak loud and clear--so loud, that one can't possibly be sane and miss the influx of merepek quizzes to this once exclusive social network. When you see "What kuih tradisional are you?", "Berapa jumlah hantaran yang perlu Si Polan beri kepada Joyah" and the classic "How Kelantanese are you?" flooding your newsfeed, you know we're spiraling downhill.

Western supremacist I am not--in fact I am quite the Malay advocate--but to disaknowledge that the more ludicrous quizzes are borne from mine own roots is to be ignorant. Hats off to us Malays because only we can come up with pandir applications as such.

Call me bitch/snob/snobitch, but I think Facebook lost its novelty the day it opened its virtual doors big and wide. Or rather the day the Asian (Malaysian?) world closed its doors to Friendster and shifted gears towards my esteemed Facebook. Of course it's not mine and mine own, but lend me your ears. Two years back--after receiving my university email address--I felt such a sense of accomplishment and was sent to a state of felicity upon finally acquiring myself a Facebook account. It was an unwritten rule once upon a time, that you only get on Facebook via a college network.

And that, my friends, was the very pulse that kept Facebook a non-nonsensical and non-crowded social platform. American employers found it a promising tool to check the credence and network of a candidate, and people actually only added friends they legitimately knew existed. I like to keep it that way still, for I realized my mistakes during the Friendster era, cum my formative teenage years.

Alas, the Malaysian diaspora goes far and wide, and the virtue of this leniency is the very fact that it brings me closer to buddies all over the globe. I cannot feign that I am not glad la familia are on board this nexus, or that I have met long-lost friends through Facebook, and I am not going to start now.

On the contrary, I am rather a hardcore Facebook advocate that my heart boils to see people denouncing the virtues of Facebook, because it certainly is an important fixture in my life. Facebook is the first thing I do upon waking up, and the last thing I do before I thread through dreams in the night, and I am not ashamed to say so. Okay, maybe a little.

So the issue at hand is this: my adulation for Facebook is marred by this quiz lunacy I see with the droves of people being sucked into the vortex that is Facebook. As of now, I have gone on a binge of restricting quiz feeds (do so by hovering your cursor over the quiz box, and hitting--with zeal, if I may add--"Hide quiz so and so") and see myself doing this for as long as the craze lives.

All the same, there is one more problem with addicts like me. There are some that just slips through the cracks and drugs me with curiosity. So, on some days I find myself facing prophecies as ridiculous as this:


Siapa dari Johor sila masuk line, sebab Facebook dah kasi greenlight. Haha.

Bean There, Fart That

G6PD remains the most obscure piece of information I carry about myself. It's tangible, recorded in black and white on my (rather unkempt) medical records; yet it's something so cryptic to this challenged mind. I find myself pressing down the black-ball point pen in between my thumb and middle-finger, making out the meaningless capital G, number 6, P, and D on the blank next to "Allergies" each time a medical history is wanted of me.

This intolerance I knew of eversince I learned how to dial my grandmother's number, and that just so happened to be fairly early. But it was always just something waved off with one hand, since I only have (had?) what seems to be a "mild case". Have or had, who can even differentiate, since I have never really understood what the four-letter/number word affiliated with my being actually entailed.

My limited inisight on this four letter (okay, that's not quite accurate) anomaly brought me to the hasty conclusion that is an intolerance for all things bean and peas; or kekacang as they more succintly categorize in the Malay tongue. Then again, there was my mom brushing off this condition shared between my brother and I. And that always made it seem okay for me to go ahead and gobble down all the types of beans in the world, if I pleased.

Considering the diet I was accustomed to, that wasn't much; since it only really comprised of long beans, string beans, french beans (the more glamorous appelation for the Malay kacang buncis) and winged beans (or kacang botol). Considering the other fact that I am not a big fan of beans and peas beyond long beans, I thought I was all set. It wasn't until I set my foot here on the North American soil that I find myself face-to-face with copious types of beans and peas. Snow peas, edamame, gorbonzo beans and the likes have became my allies come days when food in the dining halls just seem too unbearable.

Did I quiver as I boldly let my tongue caress those beans before I swallowed them in one big gulp? Did my mind ever entertain the possibility of me breaking out into hives, gasping for air, as the beans shoot their potentially hazardous venom into the red river that is my blood? Did I ever think of the repercussions from G6PD? No, no and no.

And fortunately too, eventhough my knowledge on the intolerance was founded on erroneous details. It is in fact, an enzyme deficiency, and the only bean I am banned for life from consuming is the favia bean. Lucky, lucky me. Stupid, stupid me--for being in the dark for so long. Alas, lucky lucky me again that my mom has wisely/unwisely dismissed my case as a mild one that I was never haunted by a scene of myself having "No air, No air" at a crowded dining table in a foreign land.

And after these two decades, guess what my finest discovery about beans is? No, it isn't quite that I won't die from eating them (since I never believed so, only that was with blind faith).

It is this: Beans, they make me fart. Prooot prrooot. All day and all night long.

Pembunuhan pada Malam Jumaat

Twilight Twi-bright,
A painful movie I saw tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

I am anything but an unsparing film pundit. Neither am I selective about the movies I watch. Action blockbusters, screen adaptations from novels, teenage/college saga, chick flicks, lengthy Bollywood dramas, romantic comedies, feel-good stories, horror series, must-watch epics, soft porn (forgive the lack of better category, since I must admit I have watched one too many American Pies, National Lampoon and whatnot), Malaysian and Indonesian production; you name it, I've watched it.

So when I say Twilight was painful to watch, I really mean it. It is not unusual that screen adaptations fail miserably (except perhaps PS I Love You), but Twilight was a big fat disappointment, like the big fat D on my first Additional Mathematics paper in 2004.

The script was lacking in sophistication, and the playwright, badly written. In the whole 2 and a 1/2 hours, I sat cringing at the exchanges between Edward Cullen, the pale charmer of a vampire and Bella, his equally pale counterpart. It wasn't so much cheesy lines like "Your scent is like a drug to me", "I just really want to suck your blood" (or something to that effect) that sent me reeling with laughter, but it was the whole awkwardness and lack of flair in the way the script was written.

Cullen, especially, talks like a social maladroit, and Bella utters lines that seem pulled out of thin air, suddenly cheesy, and always an awkward response to what her heartthrob had to say (which wasn't much, by the by). Then there is the whole awkward Daddy character, and the hilarious "Just keeping it real son" Native American man with his son. All were poor souls given dry lines like "Oh, so you caught that" when Bella asked the young Native American guy what they meant when they said "The Cullens never come [to the beach]".

Discounting the whole cheap hairdryer and drifting car tricks, I think the unjustified nervous fits the duo are thrown into wins the awkward element trophy, hands down. To my shortsighted eyes, the camera close-ups on the whole temple throbbing, throat-tightening and painful facial expressions could pass off very well as allergic reactions of some sort. I never caught on the reason they overplayed those adrenaline-rush moments.

Closely tailing that would be the "glassy-skin under the sunlight". Hollywood makeup/costumes/effects saw to its dearth this movie around. Can you really blame the UChicago audience for our exaggerated "oohs" and continuous laughter? I say not. Shoddy scenes, laughable dialogue, terrible makeup, somewhat wooden acting? Certainly our cue to laugh.

On a counterpoint, Edward Cullen was finally given a legibly sweet line near the end of the film, and this I'll never forget: "Is it not enough that you live happily with me for as long as you live?". Oh, and the innocent, "no sex, kiss only" teenage romance is a tantalizing change. We can now live with nightmares that a kiss may not just be a kiss, and a hicky may not just be a hicky. Necking brings a completely revolutionary meaning. Besides, you can't miss the AIDS metaphor in this.

Otherwise, I daresay a murder occurred tonight. Stephenie Meyer, my empathies to the murder of your trilogy. But surely this woman could not care less as long as the royalties keep coming, ain't it? Perhaps her babies were questionable in the first place, no?

Thanks for casting a hot vampire, but I'll play it safe with a normal mortal who's 20 only once. And really, thanks for the laughs lah.