The Leap is metaphorical overkill.

30Jul09

I never really anticipated this moment. I’m leaving Melbourne, and I tell my friends that this is the best way I can chase my dreams before they run down the rabbit hole and elude me and my aversion to potions that shrink/enlarge me (diet pills included).

This is ironic, considering one post I wrote more than a year ago, where I said that home is here. That I felt more at home in Melbourne than I do anywhere else.

My friends have still maintained this idea in their minds, even if I’ve changed mine. Some of them have even opined that it’s unfair, this whole thing of befriending me, only to have me leave at some point in their lives. In a way, it’s like they’d rather I die than choose to go, to leave them in their everyday and go back to my own, which was merely halted in pursuit of something different.

Seniors I know tell me that life in Malaysia will be a shock. Heck, even the usually hunky-dory university pamphlet for graduates recommends a 5-step program towards normalcy, warning about common symptoms of ‘frustration’ and ‘depression’. Personally, after a summer of rediscovering my original home, another summer of waxing indignant lyrical about the differences, and yet another three months of reacquainting myself to my future in Malaysia, I think I’ve got an idea.

Several people I know have tried to postpone the inevitable with arguments against my leaving, using many of my own points (do I complain about the living standards in Malaysia THAT much?). They wonder aloud, to my slight annoyance, if I can ever live to my potential in Malaysia.

And although my final argument will always be that it’s Home, call me the idealist, but if I choose to charge towards greatness, I really have no excuses, do I? Not even ‘Reality Crashes Down’ or ‘Sith Happens’. I don’t dream to be the next Oprah (tacky) or even Donald Trump (tackier). I have several dreams, all of which I won’t mind coming into at some point in my life.

I suppose it also helps that my ultimate goal is to have a life well-lived, with more happy moments than sad ones, and the ability to always come back up after a fall.

I have no reason to live in Melbourne anymore. The truth is that simple. Given the opportunity I would, but my sole motivation would be the money. When it comes down to just that, I wonder if I’ve lost track somewhere – if I’m not really looking at my life, but just trying to get over each day as it comes.

I told my mother why I was so stuck between staying in Melbourne and returning to Subang, after she gave me what must be the telephonic equivalent of a little shake-down. I told her that my only motivation was for me to earn enough to keep my parents secure, pay off my tuition loans, and pay the rent and bills here. To which she told me that they didn’t me to look out for them – that their only wish for me is for me to do what I want and to be happy.

I love the people I was born to. It can never be said enough.

There’s this line in a song, one of those generic ones, which says something to the tune of this: ‘I’ve been waiting all this time for life to begin.’

And in a way, it feels in a way, like my life thus far has only been leading up to this.

Oh, look. This is where I leap.

See you on the other side.

Filed under: calm before the storm   |  Leave a Comment

No more.

21Mar09

Lutfi (the older friend) recently discovered Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the film) and is a gushing fanboy now. That movie had an odd aftertaste for me – Akram would call it saudade. Saudade it is. For some reason, I’ve been putting off re-watching BFaT for more than a year now. Gushing Fanboy made me want to revisit it. After only 3 minutes of a scene in the middle, it all came rushing back. Tristez, saudade, all the verbs they use in bossa nova. And spewing out came this short. There’s not enough style or prose or plot for it to be anything more than a late night ramble.

This is for Lubna, who has been writing vignettes about Him and Her, two people sufficiently soaked in anonymity that anyone can relate to them. I want to be Her, and sometimes I feel I am.

‘I think it’s in our natural longing to provide, to look out for someone who expressly wants to be left alone.

For me, it’s you. And for you, it’s that stranger on the street. That child unborn to the prostitute you observe behind the wheel as the traffic light halts you red. The girl who broke your heart and told you that it’s not you, that it never was.

You feel, intuitively, that it’s a lie. You know you will hurt. Caring is masochistic – I don’t blame the ones who do not feel. They’re probably better off than we are.

You like black cappucinos and I like romances that are screwed from the start.  I like sad endings for aesthetic and sadistic reasons best left untold, but you are that secret idealist. You order a regular capp with skim milk despite being lactose intolerant, because we grew up believing you have to suffer to deserve happiness. You take extra foam and I take in you.

You listen when I talk, even when I don’t ask you to. You listen so well when I ramble on that now, words tire me. I’ve barely written in days, that’s how wretched I feel. I can’t blame you for listening to me, in more ways than one. And I can’t blame you for not caring either. I know the difference, and you do apathetic listening so well. You’re like a stranger I carry in my pocket. I never knew you, perhaps never will, and perhaps I don’t want to.

We all want someone to love, someone meek and small and needy. Maybe that’s why women have babies, and men have women. Once babies grow up they become pubescents who begin to remind you that they don’t need you anymore; once we commit we forget how we got there in the first place.

I’m numb now. If the weather were cold I’d feel it less, I think. You cannot know how I suffer. It’s nothing you’re not familiar with. It’s that tired, stretched feeling inside that makes you feel your heart is too small for large things. Spectacular things like you. Wonderful things like you and me.

We may never stand a chance to Doubt.’

Chega. Chega, meu coração.
P.S:- Lubna, sorry for being so, you know. Depressing. 

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  5 Comments

Gaza appeal

14Jan09

To help, please donate to the following emergency funds:

HUMAN APPEAL INTERNATIONAL

‘Human Appeal International Australia is continually distributing over 11,000 hot meals per day to the displaced and destitute victims. Each hot meal is cooked onsite and delivered to the victims currently sheltering in the UNRWA schools.

This has been possible due to Human Appeal International Australia being one of only a few humanitarian organisations with an office in the heart of Gaza.

Human Appeal International Australia has and continues to supply:

• comprehensive food parcels
• 280 tonnes of flour
• 28,000 cartons of dried milk powder to many starving families
• medications & surgical equipment, including 5 new intensive care units needed for seriously injured patients in Gaza hospitals
• an ambulance ready for delivery to Gaza
• 5 morgue fridges to the hospitals in Gaza’

To donate to their Gaza fund, please do so here.

MERCY MALAYSIA

‘PALESTINE RELIEF FUND

Cheque payable to MERCY MALAYSIA
CIMB Account No : 1424-000-6561053

OR

Cheque payable to MERCY HUMANITARIAN FUND
MAYBANK Account No : 5621 7950 4126

You can also download our donation form.
Download Donation Form

For more information please contact 03-2273 3999 or email us at
info@mercy.org.myThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .’

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  1 Comment
Tags: appeal, donations, Gaza, help, Israel, Palestine

The airport scene.

10Jan09

Interesting, the things you see in an airport.

Unless you’re a romantic, believing in the magic of the airport scenes in Love Actually, then the reality is different. Nerves are frazzled, people are tired, usually from a restless night of packing and unpacking and keeping an eye and ear on the alarm. Families are no more affectionate than usual. Is it just me, or are mothers becoming increasingly more adept at keeping their eyes dry and appropriately emotionless?

You see dynamics. The middle-aged couple with three young daughters and a son and American accents strained in high voices. The father debates the missing (formerly unwanted) bagel, while the mother warns the children not to touch their elbows on the table (if they wished to survive the microbiology thriving on it). The grandparents try to get in touch with the outside world, before their neuroses (and progeny) eventually kill them.

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.

But children – the airport, no matter how lousy the services, how outdated the infrastructure, how long it takes to do anything or get anywhere – to them, this place is… magical. Forgive the cliché. It’s the forbidden land, where you only get in if you’re lucky and swear up and down that you’re not going to be trouble, no sir, not at all. Only a fool would buy it. What sort of heartless being could resist the appeal of winding rope barriers that trap grown ups, and the floors that make your shoes squeak when you run, and huge McDonald’s and – gasp! — those wheelie thingies that are like little cars?

Grown ups are such bores.

But perhaps one should be kinder to them. They do try, you know. It’s not proper for children to see them weep. And when you’re bored they give you little boxes of finger foods and promise you, that really, the moment everything is over, you will see the lolly store. And if you’re really really good, you might get a candy cane. And it’s not even Christmas. Plus, if you run around long enough and fast enough, you can get a ride on a trolley. In the little bucket seat. Now how about that?

Still. If you’re not a child and you’re travelling alone, then it’s pretty much hell on tiles. With no internet, and pretty lousy phone reception.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Walking down that road is much harder if you cartwheel.

06Jan09

‘Diam ubi berisi; diam besi berkarat’
(loosely translated, ‘the potato is silent from its content; metal is silent from rusting’)
- old Malay proverb

After my most recent and marked failure, I immersed myself into the workings of self-pity – I started studying to be a writer.

I’m turning 22 in less than two weeks, and my first novel is overdue. The world has been waiting for me to debut – to finally prove my worth as someone more than just an amalgam of mediocrity, into something of a more specific success. Whatever delusions of a career at science I might have had were ripped apart by my most latest results; even imagining a life where I face that same failure daily reeks of a fear I’m too cowardly to look in the eye, nevermind denounce.

But all this, I reason, will be put aside, once I prove my worth as someone who can be good at ONE thing – someone who can be labelled instantly and kept under a neat category. (Screw post-modernism. Multiple talents in a single being is so rarely expected, they turn out into modest surprises. Soon there will come a day when a dog will be lauded for being able to chase its tail AND lick its butt.)

I think there is a deadline for all this, although mine is based on the next and nearest wannabe-writer. So if Dan Humphrey (yes, I watch Gossip Girl) writes five short stories, I will make six the next day, and not all of them of a girl, misplaced in another continent and who has no love life (insert fangirl reference here). And better still, I have a friend in Dubai who is almost there, proper novel-wise. Thank God she’s writing science fiction, something I tried only once when I was 14. Otherwise I’d never be able to compete. She’s already Indian, and has studied creative writing – two things that give her that special advantage over me when running for the Booker prize. (It’s always Indian writers who win it. Kiran Desai, Vikram Swarup, Aravind Adiga. Entire shortlists made of Indian expatriates and diplomats and former international students. What is it about India and the different ethnicities that sprout from it, that waxes award-winning lyrical about the little things? Because Malaysia’s had colonialism, and we have a fixation with urban development, and we have corruption and science and technology, as well as a down-trodden arts scene. We have all of it too.)

So for my research, I’ve been reading. Not so much for my imagination, or for inspiration, or even to escape. I’ve been studying the prose. I’ve been testing the waters. Flick, glup, bloop. I have one main story in my mind. It shall have drama and love and untold wishes and dreams. It shall have cynical hope. It shall have family, as so much of my other life revolves around solely that and its peripherals, and one can never be too obsessed with something one love/hates so much.

The only things it lacks, at this point, is money and a plot.

But being a writer, or how it works in my mind anyway, is not as easy as it sounds. I was convinced by the work of Steve Toltz that writing isn’t just a piece of concentrated spontaneity thing – we can’t all be young geniuses who pour out dense snippets of our and other people’s complex life, a la Froer – so I’ve been doing research. I have a book in which I write out ideas. I listen to conversations on trams; I discreetly stare at people and imagine entire lives behind their purposely vacant faces. But all that isn’t as difficult as doing this:

Imagining the world in words.

Can you? Every colour and every sensation? Everything it means to one person, and then imagine how different they feel to someone else, all of them studied and different and made up? I keep making sentences out of the words that usually pass me by in the hurricane of sensations that living in the city gives. Not even parks here, because everybody has a fixation with being in the sun, for some reason, and people whizzing by in slow motion, or any motion, is just plain distracting to my pathetic noggin.

And so, my brain’s gotten into a bit of a logjam. I’m sloooower in public – that much slower, it sounds like I have festering stowaway food in my cranium, blocking my nerve endings. I use up all the words in my brain into sentences I’m scared to forget. I reserve the simple ones for speech. All the cliches and pop culture references that one tosses into the air to sound relevant and present, when you’re actually drifting off into 1891. Song lyrics work too; someone’s else has done the thinking and emoting for you.

As it is, I am more comfortable being quiet and frowning. My mind is learning to take over from Bob Dylan and the Kings of Convenience and The Strokes. My mp3 player died, you see.

‘Your mouth purges words.’
- my mother, to me.

If she only knew what it took.

I don’t know how he does it, that man who told me he doesn’t need his iPod to occupy his mind. That might be why he prefers to listen and smirk. He’s reliving the world through my eyes, and yours, and yours too. Maybe he’s trying to fit a cumulative existence in his strong, steady head.

Maybe, really, all one needs is practise.

Filed under: gee, moments, writing   |  Leave a Comment

We’ve been round this tree before.

06Dec08

They say history repeats itself, but this, my friends, is ridiculous.

I wrote this post once. My thoughts just after first year, enamoured with the idea of early marriage, filled with idealist imaginings of the Disney sort. ‘Oh, we shall live happily-evah-aftah’, ‘Love shall prevail’, ‘all you need is faith”.

Pfft.

So yes. My thoughts on the matter HAVE changed.

And now – NOW of all epochs – just because I’ve finished my degree (pending results, God willing), people are expecting me to, in the tradition of Neil Armstrong and all other next-steppers, dive headlong into the world of holy matrimony.

It’s not that I’m receiving offers from right, left and centre, no - it’s that I’m old. And I’m done with uni, and frankly, what else do I have left to look forward to?

Who on earth wrote these rules, anyway?

I have friends raising their eyebrows at every male human they see/hear me talking to, making me, in return, more coarse and dismissive than usual, and not doing any favours to my personal relations portfolio. I have people hinting, I have people speculating, I have people teasing – imagine blunt jokes along the lines of ‘how about a local Muslim dude, eh? Eh?’. God, I even have people tagging me with marriage-related memes!

(Yes. You. Don’t hide away by slamming your lime-green Dell shut. Come and face the orchestra.)

Truth is, I’ve been making my own observations about marriages – what works, what doesn’t, the frequency of shut-the-hell-up-sayang moments in public. I’ve studied people with children, without children, with too many children, with spending problems, with thrift problems, and as desirable as being given a dumpster-load of responsibilities is, I’m afraid I have come to a conclusion for my hypotheses two years prior:

Marriage is NOT for me. At least, not for the next five years. Minimum.

Because, heck, there’s still a lot out there. I haven’t even had my driver’s license yet (there MUST be a record somewhere for holding your Ls for three consecutive years). I haven’t travelled enough of the Northern Hemisphere. I have never had a paying job. Actually, I’ve never even had a non-paying job.

I’ve never worked before in all my 21 years. Wow. Ding! moment #4298.

I don’t even know whether I’ve graduated from uni – my future hangs in the balance as it is. I am not done with studying. I want to do maybe another degree; I want a postgraduate degree – a PhD in something that has barely anything to do with what I’m doing right now.

I haven’t written a proper novel and no, that feeble attempt from when I was 17, complete though it was, does not count. I haven’t published a book. I haven’t gathered my thoughts around my Cartesian politics. I don’t even know what Foucault really means by ‘the gaze’!

Plus, I’m totally immature. And until I find a way of living that doesn’t irritate my angel of a housemate as much, then co-habitation with a MAN is – ugh – not an option.

My head hurts from even thinking about it.

So. Well-meaning people, far and wide, the answer is No.

No Turkish blokes who speak Broady.

No Pakistani dudes in sharp Oxford shirts. I know too many of them for it to count.

No Medic students, either. No offense.

No older men. I have a thing against condescension, unless it comes from me.

No Arab men PERIOD. And not for the reasons you might think, either. (A.Zayegh and A.Azzam need not be offended – buddies are buddies. We cool.)

Not. Right. Now.

And no point asking ten minutes later.

Well now. It feels good to get that off the chest.

Pecan pie, anyone?

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  5 Comments

SWOT-VAC ramblings (they say it’s good, for closure)

16Nov08

There are many blogs I admire.

I cannot help it. I’m a writer. I fall easily for the written word. And yes, although I’m more comfortable writing in English (not my mother tongue, but easily my first), I find myself wishing more often nowadays that I were more flexible. My Bahasa sounds awkward, and I admit, I am not a proficient in either language. Whichever of the only two tongues I choose to converse with, I end up making some cross-lingual faux pas.  Yet I’m one of those puritan writers, pedantic and monolingual to boot, and for the sake of realism and for plain honesty’s sake, I have to force myself to stop translating everything and just write the way I speak – interjected by words of another language when my limited vocabulary fails me.

I like those who write comfortably about anything and everything. I would like to be a blogging snob, and I certainly started out that way. But I’m not. If the person expresses themselves comfortably and in a style I admire (oh yes, I frequently experience blog-envy), and most importantly, if the person inspires me, then my nose starts going green and I turn a little haughty. No, it’s frivolous. It’s rubbish. Why would they want to write about that anyway? Little attention-seeking wretches.

But really. Blogs are all about attention and gathering enough so you can bask in it. I wonder what happened to journals? Moleskin-wannabes are making a comeback, I noticed, but only for the truly anal. For the rest of us who prefer a little chaos in our lives, we usually live without them, pretty and exclusive though they look.

I admire those who write in a spur of the moment. I’m a true adherent to the Chaos Theory, and there’s nothing I admire more than someone who writes because they want to and because they can. At the risk of sounding all new-age and trendy, I believe in words just coming to you and struggling to pour out of your fingers and into your blank page, or your word processor.

So your writing tends to sound emotional and wimpy, rather than professional and clean. Who cares?

Although I’ve found that the best writers aren’t complete daisies either. They get pretty organized about their work. They set timetables. It’s work, not just some dream – you’ll get it if you do, tough if you don’t. If you’re serious about anything, then effort and time has to be put into it. And nobody makes it seem less like a job than you. The fun factor is something that requires work as well. And loving what you do usually makes fun in one’s work come a lot easier.

Oh, sure, I sound repetitious. Nothing I’m saying here is anything you haven’t read somewhere before. But I guess I’m just reminding myself of all the things I should already know and do for myself. Writing is spontaneous for me, usually. I type out the words and then they reorganize themselves in my mind. One of the side-effects of being a writer in the post-modern age, I suppose – your mind only really works like a word processor. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

Or maybe I’m procrastinating from my Proteomics exam which is very, very soon.

Back to work.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  1 Comment

Where I am now.

13Nov08

I have lived the past five months in underwhelming sadness.

It only catches up with me now and then. Like when I read a random Xkcd line about planets coming together. Or when I read a familiar Facebook posting about Bolehland.

My heart has been crying, crying, crying to me: Anywhere but here.

To some it seems like I am on the verge of exploding, that I’ll take everyone down with me. I think that I know that too, somehow. So I have been leaving everyone I know well on the edge of my anger.

I have been so angry, that only the distant stay close to me.

I have been punching random buildings, because trees would hurt and they did not deserve any part of my anger. Certain words and certain memories push me to tears, like the ones that I smear across my face now in the pretence that the eye with the scar across its cornea is acting up.

I’ve been in and out of hospitals and clinics. I’ve gotten into countless arguments. I’ve come very close to hate. I’ve fallen in and out of love with many things. I’ve failed, figuratively and literally. I have found previous relationships become more complicated, and lost the will to fix them. I’ve been letting things fall around me, into place or otherwise.

This year, more than most, I have kept to myself. As always, less able to respond to things I should, and I ramble on on irrelevance. There have been good moments, yes. But submerged in melancholy. It sounds like some sort of disease.

It’s been a long, long year. Too fast, yet I am hanging on the simple balance between days and being a bum about it. I do not seize the day anymore. Maybe I never have.

There has been a lot of self-blame. A lot of self-hate misdirected to others. I have blown up in too many people’s faces. Like three years of momentum has led to this year, where everything is threatening to erupt before I go home.

I want, want, want to go home. I need to be with my family again. I shake at the memory of spending time here. I have plans, but I’m not keen on them. This isn’t February, where everything felt like a new start. This year has been vulnerable, wracked with insecurities.

I visited Tuan Keng (or is it Uncle Keng?)’s website for the first time in months. And, as always, I found what I needed, thrown in my face:
Tika ku pohon kepada Illahi kekuatan;
Allah memberiku kesulitan,
padat dengan dugaan;
agar aku membina kekentalan dan kewibawaan.

Tika ku pohon kepada Illahi kebijaksanaan;
Allah memberiku masalah,
supaya ku lebih berusaha dengan segala keupayaan
sehingga menemui penyelesaian.

Tika ku pohon kepada Illahi keberanian;
Allah memberiku ujian, dugaan dan cubaan,
supaya dapat ku lintasi rintangan,
tanpa semangat dipatahkan dengan kekecewaan.

Tika ku pohon kepada Illahi sebuah cinta;
Allah menemukanku kepada manusia,
bermasalah dan menderita,
untuk ku taburkan kegembiraan,
dan hilangkan nestapa.

Tika ku pohon kepada Illahi bantuan;
Allah mencelikkan ku keadaan kesusahan,
betapa ramai yang lebih mengharapkan.
Memberiku kesempatan,
untuk membina bakti dan menghulur kebajikan.

Allah,
tidak pernah memberi apa yang ku pinta.
Tapi sentiasa memberi,
apa yang amat ku perlukan.

Hidup ini penuh jawaban
Kepada permintaan dan harapan.
Hanya memerlukan keupayaan,
untuk menilai kenikmatan terpendam.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  1 Comment

The balcony in spring.

15Oct08

It is always like this.

I am weird and I am awkward and I strangle you, socially, metaphorically and almost literally. At first I think it’s just you, and then I think it must be me, and then I think that it’s definitely you.

There’s no hiding the fact that I am not the favourite person on your list. Which is, frankly, just another way of saying that you hate me.

It’s clear. It’s clear as day and almost as misleading, and there aren’t many places I can run. I seem oblivious and maybe I am, but not for long. Walls have cracks and faces as thick as mine definitely do. And my one crack is almost nauseatingly so – I just want you to like me.

So when the crack widens enough for sunlight and embarrassment to seep in in all its painfully cold state, I hide. I look for places, physical and mental for me to escape to. I used to wallow in sympathy, but nowadays I just find an empty tree. Wide open spaces that give me the illusion of existing alone, which is, at times like these, preferable.

Because if I don’t hide, the crack gets the better of me and I run and I flee and I fall on my knees and the next thing you know is I’ve committed murder of the first degree. Or I’ve snapped at someone I actually love and there are few things that gnaw at my heart like the look of a pair of hurt and clueless eyes. Or the mumblings of a person who struggles to understand, but cannot know that all I want is a tree and wide open spaces.

There are balms for the madness though. Like the full moon, which distracts with its shiny pallour and of how it lights up the world in a way the sun cannot, which is funny because it’s only a reflection of the sun. Verses read soothingly, achingly, reminiscent of the self when it wasn’t so far below in the reaches of the heavens. Kindred hearts who whisper comfort and love, better than the one I never knew.

And these balms work their magic. Or rather, time does. Time lets it fade away like dust and specks of empty spores of regret. The balms soothe and nurture as they ought to. But time perfects the memory, or lack of, and soon, too soon, all is well again.

One day, when time and distance deem it well enough to test the cracks that have tempered their way into nothing, someone will mention my name. And you, who so willingly tried to forget it, will have a ridiculous, almost fond remembrance of me and you will say, ‘Oh, her. Yes. Nice girl. A little silly, but harmless. Such a long time ago.’ And you’ll smile, wistful, smarting.

It’s amusing how time and distance heals cracks and curses.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  1 Comment

In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

23Sep08

Salaam Laylatul-Qadr.

We seek the last ten nights. We seek the contents of that most beautiful of nights in the most beautiful of months – even if, from the distance, it seems like uglier things have never played out in such a month as this.

Some people find a semblance of Imam al-Ghazzali from behind iron bars. Some people strive their way with good, honest effort (cheers, Sumeyye).

And most people find this the ideal month for change.

This piece by Dr. Azly Rahman says it like few can:

We have deeply racialized human beings that are running neutral machines. We have ethnocentric leaders running humane systems.  We have allowed imperfection and evolving fascism to run our system. We have placed capitalists of culture behind our wheels of industrial progress; people who have the dinosaur brain of ketuanan this or that. We have created these monsters and have unleashed them to run our educational, political, economic, and cultural systems.  We have Frankenstein-ised our Merdeka.

Azly Rahman
http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/

Growing up in a Malay kampong in Johor Bahru, having been born in a British Military hospital in Singapore, schooled in Kuantan, Seremban, Shah Alam and moving from one realm of cultural experience to the next, living in from one enclave to another in the process of being schooled and in the process of being and becoming an educator, ending up in a town a half and hour’s drive from New York City where I have lived for several years, I sometimes wonder if all these makes me a “cultural construction” of “multi-ethnicity” or a “Malay” still? Or — how “Malay” am I still? Or — what is a
Malay”? as I would ask what is an “American”?

Here in the United States where I teach a course called “Cross-Cultural Perspectives” in which trying to engage my students in the works of Edward Said, Clifford Geertz, Renato Rosaldo, and the like, I find myself again, having to interrogate my “subjectivity and objectivity” as a “culturally-constructed being” in my attempt to play the role of Socrates in dialogue with my students in our exploration of the multiple meaning of culture.

Each semester is a learning experience,  teaching me newer ideas of what “culture, race, and ethnicity” means. I look forward to the intensive classroom discussions by the “hybrid and hyphenated human beings” in my class — those whose family background present a rich tapestry of ethnicity in a sea of creativity called the human race.

I have had pure Afghans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, Turks, Greeks, Irish, Australians,  Ghanaian, Nigerian, Russian, Israeli, Cuban, Iranian, Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, Australian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Jamaican, Egyptian, Bangladeshi, Saudi Arabian, and a hybrid of all many of these. There were Indonesians too. But no Malaysians yet.

My first question on the first day of class to them is: how multicultural are we? How do we see culture as a “construct” that will enable human progress towards peace, social justice, and liberation? These are indeed big words I have set them to explore.

Is race and ethnicity an illusion and a mental construction? Or is it real as real as body and flesh we fight with using and used by the rhetoric of nationalism in honor of our country right or wrong? How might education help bring about the desired changes in the way we translate concepts to practice?

Malaysians had just celebrated her 51st. Merdeka/Independence celebration and merely a few months after the most decisive and exciting by-election in history; one in which not only many are saying “the political fate of the country lies” but also one in which race and religion has become ever more prominent as a decisive factors.

Read the rest here.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment