Thoughts from a continent away

04May08

In the spur of the moment, not an hour ago, I called Lubna on her mobile.

I still find it insane how much we’ve bonded, despite never having met. This is only our third phone call (I count that first time as TWO, because I had to call you again, Lubs) and it’s so rare to find someone so easy to talk to. And I guess it shows that we both keep blogs, because our coversation had a theme.

Lubna was asking me to go back home. Malaysia, home. Because I had a duty to my people, and because we both knew that there were far too many things to be righted back there.

But it’s funny, how despite my greater loves (family and food) being there, that I should still be so reluctant to return. Almost as if I no longer regard it as home but in name. And sometimes not even then. Whenever we mention the word ‘home’, Aisha gives me a funny look when I seek to clarify what she meant.

‘Of course, Malaysia. What did you think I meant?’

Because I live here. I may have spent 18 years of my life in the suburban comforts of Subang Jaya, and laid claim to my mother’s village in Kelantan, and love the island I was born in like no other place, but I did not GROW there. And I may feel like a stranger many a time, still, in this continent with it’s bemusing culture and odd vocabulary, but I know this city more than I knew my own hometown.

‘Don’t be a kacang lupakan kulit,’ she told me, using that famous proverb. ‘You have so much to DO here.’

I seriously feel torn. My heart shared between two continents, drawn across an ocean, all 6454 kilometres. That place is still mine. I don’t deny that. But I have a life here.

I know my reasons are purely selfish. Just because I felt more of a stranger in my homeland does not validate my intention to remain where I am. It’s also selfish in the way that my dear friends threaten to marry me off to a ‘nice Turkish bloke’ just so they can keep me here. It takes me some convincing them that they need not go to such extents, because they are enough to make me want to stay.

Yet when I read stories like this, I wonder if I should look for any excuse to remain here.

The fact that someone out there is living a life that I can’t imagine, yet which I can possibly fix, just undoes me.

I suppose. I might have to go back somehow.

Filed under: Malaysia, contentions, running away, self-reflections   |  1 Comment

Fall upon my knees

03May08

“And I have chosen you,
so listen to that which is inspired to you.
Verily, I am Allah!
There is none worthy of worship but I,
so worship Me
and offer prayer perfectly for My remembrance.”
[Taha 13-14]

Two evenings ago, I had my bi-annual meltdown.

It was the same old, same old. Feelings of inadequacy and utter stupidity, compounded by an impossible thumping pain around the circumference of my skull. The people and places and things gone wrong spun me into a little whirlwind and when a loved one asked me if I was alright, that was when I cracked. She offered a hug I couldn’t take, because it wouldn’t do to cry in the middle of a street.

I made my way, past the kindness of friends and strangers, into the prayer room. It was thankfully empty, and I clutched my head in my hands and started praying hard. My heart reached for its limits and cried for its Maker, and I began to sob.

Making my way home, hands in my pockets and stiff from the cold, I took my time and breathed in the fading autumn. The winter breeze had come, but the autumn leaves were still stubbornly holding onto their branches, and it gave an odd air to the city streets. Cars were milling up at the traffic lights, making their way home; joggers in ridiculously tiny shorts were striding past me, chasing after the last of the daylight. I walked, chasing nothing in particular, except for maybe peace of mind.

I passed by an Orthodox Church halfway down Royal Parade, and as usual, glanced inside. Sometimes they had mass on Friday evenings; sometimes there would be a funeral service, and I’d catch a glimpse of the congregation, all grey and wrinkles, staring straight into their future.

But that day, as with most days, the church was empty. The lights were dimmed. Sunlight shone through the stained glass windows and into the cavernous space.

And as usual, I wondered what it would be like, to be in a church. All alone.

When I was a child, in a moment of defiance, I was determined to enter the neighbourhood church, just down the street where I lived. We children grew an aura of mystique over the church – childhood folklore had it that staring at a cross long enough could make you Christian by default, and no longer Muslim. Even though its huge, lusciously green grounds were open to everyone, the church and steeple seemed like a forbidden space; as if stepping into one were the equivalent of apostasy. As with so many childhood myths, we kept these stories to ourselves, believing them to be absolute truth.

I was nine, and I asked my father about how a church looked like so many times that he walked into the compound with me and made me look for myself.

I lasted up to the donations box and the notice boards, before I took one look past the wooden doors and down the aisle, and ran for home as fast as I could, so I could confess to my mother.

Thinking this, two afternoons ago, I mulled the memory over a background of Cat Stevens and his melancholic guitar. I may have grown older, but I wasn’t any wiser. Each blatant glance into the church still gave me a little pang of fear – of what, I wasn’t quite certain. My mother made apostasy sound so bad that I feared it most as a child. Maybe there were still remnants of that illogical fear, that stepping into a Christian space made you one by default.

And still, childhood wonderment aside, I could imagine walking into a warm, dimly-lit room; all wooden walls and a stage at the end of the aisle; the pulpits set so low that you have to look upwards to see the preacher – it gives the image of speaking to a higher power.

And with all the internal conflict an hour before, I could easily understand how walking down the aisle and kneeling at its end, face turned heavenwards, could feel like a solution to one’s burdens.

‘It always comes down to one thing, honey

Still I kneel upon the floor.’

-Cat Stevens, How Can I Tell You

But while kneeling on one’s knees, as seems to be the popular Christian stereotype, may seem to some as a humble gesture enough, I know of one that is more natural to me than any other:

Prostration.

Knees touch the ground, aligned with the toes; palms pressing against the ground and leaning against its warmth; forehead on the floor, subjugating everything else in a moment. There is nothing like it. It feels like coming home to One who knows you better; who knows you best. And if you’re blessed enough, tears pour down like rain, the mercy of the heavens.

And in Islam, the world is my prayer space. Sometimes, I prefer praying in the park without a mat – letting the grass and earth and moss touch my forehead is a reminder that I am still alive and able to change. My prayer is not limited to four mere walls, and each move, and each word is a gesture of grace and humility and gratitude eternal.

I have a friend who searched for God and peace during Fajr in a park; praying in solitude and amidst the trees and sleepy possums and stirring birds. She says that she found what she was looking for.

And so I understand the idea of the church – of being awe-inspired and humbled into feeling that God is All-Aware. I can only compare it to a mosque, and I must say, churches seem to scare one into submission, while a mosque is just there to facilitate and inspire.

But give me the fields and sand and earth and snow anytime. The remembrance of God should and does exist beyond four walls.

‘…The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for
praying and a thing to perform Tayammum, therefore anyone of my
followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due…’

- Narrated by Jabir bin ‘Abdullah, [Volume 1, Book 7, Number 331]

Filed under: moments, remembrance, self-reflections   |  3 Comments

‘Broken parts that litter the night sky like stars’

27Mar08

I really, really, really should be studying. I know I should.

And yet here I am, googling the web for proof that Nike still belongs to my boycotting category, because I think I’ve fallen for a pair of Converse All-Stars. As if I didn’t bring enough shoes back with me this year, and as if that was all it took for me to feel better about myself, or even ace through this semester. Talking about high-ended principles are much easier than living them, believe me.

As I was googling with the keywords, ‘nike, zionist boycott’, I came across my old Blogspot blog. It was an entry from long ago, back in 2006, when I was idealistic as never before, and before reality hit me smack in the face. I felt like laughing. I felt like crying. I would attribute both to my cramps, but hey. Truth be told, there is something about reading your diary from years ago that pulls you into a time warp and threatens to cloud you over. There’s something else about reading public statements from yesteryear. It makes me fear for the fate of my blog in the years to come, really. It might be too much for the future me to behold.

Oh, the angst. The righteous fever of the young and utterly jaded and virtuous with conviction. Not that virtue is a bad thing – I mean, it is virtue after all. Only despite how righteous and daring it seemed back then, it seems like nothing more than naivete now.

Not that I don’t still believe in the boycott, although there are times I wish I still did with the same level of conviction. It’s just that the fever from before seems to have subsided, and I’d be suprised if no one else has noticed. I’m the last person who realizes anything that’s changed within me. It’s always my darling housemates and their alternately blunt/intuitive statements, along with some crude observations by acquaintances, because my closest friends are too blinded by love to care. I know I used to rant about compromising one’s principles with such vitriol as scared and bemused as many people, I am sure, but I find myself doing it all the time now. It takes people reminding me, and yet I wonder if I still believe in the same sort of things in the same sort of way anymore.

I was reminded of it throughout the six-day Seniors Camp ‘08, organized by Young Muslims of Australia’s (YMA) Futuwwah. It was an awesome experience, which started out a little daunting with all the noise of the younger kids, all familiar with each other but alien to me; but soon enough we learned to live together and create a little microcommunity, right there in the deeps of the Yarra Valley. Six days flew by and before I knew it, we were on our way back to the rackish bustle of the city, and back to cars and smoke and restless hearts.

Ustadh Mahmud Kurkcu was splendid, masyaAllah, in his undeterring focus on us regaining our spiritual bearings and embracing our Islamic identity wholeheartedly and unapologetically. Rather than the spirited, almost agitated talks one pretty much expects to hear by Muslim scholars from non-Muslim communities, Ustadh Mahmud was quiet and meditative; stern and loving. He joked and poked fun at us and disciplined us throughout, but always, he kept on driving point after point into our hearts.

For the first time in the longest time – for the longest time since coming here – I truly and honestly began to cry again, for reasons other than me.

Now that I am back, I seem to be stuck at a crossroads between action and decision, and principle and conviction, and of logic and nafs. I re-learned so many old things that I’m stuttering to start; I had so many epiphanies I could only struggle to try and explain. Too many words for too many dreams, and not enough being done to claim heart to. I’m just, as always, as always have been, looking for my way (which is not necessarily THE way), I suppose.

I’ll let you know when I get there. But for now, one step at a time, insyaAllah, insyaAllah. And may we all find our home right where we are.

‘She said, that she would prefer a broken neck to another broken heart/I said “Remember, even the beauty of birth leaves it’s own scars/And know that you will find your home right where you are”‘

-Amir Sulaiman, She Said, I Prefer a Broken Neck…

Filed under: calm before the storm, changes, cold   |  6 Comments

falling. slowly.

16Mar08

I used to operate my blog under the pretense that it was to be impersonal.

LIE. Because the idea of a blog is to infect it with your personality and see how people like it. For some, it may be the idea of pacing out your thoughts in an open forum – a window for people to look at and yet still be separate from, like a scene in a novel – that appeals to them. But the inherent truth, I am afraid, is that blogging is just another spectre of popularity in a culture that seems to care for little else.

The popular thing now is to write in blogs in cryptic language, pertaining and appealing only to those who know them best, and those who wish to know them better. And I do not deny that some people truly write just for the sake of writing, or to clear out their heads, but the process requires a sense of self-awareness, and increasingly a sense of self-censorship. Nobody would write that which they felt they did not have an audience for. They would mould their words into, at times, senseless sentences, just to keep up with the status quo. Essentially, bloggers begin to betray the very essence of individuality that blogging used to stand for.

Blogs have become a mark of vanity, almost. Software appliques like reader tickers, which count off the number of views the blog has had, as well as ‘Best Blog’ contests with their virtual plaques for nominees, attest as syndromes of this perception. I would like to see one avidly-read blogger who doesn’t check his comments page now and then, just to see how appealing their previous posts may have been to the masses. I would like to know one who has not tweaked his/her style to retain their readership, subconsciously entertaining their tastes rather than his/her own voice. Evangelists and athiests and liberals and fanatics alike have their fair share at virtual stakes, and in a world where people connect and bond through wireless relations, these often faceless voices represent the inner selves of actual people in the world.

They say that the internet is a means of self-expression. But it seems to be, also, a growing nest of self-delusion. It is no longer in movies that we are asked to suspend belief, but also in the most popular means of communication the world right now offers.

I would be lying if I said that I do not have any stake in this virtual unreality. The fact that I do and continue to says something about my participation in the patterns that mould how this world moves. But, akin to my reality, my involvement lies in communities undefined by political correctness, and I still find myself on the outside of things.

Am I criticizing blogging or bloggers or myself? A bit of everything, I suppose. It’s just hard to ignore, the (philosophical, if Summeye will allow me to say) question about a virtual existence. Some people escape themselves online, while others nurture further that which distinguishes them from people. It is, I do not deny, an oversimplification, but one which perhaps addresses the polarizing ability of the internet and just what we use it for today.

The root of it all, for me, came when I was trying to find a topic to write about for my blog, seeing as how I had neglected it for so long; I felt it incumbent on me, for the small circle that denotes my readers. But instead of racking my brains for a common theme in the mundane pattern of my life which is marked only by the little things I have difficulty explaining outright, a semi-epiphany struck me, in which I realized that I began my first blog with the ideal that what I wrote, I did not owe to anyone. And I was hit by another thought which told me, “Impersonal and objective, you said? You lie.”

‘Lie’. The word began to be associated to the word ‘blog’, and I began to dread reading my own words in the last few posts. Too vague, too emotional, and too weak of attempts at being mysterious and fluent and… cool. All the things that I had never thought I would attempt at. It was as if one of the last of my unwavering principles had abandoned me out of shame. For though I had always had a mental criticism of the masses and their tactics, I had never thought of succumbing to the whole wash. But I had. And yet, I don’t know many who haven’t.

I know of one. And it requires a staunch distancing of the personal which, in truth, I haven’t managed with anything. I am too emotional for such repression. Said person keeps a blog because that is the least known part of him/her, and thus vouches for his/her privacy. Said person also thinks of the internet as a means rather than an ends, and that is where the difference lies, I suppose.

And so my critique begins at the popular blog(ger) and ends at our perception of the internet as less of a tool, but more of a means of replacing those relationships we couldn’t begin face-to-face. Cowards, every time. And since I fall into that category, I should end this on the personal note I shouldn’t hide from anymore: I don’t know how to break away or face myself if I don’t.

Filed under: blogger, contentions   |  3 Comments

the iceman cometh indeed.

10Mar08

There is plenty to be grateful to Allah for.

The sweet guy on the tram who gave me his Metcard after I started asking around for change for five dollars.

The huge gaps in my timetable.

Still being alive after narrowly missing a speeding utility vehicle as I left the tram.

But most of all. Well, almost most of all, because there are things that don’t even come close on the scale:

We gained FIVE.

FIVE.

FIVE is a new favourite number. FIVE is a new greeting. FIVE is a new happy wake-up by a housemate. FIVE is a magic word now, carrying power and strength and spirit.

My father went to bed at midnight local time, content that the Main State was safely guarded and brought home. And then he woke up, and the first thing he said when I called him was,

“Alhamdulillah.”

Followed by:

“NOTHING can spoil my day. My day is brilliant. Today is wonderful. This is just one in a long line of wonderful blessings – the other day Man U and Chelsea got knocked out in the FA Cup as well, which I feel is perfect retribution for -”

Reader, you get the picture.

One thing I’m sure of. My cousin spent her wedding feeling relieved that she managed to fit it around the elections and doubly elated with the results.

Selamat Pengantin Baru, Angah dan Ed.

(If there were any doubts before about where I swayed politically, let there be no doubts now.)

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break’s over. what’s next?

03Mar08

Busy weeks, and busy days.

Living alone was rather enjoyable, if a little lonely. True enough, it didn’t last very long, with Sars popping in for an afternoon away from the rest of the world, and the emails flying back and forth between the members of the committee. Hours were spent walking; hundreds were spent on groceries; seconds were spent remembering.

Now loneliness is a distant memory, and truth be told, rather missed.

There was a script at the tip of the tongue for a couple of days. It went on and on about everything the Islamic Society has set out to achieve, and then it truly hit me – we never spent much time thinking about what was to come. We just dealt with whatever was thrown our way. It got me selling personal wishes and hopes for the coming year, and wondering where our collective vision has been hiding all this while.

It’ll take some time to find it, but it’ll appear just in time, God willing.

The student book is filling up slowly. People toss their diaries next to mine and events appear, seemingly out of nowhere. A five-day spiritual retreat from distractions. A networking conference with impressive female professionals in Sydney. A weekend Islamic conference. Lecture upon lecture confronting everything from Jews to Palestinian refugees to Lebanon to multiculturalism (I see a pattern, don’t you?). A barbie and a lunch. A mock debate and a meeting. No, two meetings. It should be madness, like a creature pulling hair and yelling incoherently.

Surprisingly, there is nothing like it yet. Because perhaps vision is merely hopeful wishing for that which may not happen.

Another primary, another stylish music video, and more celebrities. More brilliant oratory, more waving hands, more cheering fans, more hope. You can’t possibly blame the man for trying. You can’t blame his ideals and his wish for a better country, where people have begun to turn their backs away from the gutsy glory of years before. You can’t prod at his skin and blame it for representing unity and youth and equality. You can’t poke his brain and divulge his political mind to compare it to the rest. He wants to be given a chance. Given it, the odds are stacked up high, teetering. Those who do not swoon can see and shift themselves away.

Despite the naivete and the obstacles and the fear, whole nations live on vision.

Goodbyes were said not too long ago. Wistful and brisk; tearful with a sickening gleam of shock. Too many too soon. But life strolls down that path, and life doesn’t look back as often as you wish it would.

Vision, for the most part, is keeping history in the past and using it to build the future.

Filed under: calm before the storm   |  Leave a Comment

(Not) In the mood.

22Feb08

Oh please.

Of all the things. Of all the things in this huge, bleeding (and I mean that literally), overcrowded, overshuffled, overterrorised world. Of all the remarkable things in the world to ponder, to investigate, to marvel at. I had THIS.

I make no qualms about my political affiliations, although, only having recently been considered legal in my country – speaking of which, Government, don’t you think it’s a bit ancient an age to take someone seriously? – my word hasn’t accounted for much but a lot of vented anger. And it worries me, yes, that I seem to be a perpetual rebel, be it culturally or politically. It’s worrisome for when the side I wing for wins.

But that aside. I mean, REALLY. If there is no other reason to vote for the other side, people, let’s just do it because THIS one thinks we’re all brainless dolts, and they apparently plan to keep us that way. All the better for them to dictate with.

We are not Cuba. We are not Zimbabwe. We are not Australia (oh, they had their elections in oh-seven) and no, ma’am, we are NOT the US of A. Let’s not even mention their respectable level of democracy, because oh no, the only thing we can see is their secularism and their East-bashing and their bigotry and their Islamophobia and their inherent need to force their own rules down the whole planet’s throat and that they’re the darned closest this century has to colonialism.

Oh no.

But I will not overrule that we could, possibly, maybe, sort of be Kenya. Because hey, where I come from, people can lose in every other district and still win the electoral seat.

BIG hint.

Sigh. Forgive the Aaron Sorkin-esque narrative. But I’ve been watching Studio 60, and he DOES do peeved very, very well. And, well, I like watching peeved people. Reminds me I’m not quite alone, you know?

So. Call this retaliatory. Call this revenge. I have read enough politics to know that in a land where cyber-laws are barely even considered (unless they have racked their balding heads trying to steal the headline – but with the scandals and the murders and the kidnappings and the espionage-turned-homicides, it’s pretty hard to compete when all you do is cheat and steal on a daily basis) that when there is scant jurisdiction, there will be no verdict. Especially when there are no names, and for all you know, the link could’ve been a copy-and-paste accident.

Oops.

‘Not scared.’ Let’s put that on a t-shirt.

Filed under: changes, cold, pedas   |  Leave a Comment

Hormotional

09Feb08

I hate Dextrometrophan Hydrogenbromide.

I admit, I am rather prejudiced against pharmaceuticals in general, because of a highly effective anti-drug campaign here that made me scared of getting addicted to Vicks as a child. But this apparent hatred of this new cough medication, I assure you, is justified. And why, you ask?

Other than the high I got after accidentally overdosing myself with Benadryl and consequently Dextro last week, I suffered two major emotional outbursts today, after following the doctor’s advice and actually taking the meds as prescribed. One of them took place in the car with my father, who was quite bewildered and rather frustrated. The other was self-contained and solitary, and the resultant tears were mostly directed towards Dextro. Today, dear audience, I have had a glimpse into the hormotional nightmare pregnancy can be.

Not very pretty, folks.

And truth be told, my father didn’t deserve what he got. I don’t regret the words that were said, but how I said it. And the location, too. It didn’t have to be in the middle of KL, in his car, two days before Chinese New Year and right smack in the traffic congestion. Trying to remember everything I blubbered is traumatising. Trying to imagine myself in Papa’s shoes at that moment, even more so. I only realized I was under the influence of a drug after I was mostly done. After which I begrudgingly apologized.

You see, our family isn’t the ideal communicating family. If all families have their flaws, this is our main one. It’s a common problem in the extended family on my mother’s, but it’s weird considering how fiercely close we are. As my mother says, we Saws don’t talk – we argue. Ever since my brother and I entered school, my parents’ little utopia of darling, obedient Georgian children crashed and burned. We learned to talk back. We started picking at each other – in the early years, I was the antagonist. This, I believe, cultivated my brother’s feeling of duty to be a pest to me and everyone else in the house.

We yap at each other – we groan and whine for our mother from upstairs, which gives her much grief. This is then underscored when we conveniently forget our earlier issues and laugh at the latest Disney-manufactured teen crack-soap.

We talk a mile-a-minute and conduct full debates in the family car, arguing voices included. The fact that little brother is studying to be a lawyer has added new dimensions to the argument, where we collectively ask him to get off his freshman’s high horse and ideals and get on the bandwagon.

It’s been better since both of us have left home. My parents have a quieter house, even if the only person they get to face is each other. They are able to go on those dates they used to sneak off to by themselves. Without my brother as my foil, my parents and I have managed some real civilized conversations ourselves. It usually involves my mother and I ganging up on my father’s aging peeves and discussing my brother’s newfound passion for the law.

Still, despite being in each other’s faces all the time, the one person I can really talk to is my father. He used to be a really talkative person, my mother tells me, before he had kids. I guess he just gave up trying to compete for airtime. He can be really quiet and suppressive, whereas the rest of us throw everything out in the confines of the family car. He’ll just bite his knuckle, lean on his door, and continue driving; offer the odd anecdote and press the point when it gets out of hand.

On the rare occasion that I’m sitting in the passenger’s seat in Melbourne, I really miss my father. That’s how we talk – side by side; occasional glances and agreeing pouts; unrestrained laughter. We both lean forward at the same angle in the car seat when we get enthusiastic. I can tell my father anything and everything. I know that most of what I say reaches my mom, anyway. I just prefer him, because my mother’s invested a lot in me being a proper lady. Despite myself, I hate to disappoint, and I mostly do. In fact, this summer I’ve done my best to acquaint her with the fact that I won’t be her ideal daughter. None can say I haven’t tried.

But with Papa, I’m just daddy’s little girl. I can and will do wrong, and there’s nothing that can’t be improved upon, but he’s not so worried that I won’t meet his expectations. I can be upfront with him about who I am and what kind of rubbish I won’t take. We can talk like adults; he can still scold me like a child when I need it. We tut and tsk each other for hours in the car; we wave our hands in the air when we can find no other way to stress a point and yes, it’s a risky thing for the driver to do. We pour our hearts out and get brutally honest.

Car rides is just our thing.

And I’d properly end this, but the Dextrometrophan Hydrogenbromide is doing its thing again, and the tearducts are working overtime. Dang.

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  4 Comments

Across ponds and trenches and timezones.

01Feb08

I’ve been reading Jeremy Clarkson aka Tall Guy in BBC’s Top Gear. I like his style – it’s frank, blunt and hilarious at times. He makes fun of his eldest daughter’s athletic skills and names his pet hens after England’s best football players, which further upsets him when the neighbourhood fox decapitates them. He talks politics and country living; aeronautics and pop culture. Through every single absurd crack he makes at the system, he never fails to drum in the point.

He’s converted me to a show about automobiles. And he’s convinced me that tertiary education isn’t a requirement to be smart, and vice versa.

Don’t worry, Ma. I’m studying on contract. I won’t bail.

I was doing some ironing yesterday, which pleased my mother for my effort, but irritated her for my slowness. It’s funny how it takes me forever to get used to the changes at home and where everything is kept, before it’s time for me to leave again. On one hand, I’m getting comfortable again, at home. On the other hand, Melbourne pushes me out of my comfort zone. And I need that right now.

Now, I was ironing, and flipping through channels. I landed on one of the 300-channels, and I braced myself for an Asian channel without subtitles.

Imagine my surprise when I landed on Korea’s KBS World, which was showing TV Kindergarten Playland. And it featured a cartoon about corruption. With subtitles.

I kid you not. I mean, these are Koreans. I do not like to kid about or with Koreans. They take everything seriously. When it comes to fashion, they mismatch clothes with panache, and seriously. Judging from the lack of scandal in their government, they manage institutions seriously. They take drama seriously. They measure a male actor’s skill by the ease with which he draws on his emotions i.e. cries when the heroine leaves his character and he is struck by the inconvenient epiphany that she is his soulmate. So you know they’d take a show titled TV Kindergarten Playland seriously.

Well, as it turns out, they take corruption in politics seriously, too.

It was an adorable watercolour cartoon about Churchill. Yes, the man who led Great Britain into WWII and came up with some of the best British quotes in history. In this cartoon, which I caught late, I presume he was scolded by a police officer for doing something immoral or legally unacceptable because hey, what are the odds of that for a man of power. Anyway, he was so impressed that he decided to call up the chief and ask that the officer be promoted.

The chief promptly refused, saying that the officer was only doing his job, and insisting that it wasn’t anything great.

And it ended with a fabulous kitsch shot of his office overlooking the Tower Bridge, and a Korean monologue about how proud Churchill was that he governed a nation that abided by the law.

Did I tell you that this was the only bit of the show with subtitles? Now you know that they take corruption seriously.

Although maybe they take artistic liberties seriously too, because this Churchill had a curly-wurly moustache.

I was so struck by the show that I didn’t change the channel for a while. Instead, I ironed my father’s irritatingly cotton shirts and thought, well, if Malaysia had some cartoons like that, then maybe some lawyers won’t be driven to rubbish defence that undermines everyone else’s intelligence and definitely screws his/her own.

I mean, really, if I go around telling people that “I might look like me, and sound like me, but could possibly not be me”, it’s a telling sign that someone has given me a good whack on my head.

Yesterday I watched President Bush’s final State of the Union. The partisanship amused me, and I can live a whole year without ever seeing or hearing a standing ovation, thanks. He went on a monologue about Iran several times in quite random conjectures, and I am now convinced that the man is not responsible for those Bushism t-shirts. I wholly blame his speechwriter. He’s a smart man, if greedy, but his Communications Director is rubbish and should be told so.

This year, I know more about the US government than I do about my own, and it’s all because of a TV series known as The West Wing. With President Bartlett, I’ve so far gone through two State of the Union speeches, and I was keen to compare Martin Sheen with Walker Bush, you see. But there was something that happened with the speech that wasn’t covered in the show:

A nationally-broadcast Oppositions Response speech followed the State of the Union.

How about that. Since 1966, it has been tradition for the Opposition to agree or refute whatever the President says. And they must be broadcast on national television, and immediately after the President walks out of Capitol Hill. America may be a republic, but they sure play democracy a fair bit.

Today I drifted to CNN after TV Kindergarten Playground brought out its hand puppets and hosts with perfect skin and funkier costumes than their Western counterparts. McCain won the Florida primary, and Clinton is trying to clear up a mess. And in between, there was the final part of a report of Europe’s sex trade. Today it focused on Romania, where they rescued a girl called Monica and took her to a safehouse. The reporter’s face as he looked at her was just so tender that my heart went out to him.

Monica’s initial fears, we were told, were that she couldn’t live a normal life. She had been a prostitute since she was nine. That was all she knew. She felt unfamiliar and scared in the safehouse, where she was protected and loved.

I cannot imagine being afraid that I couldn’t adapt to normal life – one that is safer, more secure. It’s mind-boggling that while I type this, someone has grown up thinking that giving up her body is an acceptable form of barter and a measure of loyalty. It’s awful to imagine. I thank God that I can’t. And yet.

So I can re-watch The West Wing and marvel at the smarts involved in talking politics. I can comment on the US presidential election and call the shots on the Royal Commission Investigation and criticize the failures of what weak democracies lead the world. I can tut at Musharraf, wince for Aung-San, and boo at Olmert.

Merely talking about failed policies is so, so much easier than living it.

And so I call on my peers and my elders, wherever they may be, that when given the chance to vote this year, that they forget about loyalties and monetary benefits and photogenecity. Celebrate democracy, why don’t you, and vote so that those who vow to stand by the people and work for the people get elected.

2008 is an important year for too many people, for apathy to be fashionable any more.

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Moving.

12Jan08

2007 was a year for change. Noticeable change, if more subtle than those experienced in the previous year. A year for new friends and acquaintances; more inside jokes; new family-away-from-family. I will remember 2007 as the year I became more confident of the person I am, because I became more of the person I always was, instead of a person I thought I believed in. If that made sense.

In 2007, I grew to be more myself than ever before.

In 2008, I expect a new precedent for change. A more confident me. A more diplomatic (if a tad political) version of the tactless klutz of high school years before. I don’t remember a year in which the Roman and Hijiriah ‘New Years’ coincided so closely. Maybe it’s symbolic, I wouldn’t know – I honestly don’t care much for new years, symbolic or otherwise. Who needs New Year Resolutions? New Day Resolutions. Now, that’s more my thing.

2008 will doubtless be memorable. If I want a decent shot at doing my honours, this is the year to buck up. This will be my final technical year in Melbourne. I began my New Year in Ireland, and spent the next day falling in love with Edinburgh, a place I know I will one day visit again – the city where I rediscovered the beauty of living, and a new faith in dreams. This year I take on new responsibilities with a fresh outlook on life and with far more self-confidence (which may often border on arrogance, in these early, early days) than I have had since I was four years old.

This year I turn 21, and God help the person who prevents me from voting in the upcoming election, because I will not forgo this right I have waited 10 years to qualify.

This year, I’ve found that I have outgrown Friendster in lieu of Facebook. And in the same way, I have grown tired of Blogger, and effective today, I am moving to the greener virtual pastures of WordPress.

http://www.syazwinarants.wordpress.com

In the next few weeks, expect more changes as I get the hang of WordPress through my usual way of never reading the manual.

Till then.

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