Blogging on the Bus ( or BotB for short)

Why is it that I didn't find out about the joys of blogging via email
earlier?? This is so convenient! Would have saved me from that one
year no update thing .....

I am currently stuck in a clusterfuck known as KL traffic, which
is so bad that I'm not even out from the town yet and I'm in it. Uh huh, no
kidding. We are moving at a slow, snail pace, which basically means
that the bus driver hits the brakes every 2 seconds. Have you ever
felt that super nauseaus feeling you get when you're in a car and
someone else is driving and they keep accelerating and braking? Yeah,
I'm developing one of those right now. The whole physics of "a body in
motion tends to stay in motion" is knocked into my brain everytime I
get these vehicle-induced migraines.

I already miss driving. At least when I was traffic, I was mad but i wasn't
nauseaus. Good thing I'm dieting; nothing to puke out. On the other
hand, bussing means I get to blog while we're stuck in traffc, which
is pretty cool :)

I'm going to start assigning words to my day that reflects how my day
was. Today's word is "sardines". Why sardines? Well, I need a couple
of the canned ones, for one. And for another, I feel like a sardine
packed in a can based on how closely seated beside friend of mine 

Note to other people: my ass is big. I am a big guy. If you are
similarly big, please sit next to one of of the skinny people. I don't
need to simulataneously be in a sauna while I'm on a bus. It is not
cute for me to get out of the bus and the whole side of one leg looks
sweaty because it has been in constant contact with yours for the past
hour.

Suddenly I'm thinking need one of those Mini Coopers. Now if I can
just scrape the money for it .....

The art of history.....

I read this last week when I was waiting at the doctor's office, it's a little snippet from old issue of Newsweek:

In translation to English, it sounds like... the word... you know... sometimes language is not so convenient and sometimes I'm embarrassed."
Fuk King Kwok, a Chinese immigrant, on his decision to change his name to Andy Kwok after people repeatedly mispronounced his name. 

The poor guy, of course his name was supposed to be pronounced differently, but as usual the Americans mess up everyone's name. Sorry to those who feel insulted, but you do!! Some of the people I've known  can't pronounce my name right, and mine isn't that hard to begin with. Other people who have made the same decision to change their names are Monica Pinas and April Showers.

Another person who's name was.. ermm.. made fun of is Jack Abramoff. The perpetrator: George Clooney. Here's what debonair George has to say about Abramoff:

"Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of your last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up."
Actor George Clooney, thanking lobbyist Jack Abramoff "just because" in an acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. Frank Abramoff, the lobbyist's father, called the speech a "glib and ridiculous attack" and Clooney "an idiot."

Ouch. Looks like not everyone is a fan of Clooney. To be fair, while Abramoff is an embezzling scumbag who pretty much stole money from native Americans and helped raise a lot of money for the Bush campaign, y'know what, I don't feel like being fair. Yes, it was a low blow by George , but considering the hatred a lot of people must be feeling for Mr. Jack-Off, whatever that is thrown to him is pretty much well deserved. here's the bit that I read from Wikipedia that I was really shocked about:

Government of Malaysia

Abramoff's team also represented the government of Malaysia, and worked toward improving Malaysian relations with the United States, particularly with trade relations. Because Grover Norquist worked with a lobbying firm that represented Anwar Ibrahim, some have alleged a connection between the two, and theorized that Abramoff and Norquist were running a scam in which Norquist's firm would create issues that Abramoff's firm would then take care of. Abramoff also reportedly wanted to spread his influence deep into the Muslim world through a front group called the Lexington Group.

What a low life. What an asshole. Five years and 10 months in jail isn't long enough for Abramoff. I wish the US doesn't have the plea bargain policy so that he would get what he deserves. I'm just mad right now because for the past few days, I've just been reading articles that just tugs on my heart strings. Some things in life are just not fair. Take for example, the marine shooting incident in Haditha. Here's an excerpt from the artical in Time magazine.

Eman says she "heard a lot of shooting, so none of us went outside. Besides, it was very early, and we were all wearing our nightclothes." When the Marines entered the house, they were shouting in English. "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the Koran," she claims, "and we heard shots." According to Eman, the Marines then entered the living room. "I couldn't see their faces very well—only their guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." She claims the troops started firing toward the corner of the room where she and her younger brother Abdul Rahman, 8, were hiding; the other adults shielded the children from the bullets but died in the process.

Eman says her leg was hit by a piece of metal and Abdul Rahman was shot near his shoulder. "We were lying there, bleeding, and it hurt so much. Afterward, some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting 'Why did you do this to our family?' And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'We didn't do it. The Americans did.'" Time was unable to speak with the only other survivor of the raid, Eman's younger brother, who relatives say is traumatized by the experience. U.S. military officials familiar with the investigation say that after entering the house, the Marines walked into a corridor with closed doors on either side. They thought they heard the clack-clack sound of an AK-47 being racked and readied for fire. (Eman and relatives who were not in the house insist that no guns were there.) Believing they were about to be ambushed, the Marines broke down the two doors simultaneously and fired their weapons. The officials say the military has confirmed that seven people were killed inside the house--including two women and a child. The Marines also reported seeing a man and a woman run out of the house; they gave chase and shot and killed the man. Relatives say the woman, Hiba Abdullah, escaped with her baby.

It hurts to even think about grown military men shooting towards a 9-year-old girl and her younger brother. while the whole artcile is heart wrenching, here's the portion that shocked me:

The U.S. has paid relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the 15 dead civilians, plus smaller payments for the injured. But nothing can bring back all that was taken from 9-year-old Eman Waleed on that fateful day last November. She still does not comprehend how, when her father went in to pray with the Koran for the family's safety, his prayers were not answered, as they had been so many times in the past. "He always prayed before, and the Americans left us alone," she says. Leaving, she grabs a handful of candy. "It's for my little brother," she says. "I have to take care of my brother. Nobody else is left."

You can barely live 6 months on $2,500 dollars. Some would argue that due to the exchange rate, it might be more to the Iraqis. Really? Unless USD$2,500 translates to, oh say 20 million in Iraqi currency, I still think it's an unfair trade. A US Court awarded 2.7 million to a woman for simply spilling McDonald's coffee on her lap. When did the chilhood trauma of seeing your family killed weigh less than the trauma of being burned by coffee?

Life isn't supposed to be fair, yes, but it's not suppose to suck like this either.

The Malay...

The reservations some quarters have against the notion of Malay male is some kind of retribution to the paradox of ultra-conservatism, of backwardness, of sexual fetishism and of oppression that engulf these group which many for years have learnt to both love and loathe with the latter now taking center stage in light of current events involving the upholding of moral values and stability of family ties.

Despite these, I for one have not stopped to confess on every road traveled that I'm a Malay through and through, that I am unashamed of being labeled as a serial rapist and incestuous and a wife-beater, for i am very well aware that all these demonizing are retributions of part jealousy part envy by the same quarters for their lacking of their own self identity they thought ought to do them any proud.

Once a good species is now no longer, pronounced some Western-educated, Oprah-motivated feminists of the fairer skin who actually failed to garner the attention of the best of the jewels this near extinct group has to offer (:)). Yet harping on the prejudices and some loophole faults mongered by luck-ridden individuals are ways to mend their broken hearts while the efforts are far from noble, it is destructive for that not all men in this world are born free of shortcomings;and when they claim that they are, one ought to doubt the genuineness of their man-ness.

A threat to human survival is when men can no longer act the way men are supposed to act, when decisions in life are finalized by emotions rather than thoughtful rationals, and when balls are handed over on a silver platter. A greater threat to human existence is when governing is by ideals, not by realism and practicality, which have governed us all for millenniums, and which have ensured us all our survivals from generations to generations.

I am proud to have been born and grown up as a Malay male, for in that I have been warned and taught of the dangers of "dayus" (male subservience) that many men of other descendants have to live with everyday, and the complexities they have to face handling this new age of human extinction unheard of by our forebears in the golden years of human civilizations.

I fear that with the demonizing now raucous and infectious , a species which follows the good old ways of living this life albeit all its discrepancies will vanish from the face of Earth, leaving those with tamed hearts and leashed balls ruling this world with their offspring of the same tamed hearts and leashed balls, unable to pay its due to the once great Shahs of the world, who happened to have tied their balls closely in their crotch (otherwise you and I would not have seen the light of day).

This is maybe a bit chauvinistic, but being a Malay male...this is exactly what we are...and for that, one ought to be grateful...

Epitome of Utter Disgust......

To sum up there are those amongst us who, after having achieved resounding successes in life and career (such as getting scholarships to further tertiary education at overseas institutions and subsequently getting hired at top GLCs), have become forgetful of who they were and what had made them what they are today.

To these people, their successes are the fruits of their own effort and hard work, without realizing that the 'rezeki' that they have received would not have been possible without the contributions of the upper hand who had initially had high hopes of seeing them giving back for the betterment of the community, in exchange for the aid sought for them.

We need not say more what can be made of them. Values my parents taught me are 'not to bite back the hand that fed' and I shall never once become 'kacang lupakan kulit'. Or,I'd be less of a person that they are.

And I do not want to be that....

Wax on Wax Off....

No, it's not the end of the year. It's not the beginning of a new year. Not my birthday, no major changes happened, no earth-shattering major event happened. The only thing that is different is the fact that I have no boss in the office, and I want a change. I had a blog before that I was only intermittently updating, and I want to change that. I have projects that I have started but never completed, and I want to change that, too. My Room is only half-cleaned, and I want a change.

I want a change, and I want to change me. No more half assing. No more waiting for things to happen. I want to start something, continue with it, and see to it until the (possibly bitter) end. Time to find something I love to do and share with the world on why I love it.

So this blog will contain:

1. My life. well, Stuff about my life, more like. I'm a still 27 year-old Malaysian (*imagine I'm squishing my face here and trying to say the word*),Husband to pre-Dr.Noor Faridzatul Ain living in Putrajaya pursuing adventure, independence and, most of all, personal fortune. (In case you haven't figured it out, I hate the word "Schizophrenia". But more about that later.) Since this is my blog, you will (unfortunately) hear a lot about my life, or at least what I acknowledge on paper anyway. But don't fret, because I'll also write a lot about.
2. Food. If you're thinking "oh no, another food blog?", the answer is, heck yes! Food is sustenance, and you have to eat it, and if you are, no reason why it shouldn't be delicious. However, I'm not that good enough of a cook to be posting original recipes in my blog. I'm busy enough that there's usually one week per month that I would survive on eating out every few days and surviving on leftovers.
3. Books. Oh yes, I love to read. I am also a member of wattpad e-book of Urban generation who I really enjoy spending my time with. I'll post our take on whatever book it is we're reading for the month.
4. The eternal struggle with weight loss. This is going to intermingle a lot with the other things on the list. So a recipe might be modified because I'm not willing to go ape-shit with the butter or have my meal consist solely of deep fried concoctions ("brown" is not a food group you want to associate yourself with). I might also just put a review on a health book okay, this part might not happen right now, but it might happen in the possibly near future. Look, bottom line is, you'll hear some stuff about eating healthy and going for walks because I gained 30 lbs last year and I want all of it off and then some.

I feel that that's long enough for a transitionary email from old blog to new blog :) Not sure how many people will actually be reading all of the above, but if you are, thank you, and hope you'll stick around for the whole ride!

 

War Stories...

The book i'm currently reading now is about war story in Europe, though i must admit most people are not that much of a fan of aggression, but actually you look at it,any amount of wars actually provide these kinds of solid underlying foundations of any civilizations wishing to make its mark in the history of men. long before there were history and historians we had people fighting and aggression over territories and necessities and today it hasn't changed much from the yesteryear's.

It is some wretched political ideal of population control where it is thought that much of the problems that exist in the world today is the result of people making so much love thus having so many babies to populate and contaminate the earth. this, has to be handled in many ways and one of the ways is extermination. scientists also have this idea that how Mother Nature is suppossed to curb overpopulation by being emotional and violent during sessions of her menstruations; thus justifying the occassional earthquakes and the accompanying tsunamis where hundreds of thousands perish.

Of course, all these are simple-minded thinking of the atheists whose godless lives have led them to resort to using common sense and nothing else for any untoward incidents that have come upon us. we Muslims don't wanna believe these simplistic views of explaining misfortunes and from time to time, we try to decipher how God's message is transferred through all these calamities and complexities and we try to learn and make amends from them. it is good that despite all these we manage to pull ourselves together and submit ourselves to Him rather than question on why are we the ones with hardship why the others are spared. we don't demand justice for we know that justice has always been served only that we fail or refuse to recognize it.

I will try to summarize a few paragraphs from sea of poppies that i managed to finish reading last weekend, somehow. it is quite a thick book with many plots but none that are inconsistent or incoherent with the main topic. it is a beautifully crafted book with beautiful lingo and styling and reading it is a pleasure in itself. i've already gotten another book by Leon Uris but that's not to be read until i have at least finished another Booker nominee ( i got my copy of the widely acclaimed 'The Betrayed" by David Hosp  now waiting for its turn to be savored).

Ref: a friend ask me"why not you directly involved in politics, don't you think about it?" Me:  Irregardless of the politics. it’s time we stopped dicking around.I’m telling you..NUCLEAR! is the only way out...

So Little Has Been Done.....

Human heart  is not complicated. its tenderest when its in is pristine form. its roughest when its  been, well roughened. its like this simple chemical formula, when the outcome is all about the inputs. you treat people good, you get kindness in return. you spill rat's poison into your neighbor's milk, all you get is probably, your life being taken away from you.

it is not the same with a Malay though. i am no politician, and i don't give two hoots about what any politicians in this country has to say (except for those wise words from the good old Tun Dr Mahathir and his apprentice) but drive your little self to the beautiful island of Penang and check for yourself the kind of injustice  that was brought upon to the Malay population on that island. What's this, squatter dwellings on the verge of expensive edifices, a flashback of  to Singapore and its marginalized Malay 'citizens'? Is this the next Singapore? (Despite these, Malay Singaporeans claim to be much better-off than Malay Malaysians, which I like to take of as a grain of salt (of insult). Come on, if i were a Malay Singaporean, my chance of securing a much-deserved scholarship for an expensive, top class American education would be slim to none. Malay Singaporeans at top American and British institutions are almost unheard of when we have plenty of top Malay Malaysian students at all these places. Malay Singaporeans prize mediocrity more than Malay Malaysians do, it seems).
 
Is there any Malay with good conscience out there who is aware of 'this', and has done or willing to do something about it? I'm gonna be really Third World on this one (as a Western loyalist would presume), but will the government decide that it is now time that 'George Town' goes back to its 'Tanjung' name? We have Bombay changed to Mumbai and Madras changed to Chennai and even Ceylon has long been gone, all that's left is Sri Lanka. I beg the government to expedite the transformation, as my plans  to send one of my kids to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington D.C, United States (where Tun once gave his lecture and where many of world's statesmen graduate from) cannot be deferred. Wouldn't want such an exclusive institution to be confused with the colonial name of a city in all its pretensions , wanting to be European. Or are we still colonies?
 
I pity the Malays in Penang, much. But just pity wouldn't change a thing. And we don't need the Agong to interfere so that all these squatter dwellings would be  turned into mansions with Malay masters in them. What a rhetoric.All we need is solidarity. Well-off Malays looking out for the left-behinds.Right. Look into a Malay dictionary and see the meaning of the word 'tolong-menolong'. The definition is - seperti enau dalam belukar, all looking out only for themselves.
 
If you ask if me I'm angry, yes I am. Where have all the cowboys gone? as Paula Cole would put it. The cowboys (these forgetful well-off Malays) are busy making their negligible small fortunes unworthy of the larger sense of the world; when they should be sharing. They claim of being pro-expropriation when in reality they are only concerned about buying more expensive furniture than their next-door Malay neighbors, or getting their kids to Akademi Fantasia ore mediocre institutions such as those filled with competitors their kind.Simple minds of the simple folks. Isabelle Bird and Tun are yet to be proven wrong.

If this were to happen in Detroit,wouldn't you wonder the kind of respond the Blacks are gonna give? Or expensive, SoHo-like penthouses near the trailer parks in the south cities? If you ask me, would my vote go to Obama in the NEXT US electorate? I'd say no. It's no longer time to live in good old day  of puppet government. Symbolism is good though. But I don't need to become Prime Minister to make a change in this country.
 
So little has been done. So much we still have to do. But who's gonna do it? Nobody. I am no purist, but I hold on to where I come from as much as I can. Miss Bird might have made such a sweeping statement but if she were alive today, she'd begging for forgiveness from me over and over. And should I forgive her? Malays always forgive the superior races, though they always find it impossible to forgive among themselves.
 
Damn I need to cool off. Luckily I have David Wroblewski's 'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle' and Tun's 'The Malay Dilemma' that I have read over and over because they are such revelations. When I need to learn how the whites evolve and how much their religion of Christianity has turned them into such a progressive race I always have Ken Follet's 'The Pillars of the Earth' to let myself lost into. Are the Muslim Turks and Uzbegs not good examples that Islam too is a progressive religion? Most Malays don't think so.

Putting things out on the web..

I remember the first blog I ever had. Oh man, I was so honest in it, I maintained it like crazy at first and then..... the comments came. Oh how they came. Everyone had something to say about the things that you are sharing and at some point I think I was just done. So I stopped sharing and just let the blog kinda fade away.

Now that I'm trying to get into this whole blogging thing again, I'm finding myself a little stuck. I feel like I can't be as open anymore and be honest about things that are actually going on in my life because once it's out there, that's it. It's open for everyone to see. So if I complain about something, or if I rant about a hard day, then I'm liable for the things I say. I don't want to be one of those people you read in the news who got fired over something she posted on Facebook, or get in trouble over a Tweet. I want to share, but when you're afraid of the consequences, exactly how much of yourself can you share?

Sometimes I look at people's pictures and get very afraid for them. Especially high school college students who are posting semi-inappropriate pictures on Facebook, it's scary. If you're looking into an internship or a job, those are the kind of things that you have to watch now, because possible employers can have a look at those pictures, decide then and there that you are not appropriate for the job (even if you might be), make a snap decision about your character, and you lose out on an opportunity. It's a scary thing that is all too possible in the age of the internet.

So back to my blog. I feel myself shrinking away from it sometimes. And I am glaringly aware that the more I try and censor myself, the less zing I have, and the less interesting my writings become. It's hard to be creative and write when you;re in this perpetual fear of "Can this come back to bite me in the ass? Can I get in trouble  for this? Deported? Fired?" You can;t be creative when you're in fear.

*Sigh* .......

Bookworm weekend : two new reads

I am so ready for a relaxing three-day weekend. I've two books to read and I'm excited for both! I'm reading "Red Tent" for book club, and I'm reading "The Last Hero" because I love Terry Pratchett. What better way to enjoy  this year than doing relaxing things like reading two good books?

Replying from Tengku Razaleigh(Ku Li)....

I have put a halt to two books i was reading - mockingbird and leila ahmed's muslim women, and they will go straight to the bookshelf for some reasons fairly obvious. I find the reading a bit tedious especially for mockingbird, where the dialogues are mundanely scattered and the narration too simply put; i'd prefer verbose, vivid description of an occurence and I find this wanting in this book. Harper Lee however, bagged the Pullitzer for this book while I don't question the basis for her selection I was hoping that the writing style would be more Booker-like. But I've heard that Pullitzer isn't much about literary and all and it's more on the tackling of the issues, the big revelations and what nots so I just have to come to terms that a Pullitzer is usually boring? :). Maybe yes and maybe not and this could only be one of the books that satisfies only a certain audience and unfortunately so, I am one who falls into the nonintended crowd.

As for Leila Ahmed I think her book should just find its resting place because at the moment, I'm building a library of too many literary fictions. All the readings for social science books will have to be put off with immediate effect until i decide otherwise. That is, if I really think I would want to read social science again (after reading masterpieces of a bunch of master storytellers, I doubt it's going to happen, though if it did it won't be too peculiar because it's been my cup of tea, for years)

And the reading for my first Ishiguro's now is complete, and I have included Ishiguro and Ian McEwan in the list of my favorite literary authors. Both of them posess similar prowess when it comes to language and the art of stori telling - reading their books make me want to go pursue MFA in creative writing :). (duhh...)Like my two other favorite authors - (Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh), they are Booker laureates as well and I do so believe that any authors who had been at least longlisted in the prize will command a considerable amount of attention in their literary works and avoiding their books is simply, a big loss one cannot ignore.

It's like, one ignoring a much-deserved Oscars for any metrowealth movies under Ahmad Idzham's directorship, or anything measuring to its prestige, it's akin to that. How could one be so inconsiderately unappreciative,and notoriously, curmudgeonly culture-blind.

Good news on the horizon regarding Malaysian politics is that the our dear former finance minister (Ku Li) will be the director of by election Dun Galas. Good luck to him with that. I'm no UMNO man neither I am with PAS or PKR or even DAP but I see that some leader are really driving Malaysia into the right direction. We don't want any political idealists or 'mentaliti orang kaya' politicians to swarm our political scene with their rhetorics and turn in into some New World, Equality, Freedom-For-All Agenda but all we need now is a balanced leader who thinks more of his men and his country more than on wealth accumulation, or even on petit issue such as human rights? (WTF). Knowledge accumulation is fine and we need a leader who is decisive, political-savvy and concentrate his leadership on the the majority - for that is what democracy is all about - the taken care of the well-being of the majority. Are the majority of Malaysians orang kaya? Is everyone of them is so concerned and obsessed with human rights that they really desire the so-called liberations and equality? And these rhetorics...equal footing...level playing field...is it in every heart of each of us? Are we all so impoverished that we cannot feed famished stomachs at home and thus require the salvation of the upper hand to liberate us?

Is it all that severe...? I mean, life down here...

we shall see what happens in the future...but i have this wish that whatever changes that's gonna take its place...it won't one too drastic that some quarters are unable to cope with it ending up in wider marginalizations among us... those at the top won't be feeling the heat...because they are after all, too thick-headed with all this 'mentaliti orang kaya' issues and paying too much homage to the West that they forget who they really are....Asians full of compassion, tolerance and respect for each other.....

Philants That We Are ...

To abstain from reacting to wild accusations and ill-meaning allegations is a burden too much to bear, at least to some. I am taking the stand that as long as the majority of the population out there are letting themselves vulnerably misinformed by certain quarters (who architectured blatant lies and operated on the basis of 'let's find out who the scapegoats are'),I want to exercise this right of placing wisdom where it belongs.


And as much as there is this glimmer of hope that whatever we do still go by each day welcomed and appreciated by the enlightened few, philants that we are will continue to provide for any services that is required by the country. We all have meant well in the past, and surely we are going to continue to do so, come whatever obstacles waiting in our paths.

W.E.L.C.O.M.E-Like you've never seen before...

Seriously, who has a blog, and then doesn't update for almost 1 years? 1 years? ADD kittens have more attention span than I do. I think this says something about the last 1 years that things have come and gone and happened and not happened, and everything was just too difficult to put into words. To write on paper (or in this case, type on a screen) just makes things seem more real. Definite. Immovable. Part of my history.

The last two years has been an exercise in patience and letting go. The former I have experience, the latter is something I'm still working on. But I've let go of a few things in the past couple of years that I never thought would happen in this stage of my life: my car, a wife I cared about,a family I care about, friends who have been either let go so that either they can be happy, or so that I can.

Oh yes people, I'm now a part of the metropolitian  it's just kind of sick not to have to worry about things like how much you're spending on gas, insurance and parking.Friendships have a funny way of working out sometimes. Or not working out. The person you originally befriended can evolve into someone else you don't know. Sometimes the evolution is great, but in order for them to move forward, they need to leave you behind. Or vice versa. There were definitely some case (okay fine, ONE case) where I needed to leave people behind in order to be a better person and not get associated with the negative energy. I needed to love myself enough and do what was better in for the long run. I tried, gave it my best, be the best person I could have been, and since it still didn't work out, move on.

So that's one years in a nutshell. I know, it's not a lot, nothing about the places I've been and the people I've met and everyday happenings in life,but I want to move forward with my family. Look onwards and, hopefully, upwards. On to the next chapter.

by Firdaus Hasanudin