page 13.5

from the collector of stories

[bulga-saurus]

Random

Mdzs fan fic idea based on Aladdin where Lan Wangji is a stoic Prince Ali who wants to woo the oblivious princess Wei WuXian and ends up with genie Jin Guan Yao and Mo XuanYu combo cause I can’t decide who gets to be genie

#LeftBrainExercises #mdzs #random

[bulga-saurus]

I lost my mum late last year to a heart condition we never knew she had. It’s been seven months since. While the absence no longer burns, there are little things missing, which would have not if she were here. We depended on her to keep our lives together, to think for others while we lived in our own bubbles. It’s hard keeping things together with a smile.

Hard to say I’m worried, I’m concerned, I’m tired because it’s a bucket-load of problems that shouldn’t hit another’s table.

But i know it’s unhealthy to feel burdened alone.

[bulga-saurus]

I use to thrive at the prospect of responsibility, thinking by benefitting others, I would earn my keep in the world. But like the tale of every modern child, i seem to be cultivating my individualist mindset better these days. My comfort reins above others. Can i deem this to be a step further from the usual narrative? I've given false promises and broken many more. There are moments when i feel my word to be concrete, but they are only paper thin. I do not want to commit where i feel i am unable. A commitment means maintaining a consistent performance regardless of adversity. I would unconsciously choose a moderate performance as to maintain quality. This is perhaps the long game i wish to play, because i wish to work here for a longer period of time. Perhaps I may perform better after fulfilling the monthly commitments. I've to fulfill the monthly commitments first. But what if i do not? Should I negotiate? Re-evaluate?

[bulga-saurus]

Sister's wedding, Dec 2015

Ye olde hymn of friendship

Friendship’s one of those things that’s fuck hard to keep. Cause it requires dedication, maintenance, a give and take. It takes time to sustain, and sometimes, when we’re too lost in our heads, we might not realise that those life-long friends we’ve got might have drifted apart.

My friends were there for me at my lowest (though that might be a lie cause my abandonment issue states that i’m used to being abandoned when shit hits the ceiling). Friends are your chosen family, and most of the time, they’re there for you.

But what can deplete years of friendship stored? The first is likely time, for the hours, to the days to the years that you’ve spent apart. Or maybe you became a different person and, lo and behold, change occurs in parallel lines that never meet.

Or perhaps it is a change not of your choosing, but of the circumstances around you. The year 2015 was the first that i’ve felt racial issues seeping between my friends and i. I am not accustomed to a gaze so aware of my colour, because our friendships were cemented before we knew what colours were.

Were we not friends before the nation and its apparatasus and those who partake in stoking the fire, decided our kind and creed?

[bulga-saurus]

Singapore, 2016 

I extended my stay in Singapore with the intention of reflecting for the coming year. Yet in attempting to decipher the way forward, I’d conveniently forgotten the baggage of the past. I’d forgotten the ails of betrayal, and the heartache that comes attached. 

My mind is of the age where it knows only one solution: sleep on it. Just sleep and forget. But when another incident occurs, pain hurts anew. He won’t change, and numbing emotions is not the solution. 

My 2016 seems pretty certain without this baggage of hurt. Produce three papers. Divide my time well between family, friends and work. Ensure that I am a contributing member of my environment. Don’t sit back and allow the world to sweep me by. I should be prepared to stride forth regardless of the waves. I should hold my curiousity as my heart’s desire. Because that is what I came here for. It is what I came to do. 

I think in this working environment where I hope for harmony, he will be a burr in my saddle. He will fracture my world in an attack that knows no strategy, no direction. There is no intention save for impact. Which makes him among the lowest for wit, but perhaps among the highest for determination. There has to be restructuring of barriers, and I believe any instruction has to come with the boss in tow. I must be careful not to burden the others around me too. 

There is much to learn, and every day I should grow in the direction I wish to hold. 

Allow curiousity to be my heart’s desire. Because that is the path that I wish to walk. 

[bulga-saurus]

The principles of being early for work

So last week, i missed an emergency meeting due to my tardiness. Aside from the fact that the meeting was scheduled at 8am with word released to participants at 6am the same day, one might think 'it's alright' because it is understandable. I mean, dude, you'd inform me at 6am to be there by 8am? Shytes for a late riser like me, that's like asking for a miracle.

But coming from a working history where people gossip and inflate your faults, the first thing'd that'd come under fire is the time you punch in. It doesn't matter if you're working hard, doing a lot of things for the project or if you stay back late - you clock in past the 9am mark and that'd be a black dot next to your name.

In performance evaluations in my old offices, it doesn't matter that you'd work weekends. They'd mention the faults in your working performance.... And that we don't arrive early anyways. Meaning it goes "For this project you had ordered squirrels instead of chipmunks... And you come in late in the mornings" - it makes the situation worse, trust me, cause that's the first thing and/or the last thing they'd bring up in performance evaluations.

So when a colleague apologised for a snarky comment made about me missing the 8am meeting, i thought: don't. It's justified. Padan muka, siapa suruh datang lambat kan? Kalau terasa, i should've been there on time, and that didn't happen.

So this is a note to myself: i know you're working hard but if you come in late, it doesn't matter. Better to warm the office chair earlier and be half as effective then to clock in at 5 past 9.

[pewresearch]

U.S. high school dropout rate reaches record low, driven by improvements among Hispanics, blacks

[bulga-saurus]

I suspect we might learn history from occurrences rather than ideas. Coming back from Athens, I was about to be the narcissistic facebooker that i am by uploading the pics of my recent visit (And I really like Athens, kays so I'm kinda like appointing myself as their travel ambassador now).

I came across a class sheet(?) regarding Pericle's democracy in Athens, in the midst of gathering background information on the Propylaea. On the sheet, the teacher had asked students to compare and contrast Pericle's democracy with America's.

In class during my school years, I hardly had such assignments. Malaysia's curricular I remember mentioned who Herodotus was and why Plato's name is printed in our books (I think it was cause he was a philosopher). But never did the teachers ask why was his philosophy significant. His ideas, which were the crux of his role in history was left out.

It's the same with teaching democracy. We can say, oh it was an introduction of the Greeks but the word was taught as a constant when in reality, it isn't.

We're pretty keen on tackling the surface (Okay, getting the kids to know Plato exists is a feat right?) but ideas are what moves a nation. Knowing the year things happen won't make sense unless you're able to grasp or trace the incidences to today, which means you're teaching children to grapple with the abstract. 

They have to exercise these thinking skills in class. Our kids are smart. Kinda gotta make use of 'em.

[bulga-saurus]

Confession: Love in another name

I use the signifier-signified argument in discussions of jihad, nationality and in solving love problems.

[bulga-saurus]

The Stillness of a Heart

Overexposure: Watford Junction, London, 2014.

So a part of me has decided I should not go to sleep until I’ve placed some words onto paper. I’ve stalled for a while. Okay, a while might be a gross underestimate. I’m stagnant at the moment, a pace not caused by depression or any such like.

I have seen the words of the Internet. Of people who are wise, smart and who would tell me to ‘F-U!’ you’re being a waste of societal space. My stillness opposes the world’s speed. But perhaps it might be a rebellion of mine, where at this age many would say your dreams are impossible. Your path is straight forward. If you are nothing now, you will be nothing forever.

Should I believe them?

I have a theory behind this stillness. That this is really me reconciling my failed dreams. For me to take a step forever knowing I am surrounded by the ashes of what I had hoped to be.

Once there was a girl, and all she wanted was to pen stories. A writer of tales, fables and imagination. Of a world hardly possible by the calculations of physics but still one that surrounds us the same. Because I believe we learn from stories, as they echo what we see in reality.

Somewhere along the way, I lost the sight for the impossible. Things bend at the will of light. The speed of light is calculated with an equation, not the snap of a finger. What is this world you dream of?

Thus as the years waned, I lost the world of wonder and the impossible. Like a child locked out of Disney’s Neverland - I can only recall, not live it.

But society is forgiving. It does not ask us to remain children forever. Locked out of Neverland, I have this world to dance around in. This world can still be my world.

Weaned of magical landscapes, now I attempt to bring the world I love with at least a job that provides a steady income.

Hence come an interesting problem. In a world where the mind dreams and the heart follows, it is a symphony in harmony because perhaps the path you walk is in certainty. Yet, what if in the midst of this the heart wishes to assert its own destiny? What if the heart wishes not to be a part of fantasies but beats blood red with fervour too different than the mind?

What is this new road it insists on ploughing through?

The heart deceives, many centuries’ tales and lessons have taught generations. It loves knowing no owner, hates on no logic.

What is this that you are doing?

I have not heard of a story where people have to reconcile dreams. Yet perhaps I placed myself in this position by indulging in the whims of a heart. Logic sings of how the heart deceives as it knows no reason.

Yet, I fear I am too gentle a caretaker. In this stillness, even as I nod to the whispers of rationality, I wish to care for the heart just the same. 

[newyorker]

Silvia Killingsworth on the ethics of eating an animal that has been characterized as “the closest we’ll get to meeting an intelligent alien”:

"It is impossible for us to fully know the inner lives of octopuses, but the more we continue to study them and other forms of life, the...

[bulga-saurus]

Promise? NO REGRETS: Notes

Window display in Melbourne, July 2014

There are times that i feel like my brain does not differ from an Intel Pentium III processor chip: what with its need to tackle one thing at a time. Like, perfection is the key thus, bide thy time. The world ain't working that way, kays? Tomorrows still a-comin. But anyways! Am about to proudly(?) stretch a long unused skill. I really, really, really wanna say that I'm no pro at this - just so that you can cut me some slack. But i gotta put my big girl pants on and if it be rainin flaming balls, i'd just take it. On the Title I pulled a Fall Out Boy on this one, naming the vid after something completely unrelated to the content. I take it back - it can be mildly related. Promise?/NO REGRETS stemmed from my thoughts at the first sem, reflecting on my decision to head for a Masters programme. Really, this map/compass thing ain't functioning in adulthood, so I wasn't sure if I was going the right way. By that point, I was recalcitrant towards keeping promises. It ain't about promises to other people or the bosses or anything like that. It was about promises I made to myself. To keep me in line. Promise? is like the plea of a child, spoken with the hope of words becoming reality through integrity. And many times when I said 'I will' - at a moment when measurement is only held by my yardstick - I'd deem it unimportant. So I had made a promise to start a Masters at the age of 25 and I barely scraped by. NO REGRETS is more of a mantra. It is meant to give the strength to soldier forth (hence the capital letters). Despite history playing as it did, and shit happens, and it doesn't, we've gotta have the strength to face history. To taste the bile and the bitterness, and the gummy texture of the past. Regardless of what I have done, regret will not solve the problem. On the clips The brainchild of Diyanah and Sinatra, most of the clips were shot at a dinner cum-bday party for Mod at my residences. I placed the jellyfish in there cause i like them. And the longkang-canal area too. So there. On the Idea Erm, probably if you watch the clip properly, there is no sense of cohesiveness in storyline. I'll probably go all cowardice on you now and say that i'm really not talented as a director. I'm not too good with moving images. BUT BUT BUT, the inspiration was really a dance. I wanted to make it seem like you're submerged or moving underwater (hmm... maybe the jellyfish makes sense then). And i think i wanted to bring out the song. On the editing Ahh, arr here be a tale of woe and pain. This was definitely meant to be completed earlier. But due to endless excuses (my computer dying out on me, was resuscitated and then the programme becomes alarmingly heavy, to just the pointlessness of it all) had stopped the vid from happening many times. It ain't really about the quality of the work cause that, I know it's not very high (I'll try better next time?) It takes me awhile as well to get my thoughts around the idea of moving images. The best i can do is the jellyfish in the beginning. A few others do make it in, but somehow i can't envision the flow. I'll try to improve my skills so that one day I'll be able to reproduce images/moving images in my head. Hope it's still enjoyable though!

[bulga-saurus]

Arab Spring 2011

Unfinished project: Arab Spring 2011

Though I'd prefer the term Arab Uprisings to discuss the demonstrations scattered across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the title pays homage to the term popularised by mainstream media such as CNN and BBC (non-mainstream media: Democracy Now as well. Data set between Dec 2010 and Sept 2011). But semantics. Maybe it is not important. The Arab Uprising was widely covered by the international press following the action of Tunisian man, Mohamad Bouazizi who set himself on fire on December 2010. The motivations cited were high unemployment, corruption, widespread poverty and high food prices (CIA World Factbook). Following which are the media debates as coverage veer from the left to the right with words such as dictators, democracy and human rights thrown into the mix. 

Battles fought were not only limited to words as a no-fly-zone was declared above Libya and humanitarian aid included a coalition of armed forces to assist in Libya. Though not all the nations who had their own Arab Spring were scrutinised for foreign military action (Bahrain was said to have received military assistance from Saudi Arabia though Tunisia did not have external military support).

Localising Content

It is difficult studying the Arab Uprising as a monolithic block though I would recognise the usage of cyberspace as a force multiplier. Cyber-space was the tool of organisation for activism where planning had taken place via social networks (this had also drawn the argument of the Internet being a basic human right in the UN). Drawing on a common plight faced by populations of different countries, days of solidarity were held in hopes of changing present conditions. Narratives too can be changed to fit local conditions. For instance the protests in Bahrain that also stood on a platform of discrimination.

Uprisings and revolutions reveal the scars most often hidden under frocks and cloaks. Thus, the piece was meant to touch on the intimate and maybe it's better that it wasn't completed. 

[bulga-saurus]

With Knowledge; Appreciation

Limitation is a word we impose on ourselves - January 2014 Weekend Project

I have come to appreciate this world I am in. I debated a little -che, a lot on writing this. Mainly because little things like being thankful is pointless in moments that grab for tomorrow. I suppose, why rekindle the past if scampering for the future is the point of the game? Or perhaps the question is the value of gratitude. Why release into the world words that are pointless at worst, narcissistic at best? Yet, a part of my heart says that this is right, if only to pay homage to the souls who have lit our way. People, if we are to believe exist as islands, form no ties with one another save for those the mind had concocted. Therefore, a single touch that reaches through empty spaces feel like blessings. It is the reason why I stand here today, not only as a testament of my deeds, but also the influence of those around me. It is perhaps why, with something that I view as an achievement, I wish to raise the mirror for the those around me to see. I apologize if the time taken to read this is lost. There are many whom I owe this achievement to. Namely, my Monash lecturer who first introduced the school, Dr. Helen. She had said the school carried the course i was looking for and if needed, she would not mind being a referee of mine. (To make this a seven degrees of separation kinda thing, I'd probably also have to thank Jessie, my former colleague who brought me with her to Monash on that day. If she had not done so, perhaps I would still be wallowing my failure at obtaining an acceptance letter to an insitution of higher learning). I've often wondered if I would have gotten into the school without her letter. And the other, written by former colleague, Maizatul too. I sometimes wonder if I am deserving. Or perhaps my acceptance was a fluke. Upon receiving comments for my first assignment, a lecturer of mine had said acceptance into the school is judged through various criterias. Nonetheless, the piles are divided into the 'shoo-ins', those whom they feel can be pushed/KIV and those most likely rejected. Perhaps it be my insecurity staring, but I was certain the lecturer indicated i belonged to the second. It is not a bane to be second string. Afterall, the second string opened my world to a world of learning. It means I have to try harder and though my entrance was by the barest of margins, I must push to be more. It might have been a fluke. It could have been fate. Or perhaps it was the well-written words of people who out of the kindness of their hearts gave me this opportunity. I would not have made it into the school without you, Dr. Helen and for that I thank you very, very much. My gratitude also belongs to another - Perdana Global Peace Foundation. Standing on a platform of Anti-Warfare revealed how little I knew of the world, and how I have neglected a significant part of its identity. Thus in the meetings with volunteers, participants, my bosses, my colleagues - they taught me to see the world through the eyes of leaders, of victims, of the populace of a country and of those who have to come to terms with their limitations to help - and where they can push for more. Yet, standing on that platform of activism also raised fundamental questions that could not be answered through advocacy. It needed research. Timely research. Academic research. RSIS gave me the opportunity to answer some questions that have been floating in my mind for quite awhile. It is a privilege to learn, and I would not have this privilege should I not be aware of my ignorance in the first place. Another person necessary to the keeping of my sanity in this course is my high school friend, Sharmini. I do not believe we had discussed much on politics, but her presence is very much felt when I needed the emotional support to fast some nasty dragons from the past. Thank you so much for the time and the laughter. Though you're a 12-hour flip away, (and yes, I am cowardly in facing some things thank you very much) I am so thankful to have you as a friend. You're awesome! There are many that with the passing of the course, I have come to appreciate more. Such as my time in MMU, that tested my resilience at being away from home. Babu, who had shown that not many things is impossible if one places their mind to it. That camaraderie is important. That relationships have to be cultivated, and taken cared of, and harvested. He had also shown that responsibility has to be shouldered if one wants to build these relationships. And though it took awhile (and my friends from Australia) for these lessons to sink in, I do try to practice it when I can.    Also, i remember the teachings in my undergrad. Some of my lecturers have impacted deeply the way I view things and certain lessons echo even in the midst of silence ("There is only one race, the human race" - Ben). I would not have been able to complete the course without the support of my friends and one of my bosses from the Star. Who when i mentioned i'd be trying for it did not say, "Hey, you're crazy." Or my family for that matter, though they were befuddled that I'd choose this and doubtful in the beginning. And the most omnipotent of them all, I'd like to thank God. For allowing this to happen. We'll have Words later. I'd also like to thank those who have played a vital role in setting me forward: everyone. Or maybe just everyone in my social networks (awww, isn't that awfully cheesy?). Because in my weakest moments, stories and people drive me forward. I was about to type that the presence of people make me want to do better, if only out of a perverse need to impress. Then I thought, what if we lived in a world sans constant connectivity. Will I be complacent then? And I realise that perhaps if technology had remained as it did since 1993, I might be better off because the presence in my own head oppresses much, much more than those who surround me. However, in times of weaknesses, there will not be any mercy. I will not be the person I am today. I need the stories of the people, their experiences and the questions and the strength they have displayed.   Perhaps if history was written differently, I might be better. Perhaps if history was any different, I might be worst. Or none. I am thankful that things have played out the way it did. And I hope I can constantly learn from those around me, as well as from tomes and life. 

[bulga-saurus]

The Beginning

S.E.A Aquarium, Sentosa, Singapore: 2014

I said I would. Start a new blog that is. I lost the passwords to my old ones and apparently the e-mails were so aged, they're defunct. It's alright. The old ones were not meant for public consumption. 'Sides, Internet servers allow for new beginnings to sprout with the click of a button.

I've plans for this space I think. I've just made it through a juncture in my life. A crossroads - one of many i've passed and more to come (i can hope. or not). I've recently graduated from my Masters. Prior, I had only been a part of the working force for two and a half years. -> I was about to type "a premature baby of adulthood". But really I've learned once passing into the working threshold, one is regarded as an adult nonetheless. It matters not that I know nothing of navigation, or compasses or boats. Or the correct path, save ones already paved.

Perhaps that be the reason for the image above. I remember seeing the group (I wanna say school but I've always imagined schools of fish to be a lil more grandiose y'know) of fish and how they swim with such confidence in a single direction. It must be mentioned that the picture was taken at the edge of the aquarium, where really, there is no escape. They're swimming in a single direction to nothingness. They are swimming in a single direction, together.

I do not know the appropriate route my fins might take me.

Thus, this space is dedicated to charter my path. I think not myself a Robin Hood or perhaps Christopher Columbus in greatness. But life is an adventure and perhaps this slight delusion to embrace its eccentricities and challenges might be the inspiration for the tomorrow i breathe.

I wish to use this space to pander my thoughts, and keep my skills honed should time come to use them (oh god i do think myself a midnight marauder somewhere, don't i?).

I hope things will go well. And that this experiment proves to be a success.