summer @ home

03 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment

by CC in authors/books Tags:

These past few months have been building up to this summer thanks to an essay competition by the Malaysia-Australia Business Council (MABC) that I  had won using this poem “Si Tenggang’s Homecoming” by Muhammad Haji Salleh:

si tenggang’s homecoming
i
the physical journey that i traverse
is the journey of the soul,
transport of the self from a fatherland
to a country collected by sight and mind.
the knowledge the sweats from it
is a stranger’s experience,
from one who had learnt to see, reflect
and choose between
the challenging actualities.
ii
it’s true i have growled at my mother and
grandmother,
but only after having told them my predicament
that they have never brought to consideration
the wife that i began to love in my loneliness,
in the country that alienated me,
they enveloped in their pre-judgement.
i have not entirely returned, i know,
having been changed by time and place.
coarsed by problems
estranged by absence.
iii
but  look.
i have brought myself home,
seasoned by faith.
broadened by land and language,
i am no longer afraid of the oceans
of the differences between people,
no longer easily snared
no words of ideas
the journey was a loyal teacher,
who was never tardy
in explaining cultures or variousness.
look i am just like you.
still malay,
sensitive to what
i believe is good,
and more ready to understand
than my brothers.
the contents of these boats are yours too,
because i have returned.
iv
travel makes me
a seeker who does not take
what is given without sincerity
or that which demands payment from
beliefs.
the years at sea and in coastal state
have thought me to choose,
to accept only those tested by
comparison,
or that which matches the roads of my
ancestors,
which returns me to my village
and its completeness.
v
i’ve learnt
the ways of the rude,
to hold actuality in a new logic,
debate with hard and loud facts.
but i too
have humanity, respecting
man and life.
vi
i am not a new man,
not very different
from you;
the people and cities
of coastal ports
thought me not to brood
over a foreign world,
suffer difficulties
or fear possibilities.
i am you,
freed from the village,
its soils and ways,
independent, because
i have found myself.

 

I first read this during my final year of secondary school back home in Malaysia – a poem of a persona returning home enriched with experience and knowledge, but yet struggling to find ways in which to offer them in the most significant and valuable way. It is more poignant now at this point in my life than when I first read it as a younger student.

Kuala Lumpur, Dec 2009

26 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment

by CC in Anne of Green Gables, authors/books, family, friends, L.M. Montgomery, malaysia Tags: , ,

KL is really…just prodigious.  Every time I’m home, I am reminded of how much I love that I’m from here. My father is right though, there exist the frustrations.However, I’d like to think that we are lucky, in that we are uniquely blessed in our heterogeneity. I don’t think that this feeling that I have is born out of naivety. Instead, I think it comes from the reality of the healthy mix I experienced in school and amongst my schoolmates that has helped me shape my view of Malaysia’s harmony and the potential of our society. And I realize, that as I go further along, it’s something I don’t want to compromise in value.

When you grow up as a Malaysian kid, you learn about every single race – the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, the Indigenous people and the ‘Lain-lain’ (I fall under the last category). I just read Akki’s blog post: A Tale of Two Countries – Malaysia & France and the Meat They Eat and absolutely loved it. It’s true! Just by participating in each other’s lives that are so culturally diverse from one family to another, we are made to learn everything about each other’s race: how we eat, how we pray, how we celebrate, how we talk, how we dress etc…and just like  how Akki puts it …. it’s almost as if  “we’ve become experts at navigating the minefield of cultural dos and don’ts that would leave others baffled, or worse, offended”.

Yinn's dinner with ollie, kev, irv, LC, the A, chun, yinn, juls

Location: pappa rich, after dinner @ the social, bangsar

KL time…It’s nice to see everyone again :) Things haven’t changed too much; I’d like to think that everyone’s grown a little bit wiser, confident-er, closer and better together. The loudmouths of the group still make the stupidest jokes (all I can think of when I look at the two photos above is ‘dumbwaiter’ …lol). It’s really sweet that all of us still get to catch up at the end of each year. A few of us managed a mini getaway to Mulu, Sarawak. But really, the anomaly and most definitely the highlight of the holiday was talking about Jujurian times with  Lulu and Karina ;) Precious times..!!

Always great to be with the family – my father, my mother, my brother and my puppy. I’ve received love and support my whole life that I’m always enticing the opportunity to give it all back in one grand gesture. But I’ve learned over the past few years that that motive is purely selfish. What you feel or say only matters to you. What you intend to do is almost always secondary. What you indeed do to the people you say you love is the only thing that counts. I feel very fortunate that my parents still include my brother and me in their daily lives (even though we are based overseas); and it becomes our pleasure to reciprocate that favour back at them in sharing our lives. Seriously, I don’t know how people/kids lived away from home without video calls, 3G and cheap flights. (I’m still baffled till this day when I think about how my mom managed settling into KL all those years ago! Mind you that’s KL 30 years ago!)

December me time. A lot of freedom of the mind: I watched Sepet (2004)and Gubra (2006) for the first time (both films were by RIP Yasmin Ahmad.)  I also decided to pick Anne of Green Gables off my bookshelf and managed to quickly get through Avonlea too before my KL time ended. I think I haven’t read those since I was 9 or 10, and I forgot how beloved Anne was in my memory. Another forgotten treasure: the title page was signed ‘from Papa’. Hah, I didn’t remember that at all.. I was so befuddled and had to show it to Mama…she just laughed and gave me a knowing look. :D   Well, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m struggling to hold on to my childhood, or because I needed a retreat from my ridiculously thick bound copy of science urban journals that took up all semester, but whoa, the nostalgia really seeped in…crying on one page, laughing out loud on the next. Hahaha, sheesh!  *slaps forehead*.

 

if i were a sidewalk…

04 Nov 2008 Leave a Comment

by CC in authors/books, sidewalks, urban Tags: ,

Sidewalks are there with the intention to help you stay safe on course. If sidewalks could talk, what would they say? If they had eyes, what would they see? If we believed that they had consciousness, would we walk upon the differently?

If I were s sidewalk, I would ask that those tread on me, to tread with light feet. I would encourage those upright to walk further and introduce their sheltered selves to my less trod upon siblings on the unfamiliar and not so safe backstreets and alleyways.

There is just something very privy about the stuff known by sidewalks – information privy to the homeless hopefuls, buskers and wanderers, young and old.

Sidewalks are far more travelled and wise than walls. Walls just wait, observe, tower and block. Sidewalks however, lead the curious and the informed toward their destination.

If I were a sidewalk, I would know people. Just ’cause you can tell so much about a person by how they carry themselves, and even more so by the types of shoes they wear.

Sidewalks are like the old wise men of public transport – they hear stories, witness pub brawls, drug deals; consume the chewed gum of the cities; are bathed with urban runoff and spilled coffees; and even happily eat the spit of the tactless! They do all of this willfully, helplessly and continually.

Sidewalks support the feet and wheels of urban existence, and will do so even after the cities retreat and are no longer capable of supporting humanity. After which they will remain cracked and blessed – blessed with the embedded history of what once was. Only to humbly make way for the life slowly creeping out of the cracks – the moss, the dirt, the grass and the other organisms, all of which are by products of inevitability. One day, Sidewalks will be archaelogy.

Sidewalks

03 Nov 2008 4 Comments

by CC in authors/books, shel silverstein, sidewalks Tags: ,

Where the Sidewalk Ends

by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends,

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends

 

 

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