Dec 30, 2008

Winter term, here I come!

Today I digress from my usual route of objectivity and indulge in a bit of narcissism.

Alhamdulillah, I have successfully completed the fall term at Laurier. Although the three-week winter break was badly needed after the end-of-term deadline rush, I was agog for the start of the next term. I have not felt this kind of excitement to go back to school and I take this as sign that I really have chosen the right direction in my studies. Although, being able to say so with definitive surety does come at a high price.

I have attended university at institutions in two different countries. Both cost my parents dearly and I can't thank them enough for indulging in my uncertain goals. The years that I have spent on studying for the wrong vocation never fails to fill me guts with choleric anxiety. However - at the risk of sounding corny and clichéd - neither one of those places gave me such a thrill to learn as I do now.

I still committedly attend to my duties of a student on a term break - lazing about to the nth degree - but now I welcome the coming of the new term with gusto instead of with lassitude and reluctance as I did in the past. I remember the night before the start of my second term in Australia. I was psyching myself up for the first day at school and looking through my courses and their syllabi. When later I had trouble falling asleep, I decided to call my parents back home. Out of nowhere (at least, no place I can identify) came a torrent of tears and anxiety and heartfelt 'the-last-semester-was-so-hard-I-don't-know-if-I-can-do-another-one'.

This time around, my winter break feels like it's moving far too slowly. I find myself mentally drumming my fingers for school to start again. Now, with only a few more days left of sleeping in, watching TV, gaming on Facebook and reading non-required readings, I still beckon the coming term with frantic waves of enthusiasm.

Winter term, here I come.

Dec 28, 2008

Hydrating without dehydrating the coffer

How many times have I faced the challenge of a half-empty bottle of lotion? Perhaps it is the fact that I come from a background of humble means that drives me to empty each bottle down to it's last drop. Or perhaps the saying 'waste not, want not' is so deeply implanted within my psyche that it has made me inherently frugal.

Even long after I have provided myself with a fresh bottle of lotion, I'd keep the old bottle upended for days so that gravity can work it's magic and coerce the last remaining drops down to the mouth of the bottle. I have thumped an empty bottle on the palm of my hand till it turned red so that I can be satisfied that I am not wasting a single drop. I have stuck my finger up the narrow mouth of the bottle and wiped the interiors clean. I have done everything short of cutting the bottle open to make sure that every last bit of moisturizing substance that I paid for gets utilized.

I sometimes wonder if my fiscal ingenuity is a mild symptom of O.C.D. I certainly hope not. However, hunting for the last, often more concentrated, drop of lotion has it's upside - it awakens my skin with 'a light burst of hydration, leaving it smooth and refreshed'.

Dec 24, 2008

Past, Present, Future

Our experiences of the past, the present and the future are perennially incursive upon each other, thus changing our perception of them on a constant basis.

History may remain in the past, unchanged, but our perception of it is contingent upon how we perceive current situations and the potential of the future.

Melancholics put the past on a pedestal, rendering the present as obstinately inferior and the future full of hope for improvement.

Optimists see the present as full of opportunities, filling the future with the highest of ideals and positioning the past as a reference point from which things can only be improved upon.

Pessimists look at the past with pity, sneer at the present with disdain and fill the future with cautious ambitions.

Which one are you?

Dec 20, 2008

On Wittgenstein and the Myth of the Private Language

The private language is a language that no one understands but oneself. It is communicable only to oneself. If Heidigger's theory on thrownness is true, then the private language functions as an indespensable tool. If, according to Heidigger, humans have no choice but to react to situations - not reacting or remaining impassive is also considered to be a form of reaction - than the private language is what communicates a person's earliest reactions to him or herself. The private language is what communicates a person's reactions upon encountering something - a sight, a smell, an emotion, a taste or something touched. The private language is uncommunicable, and remains uncommunicable, to other individuals due to the limitation of public language. The public language's seemingly infinite compendium of words does not correspond with what one feels or thinks.

In her novel Orlando, Virginia Woolf probes the limitations of the public language in communicating the private language. Woolf's protagonist, Orlando encounters Sasha, a Russian princess with whome he falls madly in love. Orlando was found at a lost for words to describe the fox-like beauty of Sasha and called her a myriad of things - a fox, a pineapple, an emerald, an olive tree - none of which hits the mark of what he saw in the Russian beauty. Yet, he fully understands the appeal that the Princess Sasha had.

Is the private language a myth? I think not. Upon encountering something, be it tangible or abstract, we undoubtedly experience an intellectual or emotional reaction. Whether or not that reaction can be translated into words differs from one individual to the next, and is achieved at varying degrees. A less articulate individual may be at a lost for words to communicate an emotion. Perhaps that is alleviates the mythical facade of the private language.

Dec 17, 2008

Kampung Kubur Kuda

I’ve never been able to determine what was the name of the village where my grandmother’s house is. Although a large part of my childhood is informed by my hometown, Kota Bharu, the official name of my kampung eludes my knowledge. I know it as Kampung Kubur Kuda. I loved that name because it furnished my childhood fantasy of one of the Sultan’s favourite horses dying at the heart of the village. The primary school built right behind my grandmother’s house, however, was named Sekolah Kebangsaan Kebun Sireh. When my mother met a lady batik seller at the Buluh Kubu Bazaar, she described it as Kampung Kebun Sireh bawah lembah. Due to my bad sense of direction I have, however, learned to describe to my fellow Kelantanese friends that the village, whatever it’s name is, is the one that abuts Jalan Hamzah, near the Sultan of Kelantan’s official palace.

Since 2004, I have been able to add another ambiguous description of where it is located. A grand mall has been erected about five minutes’ walk from my grandmother’s house. I remember the sense of disorientation I experienced upon looking out of my grandmother’s wooden atap house and seeing the massive concrete face of the mall building. The transition from the wooden window frame, across the bushes and coconut trees and the village cemetery to the sterile, facile construction was almost rude.

My impression of my kampung as an island of wooden houses amidst a sea of bitumen is now complete. The town of Kota Bharu, in it’s slow, languid growth, had completely surrounded my kampung on all sides. A ten minute walk from my grandmother’s house brings me to either one of the major city roads leading to the town centre. After being away for two years, I had not grown physically but somehow my grandmother’s house and, by association my kampung felt somewhat walled in by the presence of these modern constructs.

Dec 16, 2008

Is this normal? I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning thinking about it. Every answer I come up with feels wrong and everyone else's suggestion never seems to fit.

I grew up among the millions of Malays who were either desperately trying to set themselves apart or blend into the masses. Most of those attempting the first either succeeded in the most superficial way or failed miserably and were relegated to the latter - conformity.

As I progress through The Writer and The World, I had an overwhelming - and frightening - feeling that I am what Naipaul terms as a renoncant: 'an excellent French word that describes the native who renounces his own culture and strives towards the French'.

I had always, growing up, embraced English to set myself apart from my peers. I grew up in a society where Malays proficient in the English language was a valuable commodity and for me - having grown up speaking the language - excelling above the rest was an easy task. Along with the other English proficient students, I was unofficially, and perhaps even subconsciously by some teachers, categorized as one of the 'smart ones'. In retrospect, that was what might have shaped my path. I happily accepted this elevated status given to me by virtue of my facility with the language and fulfilled my role as one of the 'smart ones' with ease.

I believe we are all products of one system or another. For an adolescent such as I was, the school is the overarching, overruling system that determined who I was and what I was to become. In my family, English had always been the spoken language. There was no applause for the correctly expressed thought. In school, the simple achievement of a spelling bee won me slaps on the shoulder and nods of approval from teachers.

Dec 12, 2008

There is no historical now

We pass the time of day to forget how time passes
Time moves fastest when we try to capture it
There is no such thing as an historical now
We take pictures only to remind us that a moment had passed
A photograph, a painting, a letter, a note, a pathological clinging
A preserved moment only reminds us of the past's pastness
The dead soul of a living past instilled in a picture
A permanent mark on our temporal existance
A constant reminder of something lost

Dec 5, 2008

Of Race, Ethnicity and Nationality

I had an interesting conversation with a close friend of mine and her sister. They are Pakistanis residing in Canada. Both expressed their dislike of being addressed as Indians. 'We're Pakistani' they emphasised - they were born and raised in Pakistan. 'So, what is your race?' I asked. Again, they answered, 'Pakistani,' with equal emphasis. I was puzzled. Pakistan as a nation came into being after the Partition in 1947. Prior to that, everyone within the borders of what is now Bangladesh, India and Pakistan were known as Indians - as a nationality and, for a majority of India's population, as an ethnic group.

Does this mean, addendum to my friends' response, that Pakistani as an ethnic group came into being alongside the creation of Pakistan as a nation? In that same light, is there a difference between Indian as a race and Indian as a nationality? Certainly for Indians in Malaysia, the answer is a resounding 'yes'. I honestly don't mean to poke holes in how my friends identify themselves in terms of race, ethnicity and nationality. I was merely intrigued by the similarity of conflicts applied to the problematic issue of the 'Malaysian'.

The idea of the 'Malaysian' implies a complicated synthesis of such constructs as ethnicity: Malay, Chinese, Indian, aborigines and other invisible minority groups; and religion: Chinese Muslim, Indian Muslim, Chinese Christian, Chinese Indian and a multitude of other race/ethnicity clusters. Malays, as the previously unquestioned original peoples of the country, reserve certain rights and privileges over the rest of the country's population. From my simple observation, there has been a stronger emphasis on the Muslim Malay since the controversy regarding Muslims converting to other religions.

As a Muslim country (an idea that is highly debatable in itself), Malay and Muslim is conceptually inseparable according to the country's constitution. This begs the question : What of the Chinese Muslim and Indian Muslim? Are they allotted certain rights and privileges by virtue of their faith? Or are they still to be deprived, by virtue of their race, of the rights and privileges allotted to their fellow countrymen who are of the same faith? Or are they to be allocated a (hybrid) class that gives them the benefits of one social group without the disadvantages of another? If a hybridised society is the answer, then Malaysia will be flooded with these hybrid gclassess due to the perennially developing social groupings based on race and ethnicity.

Maintaining one's racial and ethnic identity is at once purposeful and problematic. While homogeneity is clearly undesirably for an infinite list of reasons, preserving cultural diversity is often potentially divisive and exclusionary. It is at the heart of the Holocaust, Serbia's ethnic cleansing, Rwanda's genocide and Malaysia's own small-scale but equally tragic pogrom that lead to Singapore's autonomy.

Dec 2, 2008

Holiday Blues II

When the final weeks of the term were getting saturated with deadlines, my only motivation was the prospect of the coming break - the late night hours to be filled with reading the books that have been patiently waiting on my bookshelf, my empty blog that wants updating, the abundance of photos waiting to be edited and uploaded for loved ones across the ocean to see - the prospects are endless.

Now, 5 days into the break, I'm beginning to wish for school to start again.

Have I turned into a nerd?