That Jiwang Feeling

The past couple of weekends were spent with a different crowd. Anwar got married to Lin, after seven years of dating (talk about rushing things), and it being a Malay wedding, the first weekend was for the girl's side (in Alor Setar) and the other for the guy's side (in Singgahsana at PJ). The women were sobbing during the nikah at Lin's house, since Uncle Norazit passed away last year and couldn't witness his boy getting married. All in all, it was fun and cool and I hung out with people I don't normally see very much, some of whom I shall rave about now:

Ilani
I've known her since she was ten, and she is possibly one of the nicest people you'd ever meet. Since we hadn't seen each other much now that we're both out of school, we spent the better part of the two weekends catching up, her telling me about her Ding/Ling friends and her outrageous appetite (I still can't believe you can eat more than Karim!) and I loaned her my Diego y Gael DVDs for yummy boy perusal. Her mom's in Melbourne for sabbatical research, so she's gonna spend her weekends back from Banting at my place, yay :)

Abang Lan
Razlan Dawood, the boy who can turn me 12 every time. He came back from NZ to surprise Anwar and oh-WOW he still looks as lovely as ever. When other girls my age were putting up posters of the Backstreet Boys on their walls, I had Abang Lan dripping wet in a towel. He was my Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt all rolled into one, and even though I don't adore him that way that way, I still get the giggles around him. ('You think I'm funny? Really? Thanks..' [cue: little-girl giggles])

Kak Desa and Abang Shahril
They are by far one of the cutest couples I've ever seen, ever. They knew each other since they were tots (Shahril's sister Melor told me that they even have baby pictures together) and they grew up, fell in love, got married. The best part of them is that they are still their own person, like if you were to see the two of them separately, you don't think of them as half of a whole, but once you see them together, they make so much sense. The way Shahril is usually so unsettled, but when he's around Desa he's tha man, and the twinkle in his eyes when he looks at his wife. It's sweet and heartwarming and all that jazz, and it makes you long for a love that's as beautiful as that.


(yes, I'm rambling. I feel like sharing about them, but I can't coherently put anything together, so rambling I am)

Hidup Malaysia?

Earwax: OAG's 'Konspirasi Bising Internasional'

I'm suffering from guilt. It's my least favorite emotion, right under despair and suicidal. Why? Because I've never been a Malaysian.

Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to be from somewhere else. For some reason, I wasn't proud of who I was (and still am). When I was ten, I wanted to be American. The whole 'land-of-the-free' thing suckered me right in. I've wanted to go to Berklee in Boston since I could play two notes on the piano and live in a loft apartment in New York without even knowing what a loft apartment was. Then I wanted to be an Indonesian, knowing pretty much the whole national anthem of the republic. 'Indonesiaaaa tanah airkuuu tanah tumpah darah kuuu'. Summat. Then from 2001-04 I was a Singaporean at heart, which was the strangest phase. I went to Singapore so often that some of my friends were thisclose to helping me pack and move there and I had the phrase 'one people, one nation, one Singapore' everytime I reached the Tuas checkpoint and had my passport stamped. Then earlier this year, thanks to Motorcycle Diaries and Federico, I want to be a Latin American. Everything about the culture, the vibrancy, the excitement, the passion, the life, made me fall in love. For months I was watching nothing but Gael Garcia Bernal movies, reading poetry by Lorca and Neruda, listening to Kinky and Control Machete and everything in between.

The strange thing about my love for Latin America, was that it made me realise that I should love my country. All the writings that I've read from there, the music, the people are so deeply passionate about their culture and politics that it made me ashamed. Ashamed that I, unlike them, didn't love my country despite its imperfections and defects. That I was sneering at all the cultural and racial nuances instead of grinning. And now, in an attempt to 'discover' my country, I'm going with Maryam to Dewan Bahasa later this week to look for sajak compilations. On my list is T. Alias Taib, A. Latiff Mohidin and A. Samad Said (all thanks to Mat Som, bless Lat!). Even though yes, this is a start, but I still don't feel like I'm doing enough. I feel like I should shout from the rooftops, calling to the masses to start a revolution, something. I don't think listening to KLPHQ and Butterfingers qualifies me as a Malaysian. I don't think my IC with the child-bride photo (haha) qualifies me as a Malaysian. There's still a gap I haven't quite managed to bridge yet, something that's still keeping me distanced from this place. Something in me still wants to live in New York. Or Buenos Aires. Or Paris. And scarily enough, I really believe that once I go, I'd be okay with the thought of never coming back.

I really do love this place. I love eating nasi lemak in the morning, nasi kandar in the afternoon and nasi campur at night. I love knowing that every single time I go to Section 14 I run into somebody I know, without fail. I love the P. Ramlee reruns on TV1 or Astro Ria on weekends, laughing myself silly ('tetapi lobang hidongmu tetap menjadi pojaan hatiku!'). But I don't feel like a belong. I feel like an outsider in my own country, staring at everything like it's foreign, yet knowing where each road leads.

Citizen of the world? Maybe. In the meantime, I'm stuck.

Weekenders

(by Federico Damiano, for me)

Alia wrote me a mail today
says everything is a bore for her
she cooks tom yam fried rice for lunch
but we can always talk with friends
about T.Amies, Curtis Stone, Mr.P-MOSH
it’s random it’s the same
she says she wants to be
latin american like me (well that makes quite a sense)

because everything’s almost the same
for middle class kids ’round the world
we wake on mondays and we wait
you and me weekenders every day

I’m driving in my ‘not mine’ car
the radio’s off cause in my mind
there’s so much more to dream about
and all the songs supposedly new
I heard ‘em all before
maybe a thousand times or more
she says she’d like to be
a globetrotter like me

but I’m not so exciting
watching computers get restarted
and cut my hands in bloody barwork
fell in love when…I was younger
she works nite shifts like me as well
her name’s Natalia and she is cyclothimic
she wants to leave north to Brazil
but goes to yoga with her mother

because everything’s almost the same
for middle class kids ’round the world
we wake on mondays and we wait
you and me weekenders every day

and we don’t talk now for a while
a month ago and we work for the same bar
she thinks I’m way too smart
well how she wished I was a… simple man
but I’ve been quite out there
I wake up mondays and I wait
till thursday when I work again
I’d like to embrace the world
and eat some chinese at her flat
such a romantic dream I had
of flowers, poetry and cats
but i prefer to be with her
and then I post a hundred words
that touch some people in a web
I catch a glance on internet
Alia wrote me a mail today