Why?

Dear God,

Why am I hurting myself?
Why am I feeling hurt?
Why am I killing myself?
Why do I inflict pain on myself?
Why do I feel like committing suicide?
Why do I feel like I am all alone?
Why do I feel like a nobody to everyone?
Why do I feel like losing my very own sanity?
Why do I feel like I just want to die?

Why?

All Nightmare Long

I am sitting here in this room,
With only nothing but a small window,
And an hour-glass on top of a stool,
The sun pierced through it and glow.

Every grain of sand that falls,
Feels like eternity,
But I shall not be moved,
For I believe in my own destiny.

My destiny is with you,
For you are the light of my life,
And there's nothing else that I'll do,
But to wait for you 'till the end of my life.

Cuts and bruises are inevitable,
But I'm willing to weather the storm,
'Cos my love for you is unconditional,
And I'll keep going all nightmare long.

So now I am here,
By my own free will,
I will wait without fear,
Even if....I get killed.


I love you...

Al-Fatihah to Yasmin Ahmad

In the midst of people talking about racial harmony in Malaysia, always saying that we Malaysians are supposed to love in a peaceful and understanding environment, politicians stressing out the needs of being able to live together, the one person who epitomise these values and doing it by actions rather than words is Yasmin Ahmad, who died of a stroke last night.

I have to admit that I am not her biggest fan but I do, occasionally, watch YouTube especially during the 3 major religious festivities in Malaysia (Eid, Chinese New Year, and Deepavali), for her commercials and the message that it brings. The one that is playing in my head at this moment is the one with a small Chinese boy named Tan Hong Ming. It always bring a smile to my face because it is funny and it pierced through the hearts of many including me.

And of course, Sepet. A wonderfully crafted and perfectly executed movie. What am I saying? We lost another star, the one that definitely went too soon. Yasmin Ahmad, may Allah bless you in life and afterlife. Al-Fatihah.

Read Before You Talk

I recently read the news on the recently-abolished PPSMI. It was on the pro-government Utusan. And the interviewee was Professor Diraja Ungku Aziz. Not just any bloke on the street, but someone of his reputation and pedigree. However, in my honest opinion, the answers that he gave to Ku Seman Ku Hussain and Hafizahril Abdul Hamid were less than impressing. I will be taking phrases from his interview that I think were rubbish and a contradiction to what he intended to say.

1. Bagi mengukuhkan perpaduan, kita perlu kembali kepada satu bahasa yang boleh digunakan oleh semua warganegara. (yang boleh digunakan? Some non-Malay cant even speak Malay, and some Malays can't even speak English)
   
2. Apa yang dimaksudkan dengan perpaduan negara? Kalau semua orang boleh becakap bahasa Melayu, itu akan membantu usaha mewujudkan perpaduan negara. (so the only way for unity is by just having one language?)
   
3. Bagi saya ini seolah-olah satu magic untuk membolehkan pelajar-pelajar berbahasa Inggeris dengan lebih lancar dan mudah. (Why magic? PPSMI is a slow process, the results can't be analysed with only 6 years of implementation. And magic? It's an English word, why not using magis instead?)
   
4. Kita lihat orang Cina mahir dalam Matematik, ini kerana penggunaan bahasa dan tulisan mereka banyak simbol daripada huruf. (Their alphabets are like symbols to us just like Arabic alphabets to the Western, so you can't say that the Chinese use symbols more than alphabets)
   
5. Ini kerana banyak buku telah diterbit dan diterjemah ke Bahasa Melayu [...] termasuklah kamus-kamus seperti kamus Biologi, kejuruteraan dan lain-lain. (If we're using English, there won't be any need for a dictionary for Biology, Engineering, etc right?)
   
6. Kita ambil contoh pelajar sekolah rendah, penguasaan kosa kata mereka tidak banyak. Tetapi mereka mampu untuk belajar lebih banyak dan mampu menulis ayat setelah bersekolah untuk beberapa tahun. [...] Pelajar ini perlu didedahkan dari awal penggunaan Bahasa Melayu tidak kira mereka ini orang Cina, Melayu atau kaum lain. (So if we teach English from grass root level i.e. from primary schools, there won't be any problem right? Or is it the teachers not the students that will be having problems about English?)
   
7. Bahasa Melayu sudah digunakan oleh orang Melayu di rantau ini serta di Fiji dan Madagascar. [...] Mengikut kajian saya, bahasa Melayu sudah wujud lebih dari 1,000 tahun. (So what? Fiji and Madagascar? It's not like we have ambitions to work there right?)
   
8. Saya hairan kenapa kita perlu menggunakan bahasa Ingerris sebagai medium utama pendidikan. (Because we want to work where everyone in the world [not just Malaysians] can work together)
   
9. Keputusan itu (pemansuhan PPSMI) menunjukkan ada keseimbangan iaitu memartabatkan bahasa Melayu sebagai bahasa kebangsaan dan pada masa yang sama kita memperkukuhkan bahasa Inggeris. (Memperkukuhkan bahasa Inggeris? Where is it? What is it that is being done for this purpose?)
   
10. Kita sebenarnya mampu dan boleh mengajar matapelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Melayu (kerana) Universiti Malaya telah melahirkan banyak pensyarah dalam pelbagai bidang. (No wonder Universiti Malaya went down the rankings)
    
11. Bagi mengukuhkan perpaduan, yang perlu ada ialah satu bahasa. (Again, he failed to say in terms of education but in terms of unity. Why is it always that the reason is because of unity?)
    
12. Kerana itu, mengajar dan mencampuri bahasa kebangsaan dan bahasa Inggeris bagi saya ia sesuatu yang tidak boleh diterima sama sekali. (See pt. 3 and you'll know what I mean)

And there is this one last bit that I think is racist.
"Sekarang ini tidak ramai orang muda Cina yang boleh berbahasa Cina dialek Beijing. Begitu juga orang India yang ada pelbagai dialek seperti Tamil, Punjab, Urdu dan sebagainya. Jadi di mana bahasa ibundanya? Yang bercakap bahasa ibunda yang betul ialah orang Melayu kerana mereka bercakap Melayu. Ini kerana ibu bapa, nenek dan ahli keluarga mereka bercakap bahasa Melayu."

This statement, if said by any 'ordinary' person, can land someone behind bars. But well, double standard prevails in this country of mine. And I am astounded by what he said. Bahasa Cina dialek Beijing? That is Mandarin. Bahasa Cina dialek Hong Kong? That's Cantonese. And yes, Indians have their dialects as stated. But we have ours as well. We just don't have names for it. On a bigger scale, Indonesians speak Malay but in a different dialect, Bruneians speak Malay but in a different dialect. Even in Malaysia iself, people in Kelantan and people in Negri Sembilan have two completely different dialects. So what is our bahasa ibunda, then?

"PPSMI satu kesilapan"
Page 7
Mingguan Malaysia

The Land I Called Home

I recently read a post titled "An Impassioned Patriot" by Marina Mahathir. There, she posted a very interesting essay written by an Iranian living in France. Marjane Satrapi who did the wonderful graphic novel Persepolis. There the latter said "If you leave your homeland, you can live anywhere, but I refuse to die anywhere else than Iran -or else my life will have had no meaning"

I dreamt of leaving Malaysia when I was small. Sometimes, I just felt like going away from my homeland. I got my chance in 2007 and I took it with the hope of never having to return again. Oh, how I was wrong. The first few months living abroad taught me one very important lesson: Home is where your heart is. I can live anywhere, be it Cardiff, New York, Berlin or Tokyo, there will never be a place like Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia. The uniqueness of our culture, a one of its kind is simply a joy to the eyes.

I have been fortunate enough to travel to quite a number of countries over the 2 years living abroad with the likes of Spain, France, Ireland, and Egypt. And after doing a careful and intensive views while I was there, Malaysia is still the one place that I will return to. There is nowhere in the world that provides 24-hour food stall, where most of the food you can eat anytime. For example, the restaurant in Cardiff that I usually go to for a briyani only opens around 5pm and closes at approximately midnight of 1am if it's on weekend. While the reason is to cut cost, it represents the stereotypicality of their mindset. Their mindset is that they will have English breakfast, a sandwich or toast for lunch, steak or briyani for dinner and kebabs/doners for supper. No one restaurant can sell food for more than 2 meal periods. A small cafe selling English breakfast will be in service from 8am till 12pm, a restaurant around lunch will be open from around 12pm till 2 or 3pm. And dinner restaurants will be open from 5pm till midnight.

Looking at these different set of time allocated for different type of meals shows they lack the credibility to produce a number of food for different meal types. Unlike us, we have everything under one room -mamak. If you need anything, they have it. I am a food lover, and I eat almost everything edible (provided that they're halal la). So these are the little things that made us proud of who we are.

We are of different race, yes.
We are of different culture, yes.
We are of different religion, yes.
We are of different ideology, yes.
But we are all the same, Malaysians.

If only Malaysia is well-protected by its governors (unlike ours), Malaysia can be at least on par with the world's superpower countries. I can't write articles or journals that will be published and used for reference by professionals or academicians but my writing comes from my heart and now, my heart is hurting because the land I called my home is not being taken care of by those responsible.

p/s: Check the original post by Marina Mahathir
(http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/2009/07/impassioned-patriot.html)

English

Hey,

I am writing this from a cyber cafe owned by my brother in Selayang. I am writing this to express my disappointment in what I saw over the last couple of times that I went here. I am currently working here just to support myself so that I won't be too dependant on my parents. Plus, I couldn't any internship because the HR Managers missed their deadline to submit those applications to their respective superiors. That's besides the point.

What I saw in kids these days is the main reason why I am so disappointed. Not because they come here everyday since the money they pay is my income, but because their English is very poor. Not too long before time of writing, I heard a small kid asking his friends "Eh, macam mana nak eja Beckham?". I am so shocked to hear such things because, well, Beckham is one of the most famous names in the world, be it in the footballing world or the fashion world. It was such a shock but it didn't end there. There was this girl who came to the desk where I was working and ask me "Bang, macam mana nak creet (create) game?". This girl is one of those frequent customers so it astounded me when it happened.

The reason why I am so disappointed with the aforementioned situations is that they come and stay as long as they should have been in school. With the Internet being a norm for them, English should not be a problem. Maybe because I spend quite a lot of time playing these games with my chinese friends in Setapak. Even so, I just couldn't ignore these things. Even the term 'Terrorist' and 'Counter-Terrorist' in the game Counter-Strike became 'pencuri' and 'polis' respectively. So it occured to me, when are these kids are going to learn English since, well, they are using the English-languaged games anyway? Are the English they learn at school enough? If not, then they should be learning more right? This question has been the topic for most people over the last few months, even before I came back to Malaysia. Just imagine, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who experience these sorts of situations. I've witnessed the effect of seeing non-English speaking children speaking wrong English without even realising it.

And so, this is the question I want to ask our 'dear' Government: "What is your main reason to abolish PPSMI in 2012?" These children are so badly in need of English-oriented lessons and all I saw, heard, and read is "selepas membuat kajian mendalam". I do believe that the rakyat would want a full disclosure on the matter. If you keep giving the same reason without detail, people will start to speculate. When they speculate, they blog. When they blog, they got ISA chasing them. Hmmm, maybe I should be watching my back, then.

I LOVE MALAYSIA
BUT I HATE THOSE DESTROYING MY HOME

Michael Jackson's Memorial Service in LA

I just watched the memorial service in the memory of the late King of Pop Michael Jackson on CNN. The service was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California and it was a star-studded service attended by the legends and the big guns of the entertainment business. Legends like Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, Smokey Robinson, etc attended the service. It was such a moving ceremony to celebrate the life and legacy of Michael Jackson and all the beautiful memory that he has given us in 45 years as an artist and as a performer. His shimmering gold casket(I'm not sure of the spelling, though) being brought in by his brothers from the Jackson 5 (Marlon, Tito, Randy, and Jermaine) and a few other people. His casket was put in front of the stage. The note written by Nelson Mandela and by Diana Ross, his close friend who played an integral part of his career was simply moving and touching. Mariah Carey sang the song I'll Be There, Jermaine Jackson sang Michael's favourite song Smile, written by Charlie Chaplin, 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi from Britain's Got Talent (BGT) sang Who's Loving You and Usher sang Gone Too Soon. Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie performed, too.

Shaheen was a contestant in BGT and he was invited to perform with Michael for the O2 Tour in London. Usher performed with such emotion and we went down the stage to touch Michael's casket and choked at the last line of the song. Even a senator from the House of Representative gave a speech saying how great Michael was as an artist and as a humanitarian. They even proposed a resolution, called Resolution 600 that will certify Michael as the greatest performer ever lived and as a truly unbelievable humanitarian. Not to mention speakers like Queen Latifah, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Brooke Shields and Martin Luther King III.

It was a ceremony befitting the King. Just before the event started, CNN showed a recording just 2 days before his untimely death. It was Michael's last rehearsal before going to London. The 90-second clip proved just enough that he is still the best performer and is still the maestro. During the 2-hour ceremony, the one that moved me the most was Paris Jackson speaking out for the first time and seeing her face along with Blanket and Prince. "When I was born...Daddy was the best father in the world...I love you, daddy..." Then she broke down in tears in the arms of Janet Jackson. It moved me to tears...

Michael's death taught me one thing -love prevails. He has been haunted with accusations of child molestation and so on. But his death may well settle it all. His album sales dominated the charts all over the world and it may, it may proved enough to partially cover his debt and like Marlon said to Michael at the end of the ceremony "Maybe now Michael we will leave you alone". Indeed Michael, now the critics are silenced and all accusations are put to rest. And now you can truly rest in peace.