Thursday 27 December 2012

Upside Down

UPSIDE DOWN is one film that really lifts my mind to two different sides, I mean it! It is based on the [more than slightly changed] Physics of Gravity, but it is not really a sci-fi movie though. Upside Down is more of a romantic movie with a little bit of humour and social issues and science thrown in.

The premise is kind of simple, let’s start with this narration:
We are the only known solar system with double gravity. Two twin planets whirling together against one sun, but each with its own and opposite gravity. Now in our world, it’s possible to fall up and to rise down.

I love Jim Sturgess [and Kirsten Dunst] in the movie, but the way he narrates the story in the beginning is cheesy and weird, sort of. Haha~ So, there are two planets, commonly known in astronomy as binary planets, and these two circle a sun and each has its own population. One planet is known as Up Top and the other Down Below. Rich folks live in Up, while poor ones stay in Down [Get the reason behind the naming scheme?]. No interplanetary interaction is allowed between both planets except through this mega-interplanetary-conglomerate, Transworld. This terribly unjust, Down-hating company monopolise and takes the resources from Down and piles them on Up, e.g., oil, but Down has never received the proper payment it should receive. Many people from Down have been captured sneaking to Up trying to find ways to survive. In a way, that mirrors our own world, only this time, the world is really two similar planets.

Anyway, the story centres on Adam, a boy from Down, who during his childhood met a girl from Up, Eden. Yeah, they fell in love but an incident occurred and Adam lost all contact with her, until 10 years later, when he saw Eden on this Up’s TV channel [the antenna must be so good, that Adam can watch a network from the planet above], and she’s working at, guess where, Transworld. Now, Adam is working on a beauty product based on this peculiar bees that will definitely attract the people from Up. Yeayy, now Adam can use his beauty formula as a reason to work there and search for Eden, but apparently, the incident that occurred 10 years ago causes Eden to have amnesia. What’s a lover got to do but to pull the strings together. You can expect a lot of trouble and gravitational interference between Adam and Eden.

Okay, to say that Upside Down is a movie that will turn your life 360° is too far of a stretch. It is just a simple movie with a grand out-of-the-world premise, some people will hate it perhaps, but that is why I actually love it. I mean, it’s a romantic movie for heaven’s sake, and it’s quite good, maybe a bit corny or predictable, but good. I love Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst. They look cute together. Other cast members also play their roles excellently, especially Timothy Spall. The concept of the planets and the science of gravity are great. I love the idea, but maybe for some people, they may take some time to sink in, since there are some rules regarding dual gravity. The visual is so so cool! What it feels like to live in a place where another planet lies just above [or below, it depends] you, what an eye-opener! So does the music, I love it! Upside Down has its flaws, but it is one beautiful love story.

Even gravity can’t pull two lovers apart.

Wednesday 26 December 2012

Heroes of Olympus

Γεια!

For those who are wondering what the ef is ‘γεια!’, well, that’s ‘geia’ or ‘hi!’ in Greek. And if you’re wondering why a Greek phrase exists over there, it’s because I’ve just finished reading the third book of this great series by Rick Riordan, Heroes of Olympus. If you’ve read Percy Jackson before, this is actually a continuation of that series. The first book is set about six months after Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian.

Well, yeah, I know the series is targeted for, well, 9+ [as stated on the book], but Heroes is so damn good, I mean, with all those myths and legends and Gods and Goddesses and Heroes and fights and romance and… uhhh… everything. I don’t care that I’m [almost] 22!

Unlike the first series though, Heroes introduces the Roman aspects of the Olympian Deities. If you are a History buff, you’ll know that when Roman Empire conquered Greece, they actually took a lot of Greek things and changed them to suit their Roman nature, those things included Deities, and so we have Zeus or Jupiter, Poseidon or Neptune, Hera or Juno, Athena or Minerva, and a hell lot of others. Anyway, this time, besides Camp Half-Blood, there’s also Camp Jupiter, which houses the Roman community of demigods.

Since the universe of Percy has now been expended, we have new characters. Besides the old favourites, Percy and Annabeth, and Nico, we also have, from the Greek side, Leo and Piper, and from the Roman side, Jason, Hazel, and Frank. Of course, there are lots of other kind of Gods and monsters and whatever that hail from the Greek and Roman legends as well.

The premise of the story is based around the fact that Gaia [or Terra as the Roman form] is trying wreak vengeance upon the Olympians and Demigods and other mortal humans by waking up and destroying the earth [well, that’s one terrifying Mother Earth]. It’s a sort of an old feud between the Titans and the Olympians. So naturally, it’s up to the Greek and Roman demigods to unite [which is NOT something that they do the best, talk about American Civil War], and stop Gaia and other Titans and Monsters from coming back from Tartarus. And what’s best is that in order to fight them, our awesome Demigods need to fly and sail [Argo II is one great ship!] all the way to the Ancient Homelands, Rome and Greece.

That, my friends, is a heck of an adventure!

Monday 24 December 2012

Cold, So Bitter

I saw him, he wept
last night
lying bare on the
street outside.

In the cold, so bitter
it was a pity sight.

Tried to console him
but how, for I am myself
weak. My heart is not
strong too.

People, they
shoot stab plunder colonise
you into nothing
like you’re just an
invaluable toy
torn dirty ugly,

I wonder what difference
it would make if I
just sit beside him
on that cold bitter
night.

Perhaps
it would be all
the differences
in my life too.

Sunday 23 December 2012

Thundergrass

I sit
among the thundergrass bleed
you leave: slow-ly

I watch, watch
watch
my heart (beats) (beats)

You; slips
right in my mind; O mine
this isn’t the             right
thing to do; yet I do

I sit
among the thundergrass bleed
can; I; want this
to go
a-        way
a-                way

Like windy day’s
dandelion’s seeds

I sit
among the thundergrass bleed

21 Grams

A scientist once said that a human soul, on average, weighs about 21 grams: a soul of 21 grams, staying inside a body, for 525,600 minutes every year.

I wonder if you ever realise that. We move from a place to another carrying it around.

How fragile is a soul? Enough to be broken apart by an expression too harsh, enough to be mashed to nothingness when a dream is destroyed, enough to be exterminated when the things that we believed in for a long time were actually blasphemous, all enough to fade and disappear.

21 grams of soul, hidden somewhere in the dusty corner of a body, too damn fragile, too susceptible to every threat, too easily satisfied by petty achievements, too lonely to be happy.

Friday 21 December 2012

Agápē

You just gotta love Joanna Noëlle Blagden Levesque a.k.a. JoJo. With all the problems that she is going through right now with her record label [there’s still no sign of her third album!], her love for music and her fans shines bright, and JoJo comes out with this second mixtape.

It is known as Agápē, which means ‘unconditional love’ in Greek, and boy, how I really love JoJo. Here’s the track listing:

Back2thebeginningagain
We Get By
Interlude Un
Take the Canyon
Billions
Interlude Deux: Joel’s Jam
Thinking Out Loud
Interlude Trois: Love This Shit
White Girl in Paris
LTS Reprise
André
St. Patrick’s Day Interlude
Can’t Handle The Truth

Agápē is quite different than her first 2010 mixtape, Can’t Take That Away From Me. While Can’t Take That Away From Me feels more like a real album, Agáp­ē is like a real mixtape, not that I’ve listened to a lot of them. Agáp­ē has interludes that are actually JoJo’s own recording of the events of her life. We get to hear those the night when JoJo was drunk [haha] [Interlude Troise: Love This Shit and LTS Reprise], and also her father playing a harmonica [Interlude Deux: Joel’s Jam]. Thinking Out Loud is one of my favourite tracks, it’s a real live recording of JoJo’s singing, but damn it, it’s just one minute! We Get By and André, like many of JoJo’s songs, are so eargasmic! Can’t Handle The Truth is the jam, man! Slow but so effing good!

I think this mixtape, like her first one, is what a good album should be, unique, special, and personal! Even if it’s kinda short [total length: 27 minutes], Agápē is indeed a labour of love from the heart without limits or boundaries.

Thursday 20 December 2012

Love of a Scientist

The moon is not a symbol of love, the scientists say. It’s just a rock floating mindlessly in the space, orbiting the earth as loyal as it has been for aeons. Why can’t I see it as how poets see it? An eternal metaphor of love. Beautiful, isn’t it? A moon radiates the sky, and I appreciate its albedo, enough luminance for me to watch your countenance and fall more and more deeply in love with you. I wish upon a shooting star. I can make myself believe that I am transporting my wishes to place where dreams are valued, judged, processed. And why not I believe it? A novel idea, if not absurd; a child-like dream, but the universe is large, at some point you think there’ll be this Einstein-Rosen bridge to another dimension.

I can’t translate myself. Your voice is an atlas, and I will travel millions of light-years away when I hear it. My eardrum rings with your voice. It reverbs and resonates as loud as a bell during midnight. It hurts, but the sound longs to be listened, and I do that. I used to try distancing myself, crossing nautical miles of the seas, going high above the atmosphere, trying to get away from the slightest noise that comes out of your mouth, but in the end, the earth is not that large of a planet. This land’s end is just a short walk away from the beginning. You are still here, I am still there. Your shadow touches this place as the sun sits on a degree that signifies the late afternoon.

In a way, I am like someone waiting to be dissected, a surgery of sorts. My diagnosis is you. My disease is you. No medicine, no way to heal. Deep inside, I always want to exhale you out of my lungs, erase you out of my brain, and cut you so I have a heart that is whole again. I should not give you a room in it, it’s too small but you occupy a space too large. If you could just see the chambers of my heart, if you could see that my feeling travels throughout this body, along the veins, along the arteries, carried by my blood.

The sun still sets now and every day.

Wednesday 19 December 2012

Sem Three's Dean's List Dinner

So UiTM’s Faculty of Education had organised the Dean’s List Award Dinner last week. The dinner was held to celebrate those who got the Dean's Award for their third semester. My friends from both IPG Kota Bharu and my own IPG Gaya attended the event. It was not as grand as the previous semester’s dinner, but hey, it felt good to go there! The theme was Arabian Desert, but nope, I was so not in the theme! Haha~

Now, here’s wishing that I’ll get a good result for Part 4!!! Huzzah baby huzzah!

Sunday 16 December 2012

Slight

Your slightest touch is a word, and in my heart, it blooms into 10,000 different languages. 10,000 different languages and yet, I don’t know how to pronounce any one of them. Every phoneme, every sound, it stops as it reaches my lips. No air inhaled will ever change to a noise.

Your slightest touch is a small fire, and in my mind, it ignites into the most intense light I’ve ever seen. It blinds me, keeping me from seeing the road ahead, and I walk without any sense of direction. Irony, seeing that light is what we should have if we want to see.

Your slightest touch is a seed, and in my soul, in grows into a tree, hundreds of metres high, scratching the sky, hundreds of metres below, cracking the earth’s core. The wind won’t uproot it, the wind won’t ever break the branches. It just sways and sways, and seeping me like water more and more.

Your slightest touch is a moment, and in me, it turns into a thousand years of records. I want it to stop, but each scene is so beautiful, unattainable but so beautiful.

Saturday 8 December 2012

I Will Still Be Awake Even When December Ends

Hello there!

December is perhaps the busiest and the most hectic month in my life [well, my life as a student of the Faculty of Education, that is]. There are lots and lots of work to be done.

I’ve two microteaching, one for Methodology of Teaching Literature [gonna teach my friends In The Midst of Hardship], and the other one for Methodology of Teaching Listening and Speaking [for this one, it’s all about personal pronouns, and I’m focusing on the speaking skill]. I’m so looking forward to micro-teach. Heheh~ Besides that, I will also have a solo performance during Minggu Kebudayaan. Solo performance of what? Reading a poem! I hope I’ll do great! ^^ Other than that, we should not forget about MTLS’ Creative Project and Exhibition, and also Japanese Language 2 Video Project [so looking forward to that. Our film is so ‘psycho’!!! Haha~]. Trust me when I say that after one work, there will be another one waiting behind. Heheheh~

Time just moves too fast. I can’t believe that I have been studying at INTEC for almost ONE year. Another year to go and I will go back to Sabah.

Time just flies.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. 
Abraham Lincoln

Tuesday 27 November 2012

YOLO

YOLO is the in-thing right now. In case you guys don’t know what YOLO is [really guys? Really?!], it stands for YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. If you have a Tumblr [which I do!], you will obviously know about it way earlier than the rest of the planet. [Off topic: TUMBLR RULES!!!]

Anyway, while some people are divided between what YOLO really caters to, I say, YOLO means you realise that we only have one life and if we don’t take the chances to do the things we really want to achieve, we may regret ourselves later.

Life is both long and short. Why long? Because, generally, you do live until like 70-80 years old, but it is also short since we give ourselves too little time to take the risks, to have fun, to make life counts and just do whatever good things we feel like to! Time flies like a swift dragon and every second counts. We can never turn back the clock.

So, cheers to YOLO! Do everything that will make your world happy in every possible way!

Monday 26 November 2012

ハッピ!

みなさん、これはゆかたです。
This is yukata, a type of Japanese clothing, and yeah, I was so happy wearing that thing because it is one of my dreams!!! Heheh!

Next stop, Æon Yukata Fair [oh well, that's on July!]

Sunday 25 November 2012

You Live In My Heart

You live in my heart, like a parasite, you breathe in it, inhaling my precious oxygen, exhaling poisonous carbon dioxide. With you in me, I die slowly. The fact that I let you in even though it’s hurting me still baffles my mind. I try to distance myself because this is never right, but I am powerless against it.

You anchor your foundation deeply into the core and I can’t dig it out. It spreads rapidly and covers every inch of this heart; every cell now spells your name. The way you’re so beautiful, it damages me to think why I should fall this way, it damages me to not touching you, slowly but definitely. It damages me to see you, your eyes, the way they cast the light.

The way your eyes are beautiful.

You live in my heart, and I still breathe. I still say your name quietly when I sleep. You’re a nightmare that disguises itself as a sweet dream.

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Seconds

She caresses the scars on her right wrist slowly. The right wrist is where she cut herself so many times, because for everyone else, she is never right. Every moment, each and every single day, she goes from being sad to being angry to being hated by other people.

Life is worthless, she says. She has lost her hope a long time ago and she cannot stand living anymore. It is too hard, it is too demanding. Walking down the hallway with other people staring at her as if she is a deadly plague, an imminent disease. She wishes that she were a phantom, a ghost, something unseen.

Alone. Alone and misunderstood.

She pulls a gun out of her drawer, stolen from her dad. It is fine metal machinery, made to kill. Shiny and in this moment, it feels heavy. It weighs down on her hand like a hundred kilotons of plutonium. A dreadful moment but she is calm. The mouth of the gun is pointing towards her left side of the cranium. I choose this, she says.

A second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, a sound is heard, six seconds, seven seconds, a thud is heard, eight seconds, nine seconds, ten seconds, end.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

The Time to Rock On

Stop dwelling on the past, focus on the present, prepare for the future.

That’s my motto now. I mean, it’s not good to stay on your past all the time. The past is another territory, and that territory taught us valuable things for the present and the future. That’s all we need from the past, experience. Why focus on the horrendous events or problems? They are now just petty issues.

It’s better to live in the present, think about what you should do, what you should not do. You will not finish anything if you think about your failures. If you keep trying and trying and trying, somehow your way to the victory will be illuminated. The present matters more, because you got to live and move on. Time will never wait and opportunities may go away if you keep waiting or because you are hesitant to cross the border into this very moment.

Now’s the right time to live your life.

To Say or Not To Say

I think one of the ways to be truly in peace is by stopping to put your own perspectives on other people. You should stop saying a person’s bad, that girl’s ugly, he’s a dickhead, she’s a whore, the lecturer is ruining your life… just stop yourself from saying sentences with dreadful contents that are directed towards someone else.

I mean, why do we have to do that? Because we’re angry at them? Maybe, but there’s so many other important things to do than to just ridicule other people. I don’t think we will ever be happy if we say things like that. Even one little thing can have a big effect on someone else, and at the same time, we don’t want other people to do the same to us.

We can be better, rather than focusing on someone’s shortcomings, it’s better if we look at ourselves.

Life

I am happy with my life now.
I don’t know why, but everything seems to be so much better.

Sunday 18 November 2012

Yes! Really!!!

One of the goals in my life, really!

Thursday 15 November 2012

Prasasti

My co-curriculum for this term is Literature Appreciation, and nope, it’s not in English, it’s in Malay, you know, Apresiasi Sastera. Okay, I admit I was a little bit sceptical with my ability to write in Malay, but now, it’s not that hard, I mean, writing poem is quite different than say, writing an SPM 1119 essay question, but really, I think I am doing pretty well, thank you.

So just want to share with you one of the poems that I’ve created. This one is PRASASTI. What do you think?

Aksara-aksara
digubah, maka
   jadilah untai-untai
  kata

Halus

Diukir mereka
suatu prasasti
suatu yang sudah
pasti

Apabila haus,
   kembali
   dipahat

   Ia norma,
   Ia ikutan

Mahu sajakah aku ikut?

Berdiri sama orang lain,
tiada apa yang diperlu
   Berdiri sendiri
   perlukan segalanya

        Kata-kata
terpateri atas batu
  kalau aku     lari
   adakah mereka
       akan ukir
        nisanku
         nanti?

Hurt

Semua orang cakap muka aku ngan Yaya sama.
Sama ke? Tak kan? Kan?

The thing about life is you can’t stop hurting other people, whether unintentionally or deliberately [if you do it deliberately, that's another question]. Sometimes, you just do or say the thing that you want to because you think it’s your responsibility, because you’re really doing the work that you are trusted with. In other words, you don’t really want to make yourself a reason for the pain or trouble for other people.

You know, it’s tough to get others to understand you. Sometimes you just want to let them know that “hey, I didn't do that because I wanted to make you suffer.” It’s hard to do so really. You will just feel upset and then you start thinking that maybe you should not have done it.

Anyway, why do we choose to hurt others? Why can’t we just stay quiet and stop being jerks? There are times even when small things get escalated so quickly because of we can’t control our anger.

I think that is what humans do well: hurting people. Along the way, we also hurt ourselves.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Rinascimento

I am no
Raphael
Leonardo
Caravaggio
I don’t know
what kind of mix
will produce blue
as light as the sky
as dark as the dusk

I am no
Donatello
Brunelleschi
Michelangelo
I don’t know
how to sculpt
perfect lips
or a divine
visage

But what I know is
you are so
heavenly
made
of sacred
ingredients
devoid of defects

You are
my light
you are
my dark
strokes
of colour
in details
so perfect

Universo

A Mason jar lay on the ground, its content, small pieces of paper written with hopes and dreams and fears and sadness, miraculously stayed inside it. It was still early dawn, but the darkness was obscured by a massive dome of sky glow.

The boy was sitting on his bed, watching the scene that was being unfolded beyond his window, in a room of the house next to his. In this early morning, a girl was practicing ballet. She was beautiful – a muse for the boy. He looked at her with a gaze so intense that he felt as if his hazel eyes would come out from their sockets.

In his hands were a notebook and a gel-ink pen. He quickly turned to a blank page and wrote a number of lines. The boy wrote them in a short time, he still wanted to see the girl practicing her dance, and she still was.

She was lithe, and her movement was ethereal, she was flying so high and the room dissolved and became the stage and a sky. The boy could not look away, his breathing was slow, silent, yet heavy – it seemed as if he was afraid that the girl would notice him peeping covertly through the window.

Then the girl stopped dancing, and strode slowly out of her pale pink-coloured room. The boy put down his book and went back to sleep, or at least was trying to do so. He shut his eyes but his mind was still as awake as ever, playing images of the girl like a film projector, rolls after rolls of her.

Oh, her face, oh her eyes, oh her nose, oh her lips.

If she was beautiful, what would he be? In this universe, she was a star, and he was the dark matter. She was a diamond that everyone wanted to have, he existed but he could not be seen.

But the dawn waited for no one, and a new day unfurled, and he was still afraid of giving himself a chance.

Saturday 10 November 2012

Hard to Hate

Why do we have to live while hating someone else? It’s hard to live like that. I know that sometimes, the things that other people did to us can be so terrible that we remember about them perhaps all the time.

But in the end, why do we have to endure all those things every day? There’re many bad things that we can let go. What to do next is to just look at the bright side of life and realise that, despite the adversities and stuff, we actually have too many beautiful moments.

Why hate people? It’s better to forgive, even if you can’t forget. Once you do that, there will be nothing to bother you anymore. It’s you and your life.

Let

Let people do whatever they like, if in any way, the things they are doing will not destroy the earth or at the very least, burn a cell or two in your brain. I mean, why do we have to bother with the antics of other people?

I think, unless what they want to do is really, really wrong, then who are we to say anything to them? If they want to bungee jump, go on. Eat sago worms? Have a try. If they want to share their happiness, it’s their right. If they want to share their sadness, it’s their right too. Let them write, let them play, let them run, let them think, let them do anything.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Wednesday 7 November 2012

The Only Problem

Let’s have a recap on what I've bought this past three months:
 11/23/63 [my first Stephen King novel]
 Divergent [I am attracted to the plot]
 An Abundance of Katherines [My second John Green novel! Nerdfighters!!!]
 The Casual Vacancy [Hey, it’s JK Rowling!]
 The Graveyard Book [My first Neil Gaiman novel, and it was sold cheap!]
The Heroes of Olympus: Mark of Athena [Because I have the first two awesome novels!]

I would like to say that being obsessed to books is one hell of a thing… I haven’t finished any of them but I will still buy a new novel [bought ATHENA today. I just need that book! It's a series!]… and I have a heap of them at home!!!

HELP ME!!!

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Solitude

There’s something about solitude that makes me happy.

When people said that being alone is a sorry thing, I really don’t see it that way. Being alone does not mean that you are lonely. Sometimes, it’s good to be on your own just to ponder about the simple and complex events that happen or people who come and go in your life. You think more about the actions you’ve made and the consequences that came after. You reflect on yourselves by your own. No outside influences.

I like to walk around the city by my own sometimes too.

And of course, you can finish your tasks earlier without external disturbances. Haha~

Friday 26 October 2012

TYPO52 Week 14: QUIRK

A QUIRK OF LOGIC
Unfathomable things happen everyday, everywhere. Sometimes, you like it, sometimes you say, "what the heck?!"

Friday 19 October 2012

Olde' Town Steampunk Boy

Olde’ Town Steampunk Boy is a photomanipulation which I created almost two years ago, but I realised I did not share it with you guys here. So, here you go.

Here’s the link to my deviantArt page!

The inspiration of this was Steampunk. I was surfing on deviantArt when I stumbled upon the word, and then this whole amazing world of Steampunk came barging in! I would love to have a Steampunk costume, but obviously, I’m not actually a cosplayer. Haha~

This photomanipulation is one of my favourites. Hope you will love this too, yaw!!!

Watashi no e

This is a drawing of me by my classmate, Syazana! This is so cool, arigatō!

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Ломографи #1

Heyya guise!!!

I want to share with you some of the photos that I took with my lomocamera, Diana Mini. I used a film with the speed [ISO] of 400. So, if you look closely, there are noises in the photos [and I scanned the photos myself, so you can blame on that too… haha], and some photos do overlap, both intentional and unintentional, but hey, that’s the beauty of lo-fi photography.
And well… a novice like me got to begin somewhere~ Haha~
Hope you love them!

TYPO52 Week 13: BREATHE

AND WE KNOW
Sometimes, we just need to let go even if it hurts.
A line from my all-time favourite song by Taylor Swift, Breathe, featuring Colbie Caillat.

Tuesday 16 October 2012

The Casual Vacancy

So um, hello?

Haha~ I mean it’s been like what? One month since the last post? So many things happened and my weeks are getting busier. I can’t even continue with my TYPO52. Haha~

Anyway, for this rather short update, I want to tell you that
JK ROWLING’S THE CASUAL VACANCY
Is finally mine!!!

Bought this at Kinokuniya KLCC for MYR69.90. Huzzah!!! I can’t wait to read it.

Mind you, I still have three more novels that I have yet to finish. Uh… okay, bye!

Saturday 29 September 2012

Heresy

I shall be killed. I shall be killed.

I shall be killed because I am different from anyone else. I am being dragged through this cobbled street, with only my already thin and damaged clothes separating my peeled skin from the hard ground. I am numb. They have already beaten me in the prison. I am weak, but I still hold on.

The caravan that pulls me moves ever so slowly through the crowd. Some of them throw little stones at me. Little stones, they are told not to murder me, yet. Just a moment ago, a beautiful child came to me and kicked me hard in the shin. He roared, “let’s see if hell’s gonna receive you!”

I smiled at him. He didn’t understand.

The caravan stops in the middle of a piazza. A towering obelisk is located in the middle. In front of it is a stage. My death is an entertainment show for everyone else. A person approaches me and picks me mercilessly. He brings me up on the stage and throws me like I’m just a mannequin. I think I am one.

I lay lifeless. My eyes only see the sky above me, but my ears listen to an announcement. It goes like this:

My people, we are gathered today to witness the execution of a defector. If he is your family, your son, your husband, your father, your friend, I must tell you this: from this moment, you shall forget all that. He is not to be remembered and his name is not worthy to be spoken of.

According to the report given to us, the sin that contributes to the execution of this defector is the possession of a holy book. His house was visited by the members of the Department at 1.30pm in the thirtieth day of the fifth month for the compulsory monthly peacekeeping check of Division 7. This defector was trying to hide the book, but fortunately, he was caught.

People, be happy to know that the book is now just ashes. What is God, my People? It’s nothing but an ancient belief, an inhibitor to our progress and modernity. We are the Gods. Look at us, what we have achieved are all because of our own ingenuity and hard-work.

As for the defector, he shall be disposed for he is unworthy of our peaceful existence. His life shall end in the same way as the book.

The end of the speech is met with a great uproar and applause. I am not the People. I am disposable. I am put above an altar. I shall perish, but I am aware this is not an end. This will be a beginning, and it starts with the words: burn him!

I look up as the tongues of the flame turn into a monster. I look up and in that hell, I see the heaven.

Friday 28 September 2012

Using It

Hey there!

Let’s say you accidentally listen to someone who is speaking in English, but unfortunately his language is limited and the way he speaks is improper, what will you do? What will you feel?

For some, they will say that the person should refrain himself from using the language because of these two reasons: he is being stupid and he is being a show-off.

First of all, I don’t think people want to show their stupidity in the first place – well, a really stupid kind of stupidity – anyway, no one comes on top in their first trial of anything new. Learning a new language is not easy for some people. What we should do is really to applaud them for trying to use it in the public. Yes, mistakes are bound to happen, but hey, we are humans, we make mistakes… and one mistake that we always make is not daring to shed our embarrassment/fear and do anything that we really want to do.

Really, rather than being a pessimist and stopping someone from practicing their English because of the many errors they make, wouldn’t it be better if we just take part and converse with them? Encouragement and support [and corrections and advice from us] are all they need.

[At the same time, even if you don’t fear to speak with inappropriate English on the first place, try to learn and be ever better in the next time, it won’t hurt you]

Thursday 27 September 2012

TYPO52 Week 12: WRECK/BUILD

WRECK OR BUILD
In the end, you determine your life. No one else can do it for you.

Sunday 16 September 2012

You

You right there, yes, you. Stop! Just stop!

1. Stop saying that you’re not beautiful

2. Stop saying that you’re a nobody in this world

3. Stop saying that no one loves you

The main thing is: stop feeling so fucking hateful of yourself. Do you really have to care about what other people are/were saying about you? You should be yourself and stop changing yourself for the sake of the others. They don’t live your life, you do. You could be awkward, weird, be as happy as you want.

You know why? Because there is someone out there who really loves you, who adores you, who wants to be with you. It doesn’t have to be romantic, it could just be platonic. You just have to realise that you are loved.

God will not give you a soul if he doesn’t install any plans in your life.

TYPO52 Week 12: CITIES

CITIES
Urban areas fascinate me in many ways. The culture, the architecture, the vibe.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Part 4

Hi there!

This is an update of my life in UiTM Shah Alam and INTEC. First thing first, my current residence now is Cendana College. Let’s just say I love Cemara more than Cendana. That thing aside, PART 4 seems to be an interesting semester. Literature is attacking me this time! Three courses related to that thing, but I love literature! Haha~

Here's the list of the courses I'm taking this semester!

BEL482 – BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION
BJP451 – JAPANESE LANGUAGE II
EDU480 – PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION
TSL471 – METHODOLOGY IN TEACHING LITERATURE
TSL590 – METHODOLOGY IN TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKING
TSL653 – UNDERSTANDING & ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH POETRY
HKB111 – LITERATURE APPRECIATION

TSL653 is the most interesting subject so far, and hey, we now have a new sensei for Japanese Language. Looks like a gangster from the outside, but he’s cool! Literature Appreciation (actually Apresiasi Sastera) is the co-curriculum course that I’ve taken for this semester and it is in BM rather than English. Oh well… that’s all!

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Burning Kyiv

    I am a pilgrim
On repentance

A walker, in a sorrow city

                ‘Pietà’
            a destroyed
        Virgin Mary
    torn pages of
                      a bible
on the floor of
a dying place
a cathedral
   on fire

         Of final crucifixion

The last sermon
    the last sins of
      our forefathers
         paid in blood
            paid in sacrifices

And at last
   he says
      “I fear
        we’ve lost God”