Legacy

Happy 51^st National Day!

My late maternal grandmother came here from Sumatra before the Second World War. She used to sing me the Kimi-ga-yo, Japan’s national anthem, and told me how she and others hid in the jungle from the rampaging MPAJA at the end of the Japanese occupation. Ironically, then, I told the other kids at school that my grandmother was a communist (for hiding in the jungle)! On my father’s side, my Bugis and Minang ancestors came much earlier from lands also now belonging to the Republic of Indonesia. They came as warriors.

We are, for the most part, a nation of immigrants. Some came earlier, some later. Even the great Malacca Sultanate was founded by an exiled Sumatran prince. We are all Malaysians now.

I wonder what stories we will have to tell the next generation. In keeping with the tradition of this blog, I give you Stairway to Heaven.

Stairway to Heaven
by Led Zeppelin (1971)

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
And when she gets there she knows if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Oh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven

There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven

Oh, it makes me wonder
Oh, it makes me wonder

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking

And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forest will echo with laughter

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes there are two paths you can go by but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on

Your head is humming and it won't go in case you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him
Dear lady can't you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show

How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all

To be a rock and not to roll

Oh, and Happy Ramadan too!

Another Quickie

I
Back in July I pre-ordered four books (they were not yet released then) from Amazon and opted for all cheapest delivery option of having all four books shipped together. I thought I could wait. The first book, By Schism Rent Asunder by David Weber was released in late July while the last, The Clone Elite by Steven L Kent is due to be towards the end of October.

It turns out that I really cannot wait, especially after reading all the wonderful reviews for Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi, billed as his best work so far, so I changed my order. Hopefully the first two books will arrive soon. The third book, Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, the third book of the Inheritance series that began with Eragon, which was made into that awful movie, will be released in late September so I’m really looking forward to that as well.

II

The website for the International Conference on Islamic Economics and Economies of OIC Countries 2009 I was working on is already online. Please, do have a look and tell me what you think. The committee seems to be happy with it.

The thing with IE last time turned out to be my coding mistake. :P I figured it out on my own soon enough. This, however, does not mean that I don’t hate IE – I still do. Oh, and the new Opera (latest version 9.52) looks really slick.

III
I felt like eating cheesecake, so a few days ago I bought one whole cheesecake from Secret Recipe. I so wish we have The Cheesecake Factory in Malaysia.

The Truth

I find it interesting that instead of referring to August 31 as the National Day, as the celebration is officially known, more and more people are calling it Independence Day. The fact is that only West Malaysia, then the Federation of Malaya that included Singapore, gained independence from British rule on 31 August 1957. East Malaysia only became independent through the formation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963.

While we may argue ad infinitum whether August 31 or September 16 should rightly be celebrated as our National Day, reducing August 31 to merely the Independence Day only serves to highlight the gap between the two sides of our nation separated by more than just the South China Sea.

“May you live in interesting times” may not be an actual ancient Chinese curse, but few will dispute that we are living in an interesting time in the history of our young nation, and it is beginning to look very much like a curse. Fifty-one years on, we are still struggling with our identity, perhaps more than ever.

In the meantime the new political reality is creating a lot of confusion. Our past, our history is being questioned. Have we been wrong all this while? How can we move forward to the future if we cannot be certain of who we were, who we are? There are many stories, conflicting stories about everything, all claiming to be the truth.

Of course, there is only one truth, out there, but we are all really like the blind men with the elephant grasping with half-truths. Everybody claims of having an open mind and thinks of knowing better than others but do we really? After all, we only see what we want to see.

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Andre Gide (1869-1951)

__________
NOTE: Hazy out of whack insomnia entry.

Quickie

I
The department is organizing a conference in April next year. Tasked with creating a website for the conference – we don’t have the budget to get it professionally done – I’m reminded yet again that Internet Explorer (IE) really, really sucks. The simple CSS styling tweak I was working on comes out perfectly on Firefox and Safari but not on IE. Why, oh why? Oh well, I can’t be bothered to figure out a solution so @#$% it! Seriously, IE should just be banned and Microsoft burned.

Dirtiest car on campus

II
My car hasn’t been washed since... I can’t even remember when. I almost got the car washed last month, though, before I took it to its regular scheduled service. Apparently my father, who was quite the car-guy way back then, really can’t stand the sight of my car and complains about it all the time to my mother, who complains to me. LOL.

Now that the season’s turned wet I’m definitely not going to wash the car anytime soon; but that is really not the reason why I leave the car covered in a layer of dirt and dust. Lorries fully laden with dirt and sand ply the stretch of road I use to travel to work every morning, so there really is no escape getting splattered. Everybody knows how incredibly annoying it is to have your freshly cleaned and shined car violated by the smallest speck of dirt. I’ve had enough of the heartache so am rolling with it. The interior of my car is clean, though.

III
I have all three of Avril Lavigne’s studio albums, plus one EP, because I think she’s sexy. :P PAS Youth cannot exactly call her sexy, unlike Inul, so plays the patriotic card to try to get her banned. Still, apparently some idiot at the Home Ministry does think she’s sexy too and almost got her banned nevertheless, and once again the whole world reads about dynamic and progressive Muslim Malaysia.

I’m not going to her concert, though, because I’m saving for when U2 comes to Malaysia.

I Heart The Clone Wars

Rex, Obi-Wan and Anakin (StarWars.com)

Apparently, the critics hate Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Basically, the main complaint is that it is campy and childish. Well, duh, everybody knows that Star Wars: The Clone Wars the movie serves as a pilot of sort to Star Wars: The Clone Wars the television series coming up soon on the Cartoon Network! So why expect a seventh Star Wars episode/blockbuster movie?

That said, I’m definitely looking forward to Star Wars: The Clone Wars the series, not so much for the Jedi-Sith good versus evil fight but for the clone troopers. Supposedly, there will be “episodes with nothing but clone troopers,” according to George Lucas, so it will be awesome.

The Wedding Song

That’s Why (You Go Away) by Michael Learns To Rock

I am starting to think that the real purpose of having music played at weddings, ranging from a live band to just the bride or groom’s brother hooking up his MP3 player to the family hi-fi set, rather than to entertain people, is to scare them away. The music – often of very dubious taste – is played so loud with the speakers at full blast that not only your ears hurt but your blood pressure rises. Forget about having any meaningful conversation with anyone other than the person sitting right next to you. So, for quite some time (about two minutes) I wondered why people bother paying for such “entertainment”.

Then it hit me: the loud and annoying music is really a form of crowd control.

The typical Malay wedding reception is held at the family residence under tents erected in the yard or along the street. Since there aren’t enough tents available, due to both budgetary and space constraints, guests are generally expected to vacate their table after having their meal so that other guests may have theirs. Common courtesy as well as sense dictates that one should not stay too long at a table as if having a teh tarik session with long lost friends, even though teh tarik has indeed become commonly served at weddings too. However, more often than not some people simply don’t get it, hence the loud and annoying music, just to make sure that nobody gets too comfortable.

How’s that sound?

One other annoying feature of music played at weddings is more of a faux pas, I think, though one which nobody seems to care much. A wedding is supposed to be a happy occasion celebrating the union of the newlyweds. It is no surprise that ballads get played a lot at weddings since love songs are usually of that form. Nobody wants to hear beat thumping house or European techno music played at a wedding. However, it surprises me that nobody cares much about the actual theme of the songs played. A lot of ballads especially the hit tangkap leleh Malay love songs really have such depressing themes as failed relationships, heartbreak, infidelity etc. – hardly the kind of positive and optimistic vibes we would really want to have at such happy occasions as weddings, don’t you think?

Got Meat?

Jo Walton refers to Terry Bisson’s short story They’re Made Out Of Meat at the end of her article on science fiction’s treatment of the Fermi Paradox about the existence of aliens. I think the story is hilarious, but the short movie adaptation by Stephen O'Regan is funnier.

Fixed?

Addicted to Oil by keiross at deviantART

An interesting piece of news over the weekend was a government proposal to fix the petrol subsidy at 30 sen per liter beginning September. I wrote about this before; more than a year ago, in fact.

It is very important that we wean ourselves off our addiction to subsidized fuel as soon as possible. Since outright abolishment of the fuel subsidies is a political no-go, the second-best thing is to fix the amount of the subsidy. Let’s just hope that the government won’t change its mind yet again.

Book Report

All right, it’s official; I’ve lost a book. I couldn’t find The Logic of Life anywhere; not in my office, not in my bedroom or anywhere else at home I bothered to look. Nobody saw it at the department office, and I definitely never took it to class. It’s simply gone.

Anyway, one lost book means time for another.

[SPOILER ALERT: Naomi Novik’s Victory of Eagles]

At the end of Empire of Ivory, the Celestial dragon Temeraire and captain Will Laurence were forcely separated for committing the treasonous act of delivering to France the cure to the flu-like epidemic that was threatening to wipe out all of the world’s dragons. Laurence was swiftly tried and condemned for helping the enemy, while Temeraire was sent to the breeding grounds in South Wales.

Finally, in Victory of Eagles, Napoleon Bonaparte landed in England and the British Army was in retreat. Believing that Laurence was dead, Temeraire rallied the retired and unharnessed dragons at the breeding grounds to launch attacks against the invading French forces. Laurence, surviving the initial French invasion, was given a temporary reprieve to reunite with his dragon.

London fell and the British forces under the command of the future first Duke of Wellington fell back to the highlands of Scotland. In order to force Bonaparte into battle, Laurence and Temeraire were assigned, along with a small contingent of dragons, to search and destroy French raiding parties all across England sent out to gather supplies for the occupying French forces. Victory of Eagles climaxed with a massive battle in which the British Army and Aerial Corps, with the arrival of Nelson’s fleet, defeated the French forces and had Bonaparte fleeing on dragonback across the English Channel.

Naomi Novik did a splendid job with this fifth instalment of the Temeraire series. I am hoping that more will come. Have we seen the last of Bonaparte? Will Temeraire ever get to confront Lien? In the meanwhile, I’m wondering how I can get my hands on the UK release hardbound copies of the preceding four Temeraire titles for keep.