Ridiculous Business.

Currently playing in the background: Mario Vasquez- Gallery

Current thought to blurt: MTV Asia Awards in my own backyard, and I’m going to miss it. Gahhh…!

You might know me as a very ambitious girl who often bites off more than she can chew. But then again, I have never made it a point to treat myself to big opportunities, most of which millions of my fellow homo sapiens would dearly love to kill for. For instance, I made it into the 500 guests’ list of the 2^nd Malaysian Student Leaders’ Summit in Kuala Lumpur... which opens approximately 5 hours from now in Hotel Nikko. I had been dying to listen to people like Karim Raslan and Zaid Ibrahim for as long as I can remember, even before my legal studies. These two names are just a tiny segment of a whole list of speakers at the 2-day summit.

I’ve registered 4 months in advance so as to have something to look forward to in August. That was before they released the official list of speakers. At the top of the list is none other than Pak Lah himself, followed by Professor Ungku Aziz, and some other bullcrap Barisan Nasional politicians. The joke of it all was, even Khairy Jamaluddin made it into the list. Just because he’s an Ox- fart. A friend of mine once said that it was no point making the trip because it will be a bore, with BN lackeys toeing the party line and the whole summit would be rigged with nothing but propaganda. Despite the attraction of being able to question various government policies, I bore in mind the fact that not everyone in the summit would kindly tolerate a full- scale pre- emptive strike on the government. If we had to behave ourselves like the demure, tame government supporters they expect us to be, the entire event would stand too politically correct besides being another mere tool for benefitting cronies through contracts spawned by the event.

Now you may think I sound like one of those anti- BN fanatics who label all things BN as evil, counter- productive, impotent, and a disgrace to the nation. If the BN had not been over- playing their racial politics crap over the years it wouldn’t have had such an obvious pressure- cooker effect on me. The MCA is the most constipated party of all, and the MIC has suffered a fate of being subject to greedy and selfish party leaders. Politics in Malaysia is unique in itself, because everyone is trying not to be such a racist nincompoop, but ends up being racist all over again. If we are truly Malaysian, we do not call each other ‘Melayu’, ‘Cina’, or ‘India’. We see each other as fellow Malaysians who share this glorious nation, and work together in its building. However, there is this unfathomable mentality certain people possess which has already violated every principle of law, and defied logic itself. I genuinely wonder if this mentality will continue to exist 10 years from now because it’s grinding a humongous ulcer into the belly of the country. Well, there is always the Federal Constitution to help it along: the largest joke which poses stark naked in front of every Malaysian, and the rest of the world for that matter.

A constitution sets the foundation for governing a nation, with all its fundamental laws of the land to act as a guideline for administration purposes. What’s worse with a constitution like ours is the fact that it is written. It only takes a strong government (more than a 2/3 majority in Parliament) to disfigure these laws, shaking the very pillars holding up the laws of the land. The government has also frequently abused the constitution to their advantage. If you had a copy of the constitution, it would naturally occur to you that it is either there is something fundamentally wrong with the constitution, or that Malaysian schools have failed miserably in educating our local politicians in reading skills. The live feed from Parliament in the mornings would tell you a lot of how politicians abuse their mandate to satisfy their own ideals. You might be watching it one day, with one of them going with such gusto:

“Ini salah! Soal perlembagaan tidak boleh dipertikaikan! Saya mewakili semua rakyat di Pasir Salak…. Blah blah blah…”

And you’d be like,

“Who says?! I did not tell you to say that on my behalf!”

Imagine the irony if he were actually making racist remarks on live television, and claiming that he’s acting on your behalf. Wonderful. Hidup BN!

I can never watch such debates without flinching. The worst was the issue of JPA scholarships. You can actually see these UMNO flatfish rear their ugly heads. (By the way, the above quote was from that session) If the constitution safeguards the privileges of the *ahem* without compromising the rights of the non- *ahem*s, it is a little illogical, don’t you think? In a heterogeneous society like ours, you can never give someone privileges without taking away the rights of another. So tell me, where are we now?

All Aboard...!

Currently playing in the background: BoA- Can’t Let Go

Current thought to blurt: Wow, 2 posts in a night!

Tonight feels right for a little exercise on my finger joints. A few to-do’s have been hovering in my mind. Perhaps an experience still fresh in mental storage would be my little trip to the land of the Dragon, the People’s Republic of China. This trip was initially planned for a month. However, due to the crabbiness of a very strict Chinese government, my 30-day visa was reduced to a 15-day one. Blame them for wanting everything to be in place for the 2008 summer Olympics. Better than nothing, I finally thought after days of complaining. Shenyang, here I come!

Departing from Penang, I geared up for a 4-hour flight to Guangzhou onboard a China Southern Airlines aircraft. I bumped into local MCA politician, Chong Itt Chew during the flight (tough luck during the last elections). I travelled with an uncle for accompany, as he too, was going to Shenyang to check out my dad’s workplace. Security has never been such a hassle, as we endured hours of waiting in line to be checked at Guangzhou (groping and all). The coolest device perhaps, was this heat detector to screen for people with comparatively higher temperatures, and you could see your body on this screen in shades of red, orange, green, and yellow. It was like watching swarms of people with a pair of night- vision goggles. Life did not get anymore exciting, as we had 5 hours ahead of us before our next flight from Guangzhou to Shenyang. My lunch in the airport cafe came in the form of RMB50 (around RM25) ham- and- cheese sandwiches which you and I could make anytime in our own kitchens. Coffee was RMB68. I was marveling at what the airport authorities were thinking: hiking food prices through the roof at the domestic flight departure hall. We spent those hours walking around the place, reading, and finally sitting cross- legged on the carpeted floor outside our boarding gate to watch a few Sylvester Stallone movies (my uncle’s a fan!) on a power notebook.

Touchdown at Shenyang was a great relief- at 1am in the morning. It was a long, taxing day- I could go to France with the amount of time we took to reach Shenyang from Penang. Shenyang is the capital city of Liaoning province, located in Northeast China, above the Korean peninsula. With a population of more than 7 million, Shenyang was a big, bustling city. Even Kuala Lumpur pales in comparison. Being the venue of the Olympic football preliminary, efforts to spruce up the city have produced results: this city turned out to be more intriguing and beautiful than I thought.

Being the helpless Malaysian- ised Chinese I am, making my way around China was just as challenging as I thought. I couldn’t make out the local accent at all on my 1^st day. They sound as if they spoke out of their nostrils. Culture shock was natural: the random Chinese who cut into queues as if the had the right to (as forewarned by mum), their unnaturally loud conversations, and many other traits that could set non- mainland Chinese apart from the boisterous locals (and all these are just the ones I’ve noticed in the airport and onboard the planes. God knows what else they do on their own turf.)

It is getting a little late to go on, but I still have tales to tell. I leave you here at this point. Until the next recollection of my journey,

Good night and Good luck.

The Big Question

Currently playing in the background: Live- Heaven

Current thought to blurt: It’s August already?

I must say time does fly. What is time? I see it as nothing but a figment of human nature: the desire to measure everything. If it indeed is a mode of measurement, what exactly does it measure? I daresay it is nothing but a convenience to everyone but you. Time runs out on you when it does not on others. When people want you somewhere someplace at their fancy and CONVENIENCE, they use time against you. When your body exists, other people keep count of its biological age more than you do yourself. They want to know how long you have shared the air on Earth, and they always want to know when you expire. You never knew anything the moment you were born into this world, and neither will you know anything more the split second you heave your last breath. But other people do, with the accurate hours, minutes, and seconds. I say time is nothing, nothing at all, and it is the most overrated subject.

But of course, as I have said earlier, time is only of value to you if it also of (a whole lot more) value to some other people. If you are a person who can focus on what you really wanted at that moment, you come to realize that time actually stood still for yourself. You see, time for yourself is actually a sacred moment in your life which you actually LIVED, and not simply exist in flesh and bone. Remember the saying “Time flies when you’re having fun”? You may see that what I have said is parallel to these words passed from generation to generation. You may not realize the sun has altered its position in the sky, and the passing of billions of other people’s lives around you. Time simply froze. With that, how could one possibly measure his life in years and months when he barely lived past a quarter of his biological lifespan?

I guess it takes a wholesome human being to comprehend the demands his own life imposes on him, to act on what is best for him without breaching the boundaries of someone else’s life. We have never gotten to live life the way we wanted, not without a little trial and error along the way. We may never get what we want, but wants and needs are so abstract even to ourselves that we may never know if we have lived life the way we desired. You and I both know that we are the masters of our own lives, and to subject it to time, an invisible, overrated organism, is simply unacceptable.

Time is just a demonstration of how nature operates at its own rhythm. Time is the definition of inexplicable pieces of our lives. We are often told that every second past will never return. But through my eyes, if time is really bits and pieces of your life that has passed you by, those moments can still return. Photographs are an example of how one can relive a piece of their past. Therefore, I have often marveled at this: a simple device created by man which we have ever so often overlooked, with the ability to defy time.

I could go on and on, perhaps prepare a ridiculous thesis on this topic. But as we all know, this is just a random thought I caught while wondering why we are subjected to Time. In actual fact, we are subject to our own lives, slaves to growing responsibilities which we, at times heap onto ourselves for no apparent reason; and more importantly, the lives we lead have not been for ourselves, but more for others.