creative experimentation: pages from a diary no.1

the little joys / les petits bonheurs

"There are times when it is hard to believe in the future, when we are temporarily just not brave enough. When this happens, concentrate on the present. Cultivate le petit bonheur (the little happiness) until courage returns. Look forward to the beauty of the next moment, the next hour, the promise of a good meal, sleep, a book, a movie, the likelihood that tonight the stars will shine and tomorrow the sun will shine. Sink roots into the present until the strength grows to think about tomorrow." -Ardis Whitman

confession (it's been a long time since good ol' honest confession has taken place on this blog! somehow growing up tends to make one practice a lot more self-censorship all in the name of maintaining a certain image):

i've been having a mild quarter-life crisis for the past few weeks. and no, this is not a report to say the storm has passed and i see where i'm headed with absolute clarity now. i'm still torn between wanting to be incredibly driven and between taking it slow, between wanting my freedom and wanting to be dependent, and oh, just between a whole lot of things.

times like these, i write quotes like the above and paste them all over my bedroom walls for sanity. don't get me wrong - i love where i am, i love the people around me, i love life in general - but i guess none of us can avoid asking ourselves, especially in the late and lonely nights when you've had a bit too much indie music to listen to, is this all there is to this?

i guess that's part of growing up. learning to acknowledge and not deny that these feelings exist. but at the same time, not being ruled by them. learning to be expressive without necessarily being impulsive. don't get me wrong  - i'll always still be this spontaneous risk-taker, free-spirit at heart - but growing up means realising that your actions don't affect you alone, but a lot of other people as well.

and times like these, i try to focus on and count my les petits bonheurs.

like amazingly rich and delish affogato at the bee

chocolate-chip cookies

good food

good sleep

good people

the good book

refreshed

Here we go
Let in the light from my window
Say goodbye to my sorrow
And hello, new day

My soul needed a rescue
A Hero, it had to be You
I know You’ve changed everything

So I want everyone to know
Everyone to know
I want to tell the world about Your love

I’ve thrown years away
And every chance to change
It took so much to see my pride
I’ve thrown punches in the air
Chased after love that wasn’t there
I know only You satisfy

To all the broken hearted
The crippled and the weak
We are all invited to taste and see
To all of those who are searching

Come find what you seek
It is the truth that we all need

***

it's been awhile since i've been really, really challenged. refreshed. inspired. filled. fueled. but sometimes it just takes that one step to push yourself out of your comfort zone, to desire, to hunger for more. and then things just start happening.

you meet people, you have conversations, you encounter situations that remind you what the bigger picture is all about. what this life is all about. what fighting the good fight and dreaming and working for a better tomorrow is all about.

that's what this entire past week has been for me. a refreshing. a reawakening. a renewing. a rebirth. and the thing with coming alive all over again, with being so crazy excited about doing this thing called life, with not just surviving but embracing all the challenges it has to offer, is that it affects every single area of your life.

if you've noticed, this blog has come to life again over the last week or so. if you've talked to me lately, you'd have noticed how excited i am to share what's been going on in my life. if you've checked out my sidebar, you'd see the kilometers i've been racking up since i decided i'm absolutely going to run 21km at the stanchart marathon next month.

the thing with passion is you can't get passionate about something... and not have it lead you to getting passionate about everything else in your life. and when you get passionate about everything in your life, you can't not want to share that passion and get people to become that passionate as well, because you know the difference. you've been there, and you know the difference between waking up on a monday and thinking, omg, not another week, and between waking up on a monday and going, yes, another week!

the question is how. how do you get people to get excited about life? to get excited about using their gift and talents to make a real, positive difference in their world?

i don't know. i'm still trying to figure that out. but i guess it starts with first coming alive myself. i guess it starts with getting so infected by joy and passion and determination that it becomes contagious.

“Passion is passion. It's the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn't matter where it's directed...It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith...the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all.” -Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

thoughts from a train ride, on bersih 3.0

before anything else, let me firstly say that i do not claim to be a political pundit nor am particularly interested in the latest political news, scandals, debates, or issues of the day. in general, i think politics is boring and history repeats itself because people are quite selfish and short-sighted by nature and the only time people have reversed the status quo or changed the tide of history has been by going against that instinctive human nature for self-preservation and instant gratification.

secondly,  i am not pro-any party or any particular one person. the only things i am 'pro-' are pro-clean and fair elections, and pro-transparency in government, regardless of party or individual.

like thousands of people living in kl, i take the lrt to work every day. i start my journey at one end of the ampang lrt line, at the sri petaling station, and i get off just one stop short of the very last station all the way at the other end of the line. when i get on the train, it's empty. by the time i get off the train, it's empty too. it's a 5-minute drive from my house to sri petaling, and then from the sentul station, it's an approximately 7-minute brisk walk to my office. in total, if you count the return journey, i spend an average of 90 minutes on a train a day, and 20 minutes walking, which gives me plenty of time to think, reflect, ponder.

when i first started taking the train to the hang tuah station a year ago, to walk to my office on jalan bukit bintang, i thought it'd be a chore. and honestly, some days, it is. when you get on at peak hours and people pack in like sardines. when there seems to be a pregnant woman on every carriage, whom you have to give up your comfortable seat for. when the driver seems to be taking out some suppressed frustration on the train brakes and you're jostled around every time the train stops at another station.

but that was before i discovered the graffiti spray-painted on the crumbling walls of the old pudu jail that i started walking past every day. that was before i walked past those walls one day to find that some guerilla artist had stuck some hipster lomo prints all over them and thought to myself, this pudu jail could actually be marketed as a tourist attraction. that was before my boyfriend told me that the peeling paint depicting an idyllic picture of a tropical, sandy beach on the walls of the pudu jail was actual painted by an inmate during his incarceration at the jail.

that was before i explored the grimy jalan alor a stone's throw away, that always has a very confusing fragrance of sewage and tantalising hawker fare wafting along the street. that was before i walked past the royale bintang and watched tourists from china, america, and the middle east piling into one tour bus after another, or eating breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and imagined what their lives were like back home and what it might be like seeing the city i grew up in with fresh eyes. that was before i discovered that along just one road you can have one of kl's biggest malls, swankiest malls, newest malls, authentic middle eastern restaurants, dodgy massage parlours, hawker stalls, organic restaurants, hair academies, shisha parlours, nightclubs, and gleaming banks and corporate offices.

and that, was before i started driving to the office and getting stuck in hour-long jams. sure, i had my comfortable air-conditioning and a proper stereo playing music in the car, instead of the tinny announcements of each station name coming from the in-dire-need-of-being-replaced speakers on the trains. but after awhile it felt monotonous, boring, sterile. it was the same, day in, day out. when you're on the road, on the train, every day is different. the faces, the shops you walk past - they change every day.

and then our office temporarily relocated to masjid jamek. if i thought walking along bukit bintang was exciting and exotic, masjid jamek was a whole new level. upon exiting the station, i walked into a little bazaar with vendors setting up makeshift stalls to sell all sorts of local snacks and delicacies. and past butchers displaying huge beef carcasses hanging from large metal hooks and grisly cow heads without bodies attached to them and with glazed-over eyes staring blankly at you as you walk past. directly opposite the road is a shiny mcdonalds outlet, where the same meat is packaged in a much more appetizing manner, and people happily chomp away, oblivious to what the cow they're eating looked like before it was turned into ground beef.

i discovered that the famous beef ball noodles that my mum had grown up eating when she was a little girl living around the area was just around the corner. and my knowledge of kl geography increased even more when i discovered that chinatown and the big bookshop i used to love going to as a kid was around another corner.

last week, we moved to sentul. sentul is a little dustier, a little quieter than bukit bintang or masjid jamek, but it has a sleepy charm of its own as well. walking to my office from the station, i walk right through a low-cost housing estate and past wesley methodist school, amid the noisy chatter of schoolchildren relishing their morning rehat from sitting in a dull classroom. there is more greenery around the area, so early in the morning i hear birds chirping from the trees above, blending in with the hum and drone of traffic in the distance.

just as i round the corner to my office, i walk past a kandang housing about 30 cows (and no, i'm not exaggerating) kept by squatters who, rumour has it, believe that the cows are sacred and will protect the hindu temple located right next to it, and as such, refuse to remove the cows. sometimes, there are hens and little chicks and dogs running around as well.

if there's anything i've come to appreciate from all these lrt rides and walking through the city, it's the sense of feeling the heart, the pulse, the rhythm of the city. that is something you don't experience through looking at pictures on a computer screen, or hearing my secondhand account of what it's like to walk past cow dung and shisha parlours and mak ciks selling nasi lemak in just one day, in one city, along one train line.

which brings me to the events of last saturday. i went for many reasons. one, my previous plans were cancelled. two, just because i was banned by parentals from going last year, and since they were not saying anything this year, i wanted to go out of curiosity. three, i didn't want to be one of those malaysians who have lots to comment from whatever photos and footage they've watched on the internet that could be so easily doctored, skewed, and distorted, but who actually couldn't be bothered to be there in person and see for themselves what actually went down. four, i went to be inspired. to be challenged. i wanted to witness firsthand the 'spirit of the rakyat' that seemed to be all so prevalent in bersih 2.0.

i went. i was tear gassed. i ran. i stood / sat in the scorching afternoon sun. i was on that very road and heard the crash of the car as it rammed into sogo. i walked for ages around the city because all the main roads were blocked by police. i waited in long queues at the monorail station because trains were delayed. and i was disappointed. in a lot of things.

disappointed at the 'herd mentality'. disappointed at the people who seemed to want to cause a scene more than protest peacefully. disappointed at how some people seemed intent on provoking the police into aggression. say what you want about agent provocateurs being planted, but those aside, the car crash incident aside, even in the crowd there was plenty of naiveity going around and people who probably thought they were being some sort of heroes by shouting along to political slogans. yes, we get it, nobody likes rosmah, but the point of screaming it out in a public assembly is???

yes, we get it, the local, controlled media plays up things, but nobody takes them too seriously anymore. and the supposedly objective, liberal media? i didn't see much difference in terms of slant, bias, and appeals to emotion rather than logic and objectivity when reporting on bersih 3.0. the only difference in their propaganda was whose agenda they were propagating.

but mostly, i was disappointed by the way people swallowed up the drama wholesale - the way obviously doctored photos were posted and reposted around the web, the way rumours of people dying from the car crash ignited fury before anyone stopped to check their facts. seriously, would you trust someone who can't tell the difference between a normal and obviously photoshopped picture, who wouldn't bother to determine if their news sources are credible or not, to run the country much better than those who are currently running it?

i was disappointed by the way many people just wanted to spectate, rather than participate. it's always easier to criticise, than to actually do something to change things. yes, i have a lot of doubts about what good a rally like this can do, but i wanted to see what it was like for myself, instead of sitting in the comfort of my home and commenting that there's no point in rallying together for one day in a year when the rest of the year people couldn't be bothered to work together.

maybe i'm being too glib, too naive myself. maybe i'm oversimplifying things. but my point is this. good intentions, and even righteous anger and indignation, is not enough.  if we talk about the 'spirit of the rakyat', then yes, many people who marched at bersih 3.0 had genuine motives. but having good intentions can do more harm than good if coupled with naiveity and gullibleness. when people react out of emotion, out of the heat of the moment, then when rumours like 'the police killed someone!' or 'a mobster killed a police!' are spread around the wrong camps, things start getting out of hand, very quickly. agent provocateurs need people to provoke in the first place, or they would not succeed.

what i'm saying is this. change doesn't happen overnight. it doesn't happen through force. it happens through persistence. determination. a little at a time. a day at a time. it happens when we stop waiting for one catalysmic event to shake things up and finally bring about a revolution. even revolutions just fade into a few lines in a history book. and then the cycle repeats itself.

no, change, real change, the kind of change we get to feel in our bones and see in our lives, is when we change. when we change our shallow and short-sighted perspectives. when we discipline ourselves to learn to see things through the other person's eyes and realise that maybe we're not so different. maybe we're not so much holier than them. when we learn to forgive. when we plant our feet firmly on the ground, when we stop cocooning ourselves in a bubble of comfort, fed by secondhand information, when we stop pretending to know what other people's lives are like and actually get uncomfortable to find out, that's when we get close to the heart of where the real change happens. it happens in the day-to-day lives of the rakyat who work hard and honestly just to feed their families, and who change what they know they can, in their own small ways.

if there's one thing i'm glad bersih 3.0 did, is that it got a whole bunch of people out of their comfortable saturday routines into that heart of the community. it got people from all races and all walks of lives running along dodgy alleys and into malay bazaars seeking drinks to calm throats parched by the heat and tear gas. it got middle-class people like me feeling that sense of muhibbah when the hawker we bought our milo ais from expressed good-natured concern, warning us to 'berhati-hati' as we went on our way. it got people who would never have a reason to take public transport queueing for ages to get onto a train. it got people from different walks of lives and cultures sitting next to each other, sharing umbrellas, sharing salt, smiling at each other.

the question on my mind, as saturday came to a close, was why does it take malaysians something like bersih to act this way? and then as i thought back to all my train rides and watching different people interact with each other, remembering the way people gave up their seats for the elderly and pregnant, remembering how an old man picked up and returned something i dropped while walking to a train, remembering how two sisters returned my lost passport at the sentul station, it dawned on me.

it doesn't take something like bersih for us to act this way. if anything, the stories of kindness and community and the spirit of muhibbah at bersih get told and spread around because they're linked to such huge political issues, which the media always loves to play up. but this is who we, the rakyat, are. even in a metropolitan city like kl, there is still very much a traditional sense of community, if you're looking in the right places.

and maybe the key phrase is 'looking in the right places'. good things are happening, if we're looking in the right places. change is happening, if we're looking in the right places. people can be good-hearted and genuine, if we're looking in the right places. or maybe it should be 'looking with the right eyes'. because it all starts with us. it starts with taking ownership and not pointing fingers or shifting blame or assuming we would have all the answers if the tables were turned. it starts with not trying to change the whole world, but working to change what i know i can, in my world. it starts with me.