Media Disgrace

I was examining through stacks of articles on thecicak when I came across this one. It was not the whole story that bedazzled me, only a tiny part of it. Apparently, Malaysian media does it again. Exaggerating stories. The only thing that they are very good at. Remember kes parang, fellow budak koleq?

Media says..

“Bunyi tembakan begitu kuat dan bertalu-talu. Hujan peluru itu terlalu hampir dengan saya"

The actual victim says..

"'Hujan peluru' was nowhere near me"

That is certainly not all. Browse through the world wide web yourself for the whole story and you will see.

I am in no good shape to write, and the media frenzy was not the only thing that bothers me. Have a go at this other disturbing article from Malaysiakini, which I posted on on The Class of 2005's blog.

Books Galore@UNSW

UNSW was having its annual bookfair, dubbed as one of the largest of its kind in Sydney which only ends today. I am not in the right frame of mood for any good books lately- no thanks to the huh-hahs of the hectic university life and the dreadful mid-sem test- but I still came back from the Roundhouse last Thursday with a box full of books anyway. And I was not about to finish yet; yesterday I went there again and bought two more to add to stacks of my collection. I choose the word collection, because from experience majority of them will be left intact for a long period of time. Stuffs that we bought and kept unscathed are called collection, am I right? I pity these books, and piles of their other companions that I left in Malaysia. They always cried out, telling me that they want to be read. But what can I do?

Anyway I did not find any book that is on my wishlist during the bookfair, (that is weird enough, because I still managed to come back with the box) so I decided to casually have a look and remain optimistic that I could find ones that by the least attract me, or whose author I recognize. Ultimately I settled for Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale which I watched the movie chiefly because it is Spielberg's, The Family by Mario Puzo because I know he wrote the widely-renowned The Godfather series so my predict says this book must be good as well, Bad As I Wanna Be, the biography of NBA badboy Dennis Rodman which I have already read but I like the idea of having it as my collection anyway partly because the fact that it bears an enganging personal experience with Zahira, Lord of The Flies by William Golding which is not really my type of read but I saw NikNazmi recommends it on his page so I decided why not to give it a try, among them. Trying to seek for something serious but could not find any that really thrilled me, I nonchalantly picked a people's almanac and a fancy dictionary of dates, added to a couple of past years' editions of Reader's Digest which cost me only ten cent each and a few copies of NewScientist (which, again, is weird for me who have never had any interest in science). Thinking about the mistress 2000 miles away, I also spent sometime searching through the heaps of books and ended up buying five for her, which I hope she likes. In total, twelve books and a handful of magazines, costing me merely a little less than $30!

Now come the real problem; I need to endure their howling for being left safe and sound in the comfort of the bookrack for possibly the next few years.

Good To Meet You Brothers!

This morning I went to Liverpool to a friend’s place with some other classmates. No, not that Liverpool in UK. This is Liverpool, New South Wales, about an hour journey by train from Sydney. We are basically working on a group project for Engineering Design subject. Her father offered to help us and he happens to own a factory there, so we decided to go have a look and work.

It was 5.30pm when we boarded the train back, which means Maghrib was looming. True to the nature, I had this uneasiness feel of not being able to make it on time to reach home for Maghrib. Having three Muslim counterparts out of four people with me did not give any help either; they simply did not seem to care about performing their obligation. So I decided to stop in the middle of the train route at Auburn, a small, very nice Muslim town. I had been here once before, and I knew they have a mosque where I decided to pray.

I performed solat jemaah with few locals, and finished praying when I realized that there was someone observing me. After I was done with my doa this guy approached me, and decently asked, “Where’re you from?” To which I replied, “Malaysia.” This guy seemed to be excited at seeing a foreigner at that mosque and probably keen to find out more from me, which drove to more dialogue between us, and apparently more questions from him,

“So what’re you doing here?”
“How long have you been here?”
“So how do you find Australia?”
“Well I actually have a friend who just came back from Malaysia, he went there to watch the Formula One. Do you watch Formula One?

After a series of conversation, he finally revealed his actual intention for approaching me. Apparently he noticed that I did something in my solat that is not right, and he made it a point for him to show me to right way. Later a friend of his saw us and joined in the conversation,

“Assalamualaikum. Chinese?” (as you might have expected)
“Oh Malaysia! I’ve been there!”
“Malaysia’s very nice. I found that people there’re very humble.”

To those people who read my previous two postings and decided to judge me as always trying to find a way to be critical to my home country, this piece proves that I am actually not.

By the way, the first fellow’s name is Yasser, while the second one is Mustaffa. Both are locals, but I believe hail from some Arabic countries.
The conversation continued.

“So you’re a university student? Petroleum engineering? Wonderful! It’s good to learn that we’ve got plenty of Muslim professionals in the future.”

I am posting this not because this was my first time meeting other Muslims in this country. My Petroleum Engineering class itself in fact has Muslims covering more than half of its students, mainly from Saudi Arabia, Brunei as well as Malaysia. Besides, I encountered hundreds of them every week during the Friday prayer. But as far as I am concern, my meeting with Yasser and Mustaffa was the first of its kind I experienced. I found that most of Muslims I am living with here choose to segregate themselves according to background, countries where they are from in place of one genuine label; Muslims. Those from Saudi never bother to greet Malaysian blokes, and pretty simply the other way round. Again, I am not referring this bigotry to all of the Muslims here. I am merely saying most of us. Those who decide not to live in such way, I take my hats off in praise for them.

Well, back to my trip to Auburn. Yasser and Mustaffa apparently had some other serious concerns and left before Isya’ while I decided to wait for one, so here goes their final dialogue,

“Good to meet you Brother.”

It was indeed good.

A Speaking Snapshot

Picture speaks a thousand words, so the saying goes. This picture I posted here definitely does! Some of you might have already recognized it; the snapshot was taken during the fracas-filled nomination day of Ijok by-election. And no I was not there, I stumbled upon the snapshot from a personal blog and simply decided to re-publish it here.

I must admit that I was not a fanatic follower of Malaysian politics, I like the idea of being a mere casual observant I guess, but somehow this Ijok by-election really catches my attention.

Do not get the wrong idea of me lining up in support of the opposition party by looking at this picture anyway. Again, I state here that I am only an observant. I judge this picture from a balanced perspective, that those people in the snapshot are human beings after all. Perhaps there were also some from the opposition party displaying the same shameful act that I simply missed out.

And yes, I stress it again. This kind of act is plain shameful.

Of Malaysia Hall's Open Day and The Quest for Nasi Lemak and Roti Canai

Today Malaysia Hall Sydney is holding its inaugural Open Day, and I could not get myself more excited about the prospect of one thing- Malaysian cuisine on the horizon. I went to bed last night thinking of myself luxuriating myself in the incredible taste of Nasi Lemak and Roti Canai, and I still did when I woke up this morning. Laugh at me if you wish to, but come here and try replacing my shoes, I bet you will surely have the same yearning. It is not that I had never found such heavenly luxuries here; in fact only last night my sponsor provided me with Nasi Lemak for dinner. People, it is the strange feeling when you never get satisfied with something and always ask for more. When you are used to having Nasi Lemak for breakfast or a weekly Roti Canai for supper, do you think you ever want to put a full stop to the whole think? Perhaps it is the same feeling when you patiently, staunchly waiting for the next Harry Potter movie to come out when you already watched the previous movies repeatedly, and in fact, you already read the book which means you know the entire story. Well, Nasi Lemak, Roti Canai and Harry Potter. Not a bad combination, huh?

For those of you who are not familiar with Malaysia Hall, it is a social center for Malaysian community in Australia which mostly revolves students, besides serving as a convenient accommodation for them. They hold major Malaysian events and religious festivals to promote good bonds and feel-like-home atmosphere for Malaysian residents here, Sydney in particular.
This Open Day, dubbed as the biggest event ever in their history, was given mediocre publicity, mostly only to Malaysian community. However, considering the somewhat large community circle as well as the kindness of some who invited their counterparts from other countries to join in the event, I was expecting this Open Day to be a real big one. Was I wrong? Well I did not really actually care, Nasi Lemak and Roti Canai were all in my mind.

So now both the Nasi Lemak and Roti Canai converged with the Open Day, the result was you saw me cycling spiritedly through a typical morning to get to Malaysia Hall- a breakfast set of Nasi Lemak, Roti Canai plus the awesome Teh Tarik was all I thought. The night before Buk told me on a phone conversation that the event would start at 9am with breakfast set ready to be served. I chose to give them a chance and decided to come only at 10am, as my Bruneian friends who were also coming wanted to come at that time. And I was there a little before 10 am.

However, as typical as any Malaysian event could be no matter in which part of the world, this particular event did little to escape the pathetic notion of ‘Janji Melayu’ which is recurrently associated to them – the settings of programs were way behind the schedule. I could only get a taste of Nasi Lemak about one and a half hour after I arrived. In fact when I reached there at 10am the booths had not even been set up, and there was this group of ladies who were only starting to prepare the cucumber for Nasi Lemak. And they acted as nothing was actually going wrong, that they never knew how to use their watch. I waited there patiently, until it crossed my mind that I should get myself off this whole mess and treated myself with a slice of pizza at a nearby place instead. I did wait, however, until the smell of Nasi Lemak reached my nostril and raised my appetite. In short, there I was enjoying this not-so-delicious Nasi Lemak after one and a half hour of patient, while waiting for my The Tarik. I was just about to forget the morning’s chaos when suddenly I was notified that The Tarik was not available, and I should get another drink instead. People, I was not really bothered with getting another drink, but what I wish to question is why did you want to put Teh Tarik in the menu in the first place when you could not afford to serve it? On one hand, you were cheating while on the other, you crushed people’s hope. You ruined my hope.

Later on I met a friend who dejectedly told me about the disappearance of his slippers. We both shared the same idea; it is not the price of the slippers we were concerned of, instead it is the bad manner of taking people’s belongings that annoys us. And as what you might also think at the moment, this is another typical dire manner of Malaysians.

As the event went on, there were also all those traditional Malay games as well as other modern games including 3 on 3 basketball made available, but I was simply not interested. There are other things that I wish to complain, such as the use of coupon to buy food. I always hate this idea since the primary school age, because this coupon system apparently forces us to spend. And for a matter of fact, my primary school’s Open Day applies a similar coupon concept. And now you start to think what is the difference between a primary school’s Open Day compared to this biggest-in-the-history one I had just attended? Well, maybe in primary school they do not start late. Maybe. The other thing that annoys me is the unprofessional, second-class use of the PA system. People are listening, so do not act silly in front of the microphone. And it is not that hard to find someone who can do the job properly I guess. By the way, the event's official poster that I posted on your left does not look nice either. The language used is simply not taken care of.

I spent my last coupon on Pulut Kuning, met some other people including Hafiz and Hanaa for a moment before I took off. By the way, did I mention anything about what happened to the Roti Canai? Well, the Roti Canai were there, but they looked weird, and I suddenly lost my lust for it. And two small, weirdly-made Roti Canai for AU$5? It simply did not help.

By the way, that friend of mine who lost his slippers found them back shortly after our conversation. I guess, at least we do not take people’s belongings, we only borrow them for a while. Without telling them.

Pressing the [re]Start Button

Now I'm wondering why it was so hard for me to move these tiny fingers and type down several sentences for the past several months? No thanks apparently to excruciating university workloads and the disease of regular laziness in me.

So here I am at it again, jotting down pieces on this powerful instrument called blog.

For those of you who are familiar with my now-lifeless Friendster blog, this will basically be a continuation of that decent effort of mine to capture good things in life. For those who are not, I would appreciate if you can just stay put and lend me good supporting hands.

Looking back, I regret the time when I was too lazy to write. I chose to sit on a silent platform when I had plenty of stories to tell the entire world, when life was so wonderful that I saw a mirror and smiled, when the subject of my night was indeed beautiful that I carried it out to bed and into my dreams. Even when I had a mundane day, at least speaking out and share would help a lot to relieve some fraction of the pain I believe. How I wish I never missed those parts.

"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

Give rambling a full stop, now let's hope that the ride is smooth and the sea is calm!