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The United States of Malaysia
Originally uploaded by Luca Zappa. Originally uploaded by blackjacket.
Reasons why Malaysia and the U.S. might be the same country:
- They both have similar flags.
- They both have big yellow coloured school buses
- Both have a federal government as well as individual state governments.
- The capital of both countries is a city within a larger state, but is considered a territory to itself.
- Both have had publicised issues regarded the separation of church and state(substitute mosque in place of church for Malaysia).
- Both have a stretch of states that are considered to be socially conservative and tend to vote on religious grounds.
- Both have issues regarding affirmative action (although somehow in Malaysia affirmative action involves the majority, who already wield a significant amount of political and economic power and still somehow can’t catch a break).
- Both have two states that are very far away from the rest of the country(Alaska and Hawaii for the US, Sarawak and Sabah for Malaysia), one of which is the largest in the country(Sarawak and Alaska).
Technorati Tags: malaysia, america, usa
a review of possible works of art
Went to the installation a week or so back. I apparently just missed Jeeshan by a couple of hours, since he had to leave due to NS commitments. Friends, students and family had been streaming in and out for the past few days, but since I generally choose to avoid crowds I had wanted to make it on the second to last day of the installation, but other commitments meant I came on the last day.
As I mentioned earlier, Jeeshan wasn’t there, but Christina was. I suddenly realised that the reason why I’d recognised her from the flyer was that she had been a student at the college and to top it off like Phife Dawg she’s got a track record longer than a DC-20 aircraft in the fields of art and design, having apparently designed the interior for Plaza Singapura. This is the first time she’s done an installation piece though, and it was basically using the entire space of the room at Bras Basah Complex (owned by Basheer Graphic Books) together with Jeeshan’s poetry and a video piece by him to create poetry in design as it were.
Words were everywhere, line after line snaking and streaking across the walls and met with paintings and patchworks of photography. I’ll admit I don’t always ‘get’ art, but this was definitely interesting. They had to take it down after the week was done, but Christina told me that she was trying to sell it elsewhere in September. In any case, The Event of Being is available for sale at Select Books and Books Actually should anybody be interested. A collection of poetry Jeeshan’s written over the past ten years or so, it’s not bad at all.
punch drunk love
The other day at the gents at City Hall MRT station I saw a kid puking into the sink, and his friends were being ’supportive’, holding his head and shoulders (not shampoo) and what not. I think the worst part of it was that the cleaner was an old man who couldn’t do much but look on. He just put a bandana around his face, got his cleaning tools and waited for the dumbasses to be done.
1)Kids: drinking doesn’t make you mature, and I’m pretty sure the case wasn’t just your inability to hold your communion wine. I apologise ahead of time if you just had some bad hor fun or something, but I think my next point is still valid.
2)I really never understood throwing up in sinks. Sinks don’t have systems in place for your vomit to pass through the pipes, and it’s more than likely that the pipes are being clogged up as a result. You might as well have vomited on the floor, at least that could’ve been mopped up. If you need to throw up, do it in the toilet bowl. If your friend is going to throw up, direct him/her to a toilet bowl.
3)The cleaner should’ve beat them with his mop.
***
It reminded of working at the firm and seeing drunken fights outside bars at nine in the morning.
Peace.
For Sale
Trying to sell off some stuff.
Read more »
culture and venerealism
The Interpreter - John Colapinto
The New Yorker has a really fascinating albeit lengthy article about what appears to be the unique linguistic nature of the Pirahã culture in the Amazon, which has apparently created some controversy among linguists. I respect Noam Chomsky for some of the stances he’s taken politically, but I think as I’ve grown older I’ve had to revise and reconsider certain opinions about certain ideas and this article throws a lot of what Chomsky theorised about linguistics, which had early in the twentieth century helped it progress as a science, into doubt.
Thanks to That’s How It Happened for the link, and kottke also has links to the same topic, with some additional links of interest.
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Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching - Terry Eagleton
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
For some reason I’d always expected Marxist critics to be dry and humourless. Terry Eagleton on the other hand makes for wonderfully entertaining reading that is intelligent without ever being dull. The above is his review of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion and it addresses a lot of the problems I have with texts like this, among them that atheists and religious fundamentalists appear to have the same problem; they both apparently have nothing better to do than talk about God.
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Slate has an interesting series called Blogging the Bible by David Plotz, covering the entirety of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh). It’s by no means theologically indepth, but as a layJew’s experience of reading the books in their entirety it makes for fairly interesting reading.
Technorati Tags: linguistics, terry eagleton, richard dawkins, judaism
A Whirlwind of Possible Storms
For his students, ex-students and anybody else who might be interested.
say it out loud it’ll be okay
Just summing up the exams, since I haven’t already done so.
Modern American:
Charles Johnson: identity
Ernest Hemingway: decent but generic look at gender
Maxine Hong Kingston and F. Scott Fitzgerald: half assed attempt at culture
Post-Colonial
Tsitsi Dangarembga/ Anita Desai: possibly a gender question, I can’t remember
Hanif Kureishi: diaspora
Chinua Achebe: religion
It didn’t go too badly, I think.
***
I finally passed my driving test on my third try last week. No stupid mistakes (ie, not sliding down the slope or mounting kerbs), lots of prayer and a calm head went a long way I think. The tester kept making comments about my driving, and when we headed back to the driving centre before the test route was through, the only though in my head was “Oh no”. But it turned out okay.
I realise, though, that like a lot of other things I only took my driving test just to get it out of the way. Once it was done, I had no real interest in actually driving all that much. You know, especially not with an entire family of instructors surrounding you. But I realise a lot of the apprehension that I have is from driving so much within the Eunos/Ubi area, where the traffic is always heavy. Once I was driving almost up to the Tampines/Pasir Ris border, a little place I like to think of as mini Malaysia (haha) I was enjoying the relative freedom of basically just driving up and down long stretches of road without worrying too much about traffic. I expect my driving will get better eventually.
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Mum had dengue awhile back. It was pretty bad before she actually got diagnosed with dengue proper, she just felt cold all the time. She’s recovered since, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as when my brother got infected. That resulted in him quitting smoking though, blessings in disguise I guess.
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The youth are getting restless.
Peace.
the one with the strange phone call
I got a phone call from somebody or other telling me (I think) about some sort of talent audition happening some time or other. I’m saying it like this because I promise you his side of the conversation was like this.
Is this Ahmad Zhaki? I’m from (indecipherable). There’s a talent audition for (indecipherable) happening this (indecipherable)
Enunciation, people. I kept wondering whether it was one of my friends pulling a prank and I was trying to pinpoint the voice whether it was somebody I knew.
I got to thinking about how people sound on the phone. I can make out most of my friends I think and I thought about how so many people sound like they’re anxious and eager to get off the phone as soon as possible. I hate talking on the phone myself so I understand the feeling. I think about how there are several voices for Farhan for example, I think he does sound anxious on the phone and in writing (on forums, MSN messenger, SMSes,etc) he just sounds like an overenthusiastic fanboy, which he is of course. But he’s a bit more agreeable in person. I have no idea what I sound like for example. Hearing my voice in the various UsDudes recordings weirds me out, but I’ve gotten used to it. There’s a point in here somewhere, but I just don’t know what it is.
I kept wondering what it is I could’ve possibly signed up for or what I gave my phone number for that I could’ve gotten that phone call. Winda tells me not to give my details for lucky draws and the like, but the strange phone calls I get from strange people generally involve me correcting grammar and syntax, which means the only answer is to change my phone number I guess.
And I said I wasn’t interested.
Peace.
from the depths of Google Video…
I haven’t watched all of these, but I just wanted to put them up here as a sort of bookmark and to share with whoever might be interested in viewing them. Stand up comedy from some of my favourites, with a couple of old skate videos at the end. Oh, Not Safe For Work I guess because of the language, but also since they’re all at least half an hour long or so.
Dave Chappelle - For What It’s Worth
Dave Chappelle - Killin’ Them Softly
New Beastie Boys
Off the Grid
The Rat Cage
Not terribly new to anybody who’s been paying attention, but new enough. The Beastie Boys have an all-instrumental album called The Mix-Up due June 26th, and so far it sounds cool. If it’s any good I might actually forgive them for To The 5 Boroughs. There’s a track by track review on Mic to Mic, a Beastie Boys Fansite. Also due on June 26th is a new Bad Brains album called Build a Nation, featuring their original line up and produced by Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Ah, good times, good times.
Technorati Tags: beastie boys, bad brains, the mix-up, build a nation
