wireless

we're finally wireless at the family home. brilliant.

adam finished upgrading my mom's new 50 ringgit (now 380 ringgit after all the additions) pc. set up the wireless connection in the house so our two pc's can get crack-e-lackin. its pretty neat and my mom's pretty happy.

so now when my nieces come over they wont have any trouble getting online, since they can use their notebooks or my mom's computer instead of fighting for the one available pc.

this computer purchase is pretty much the best thing I've done this month.

hello. nice to see you again...

I have so been neglecting this blog. been tumblring a lot lately. and playing restaurant city on facebook. basically the only two personal things I have time for on the internet lately. work has been somewhat, interesting. *smirk smirk*

I feel like I haven't been very productive in the longest time. my world lately revolves around working, work-outs and hanging out with people from work. I haven't finished either of the books I had earlier blogged about, despite refusing to loan them to my sister first. *sorry sis*

so what have I been up to lately? it's important to jot these things down sometimes, in case, 10 years from now, I change even more drastically and miss my previous self *as I do more often every day*. the journals allow me to go on a short time travel, once in a while. what amazes me is that, as lazy as I am sometimes, I seem to have a journal for every period of my life, be they in a diary, on scrap papers or online. *yay me*

so recently I,

• bought my mom a 50 ringgit computer. the company's ICT department were having a sale on them.
  
• started gym at adam's apartment. been there 7 times already. not too bad.
• finished watching the entire available episodes of kath & kim. I really don't understand why they cancelled it, but thats American tv for you.
• gave myself a pedicure
• discovered how great NSYNC was again. *yes, I loved boybands, just as any 90s girl*
• been thinking about my future a lot. you know, the whole nine yards, where I wanna be in 10 years time ect. still clueless about some things

there's a lot of nonsense happening in my life right now which I don't really get. in true sagetarian fashion, I have decided to shrug it off with a short reminder to myself, there are bigger things happening in my life. more important things that deserve my attention and action.

more importantly, there are even bigger things happening in the world and some things are just too small to pay any attention to.

all in all, things usually takes care of itself. I just have to live life right and do what I feel is the best I can do.

one step.

at a time.

dinner

we had dinner by candlelight

at our favourite little Italian shop

where the pizza is dripping in

cheese. holding hands across

the table while talking about

the barbaric ways of old.

I have been reading about

Vlad Dracula and impalement.

it was a different time, I say

but you tell me about the

traps they laid out in Vietnam,

how they won the war and

the brutality of the Cambodian

communism movement. these

are the nights that make

me fall in love with you

all over again. listening to

the softness of your voice

telling me about the mass

killings in Phnom Penn, we

walked the streets of

Kuala Lumpur at 10.40pm,

imagining it as a ghost town,

just the two of us left in this

empty city, rebuilding the world…

new books

Thanks to my Librarian friend, I managed to get two new books last night at MPH with 15% discount. Both are Historical Fiction, which by now I can safely say is one of my favourite genres

The first is one I have been eyeing for a while. Drood by Dan Simmons is a fictional recount of the last years of the life of Charles Dickens by his friend, writer Wilkie Collins. The book tells the story of how Dicken's believed that he was plagued by a demon-being, whom he refers to as Drood, which compels him to descend into the bowels of humanity and perform some twisted deeds. I am a sucker for historical mysteries laced with supernatural tendencies. I believe I am going to enjoy this, all 800-pages of it.

The second was an impulse buy, I saw it on the bookshelf and was immediately drawn to its title. Vlad - The Last Confession by C.C. Humphreys, is a story of the real Dracula, Vlad III the Impaler. I have always been drawn to the story of this man, whose name and history inspired a legend that has grown into a pop culture icon of terror for our time, the vampires. I still remember reading a story in the encyclopedia as a child, about how an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube and seeing a portrait of Vlad next to it, all white and pale and freaky.

so all in all, my weekend is set!

kath & kim

new favourite show ♥

crushing

okay, I am not a star trek fan. I’m not. I love sci-fi shows but somehow I got hooked on babylon 5 instead of the next generation. while I like capt. picard, never really got into data and that weird dude with the razor ala cyclops eyes. there was just not enough aliens in that star trek I guess.

anyway, I’m thinking, after watching the new star trek movie that I would have liked the old star trek series.with capt kirk and mr. spock. maybe I should start watching the old episodes. or better still, they should make new episodes. with the new spock.

gosh. that would be like.

super awesome.

fyi : someone is totally crushing on mr. spock in the new star trek movie. ok.

narrating : the power of points of view

The power of point of view in storytelling is potent. It is in fact on of the few things that separates a good writer from the mediocre and the bad.

When reading a book, I often find myself sometimes being strongly involved in the narrative, experiencing every bit of emotion within the pages, that the book becomes something powerful and alive. This I believe, comes from good narration, the authors complete control of the narrators point of view.

In a story, someone, somewhere is always telling it.

When taking creative writing in university, my lecturer, Mr. Raymer, would always stress on the importance of point of view. One of our exercises involves describing a room from the point of view of different objects in the room or the different people that might visit the room. We not only take into consideration the physical point of view of the person or object, but also the persons projected personality and state of mind. This all sounds mighty technical, but in truth, what we did was, we tried to think of ourselves as the person or object.

In Iain Pears book, An Instance of the Fingerpost, he exploits the power of point of view to the fullest, using 4 different narrators to tell of the events occuring during the year 1600's. Setting his tale in Oxford, these four men, write of the events concerning the death of a respected church member, Dr. Grove, and the events occuring in their lives at the time of his death, and how everything pieces together. He looks at how people can see the same thing differently, simply because they are seeing it through different state of minds, or personal beliefs and even because they have different values. Cola, the Venetian gentleman, sees everything is shades of bright green or sad grey, but none of the fiery red or dark black that surrounds Dr. Wallis, the cryptographer's narrative. This would call from Pears an intense in depth look into character and how we define ourselves, and others define us. For while the narrators would speak of themselves in one way, others could have a totally different point of view altogether.

Margaret Atwood has also exploited the power of point of view to a certain extent, though I must say not in the same circumstances as Pears has done, and perhaps not with the same impact, but effective nonetheless.

In The Robber Bride, three stories were also being told, interlaced around the death of a woman who affected the lives of the three narrators, in the same way, but under completely different circumstances. Here though, all three women have the same emotions regarding Zenia, their enemy, and see her as the same. Evil, dark and manipulative. However, before she became Zenia the Bad, she was Zenia the Friend to Tony the Historian, Zenia the Charity Case, to Charis the Hippy and Zenia the Women's Liberator to Roz the Millionaire. She was a women, seen from different point of views of the three when they were separate and then merged into one Zenia, when the three women united and had the same emotional attachment to her. It is the power of the storytellers to be able to delve so deeply into the minds of their characters that they can write out such realism, and bring readers deep into the minds of people, perhaps not so different from us.

Point of views, gives readers a chance to explore their own thoughts and ideas, and see how it is reflected in others. In An Instance of the Fingerpost, all four narrations, though mentioning same events and occurance, are different altogether, and adds an element of thought into the readers mind. Which is the true account? Or perhaps none are? Truth is perhaps only as true as we percieve it to be.

(written in August 2005)

faith and religion

Over the last weekend, I finished reading the 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. It's been a while since I found myself engrossed with a book. But it’s not surprising that I loved the 19th Wife. I have always had a penchant for historical fiction. With characters taken from the past, the story becomes more vivid and real, and I usually find myself actually pulled into their world, reliving the scenes from each page.

The very base of this novel talks about a subject matter that is close to my heart. It is about religion and the clash between what you believe and what you are told to believe. It is about faith being tested and sometimes being discovered to be wrong, or rather not for you. And it is also about the strength of faith itself, and how you can never look at it as a plural thing, but a very singular entity, different for each and everyone who practices it. At the final note, it is also about being lost, and missing something so intangible that you don't even know you are missing it.

At the face of the novel is a story about polygamy in the Mormon Church during the 19th century, and how it affects the lives of the people inside the institution. The novel is a work of fiction, but uses real life historical figures as its cast. As with the works of Iain Pears, I love these kinds of books because it makes me want to research more about the subject matter and the characters, thus I have spent a fruitful weekend reading up on the Latter Day Saints and their history and founding fathers.

The story is about Ann Eliza Webb Young, who was the 19th (as far as she knows), wife of the great Brigham Young, then leader and Prophet of the Mormon church and a powerful political figure in 19th century America. It examines their lives as Mormon pioneers, and also the lives of a community engaging in plural marriage.

According to the book and my research online, Ann Eliza was one of the leading figures in bringing to an end the polygamous practices of the Mormon Church. Disillusioned by her husband and with it, her faith, she divorced them both and proceeded to lecture around the country on the negativity of plural marriage. She also wrote a memoir, the 19th Wife, detailing her life, being born into a polygamous family and then being married into one.

However, the book is a work of fiction and in between the historical review of the lives of the original Latter Day Saints, there is also a story about a murder inside a polygamy practicing religious community in the twenty first century. Jordan Scott, a lost boy of the Firsts, a breakaway religious group from modern-day Mormons, returns to his religious community in Mesdale, to investigate the murder of his polygamous practicing father. His mother, a 19th wife, stands accused of the crime.

All the elements in the two stories connect as puzzle pieces, adding up to a historical review and perhaps a critique of how polygamy works. Within these two stories, the life and consequences of plural marriage on women and even more important, on children, is depicted and examined, in beautiful lyrical language.

opposite saturday

today I visited my best friend and her baby which made me very happy. since she moved, we haven't seen each other much. her baby is now four months, which basically is how long since I had seen her.

then I visited my brother, which made me sad. nothing more to say here I guess.

mari kita mari kita

bergembira tepuk tangan sama sama

kita menari sambil langkah kanan kiri

goyang badan goyang kaki

hooray hooray hip hip hooray

back from the trip to Lumut. it was a damn tiring trip but I think I needed it. glad to be back though...