Of Field Trips and Kengchows

State of mind: ...decidedly emo. o_O

This year's first Exploration Week has come and gone - much of it spent in the trusty arms of Morpheus (read: Zzzzz...). I had some personal victories when it came to work—second Motion Graphics idea approved without too much sweat, similarly for Multimedia Production—but am still soul-searching over a few other things (Online Media 3 being one of them...).

Anyway, this is not the place for pure unbridled emo - yet. The foundations will hold a little while longer, be they shaken—and I bring news of Islamic art and Jason Grove's visit to our college!

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Islamic Art Museum outing, or We Drive All Over KL: 15/3/07

Make no mistake: the Islamic Art Museum of Malaysia is PRETTY. The art is pretty. The fountains are pretty. The whole second floor, with its high ceiling, glass walls and tall pillars, is sheer beauty. I wanted to lie on the floor in that space of light and air and just stare at the ceiling and its inverted dome.

We were, however, on a tight schedule, and no pictures were allowed. (You can see a small part of the second floor on the website's main page, though.)

Let's go back a bit. There were six of us: me, JL, Cons, YM, James and WY. The plan for the day was quite simple, and had two steps:
- everyone meets up between 9-9.30
- hitch a ride from James' mum to museum and back

The plan instead morphed into THIS:
- 9.30 comes, and WY's missing
- long discussion on whether to keep waiting, or sod it for a lark and just go
- James' mum can't take us all to KL
- JL decides to drive, following James' mum from behind
- James' mum ninja-speeds off and we lose her
- decide to go to KL on own
- become hopelessly lost between streets
- arrive at museum in various stages of pissiness, sweatiness and relief, swearing the museum had better be worth the trip.

There's actually quite a bit to see in here: little (and large) models of famous mosques, matchlock rifles longer than we were tall, the most fantastic traditional robes, Chinese Muslim calligraphy, little books illuminated with gold leaf and beard combs that you could fill with rosewater so your wonderful chin tresses would smell sweet AND look spiffy. They had a special exhibition connected with spices around that time, and JL and Cons were VERY interested in the coffee section. >_>;

There's also one thing and one thing only you can take pictures of in the IAMM: the domes. They're very proud of their lovely lovely domes.

The museum has a little open courtyard with some fountains, so I would strongly recommend packing a lunch and taking a day trip. The food's EXPENSIVE, and if you don't like Middle Eastern cuisine, you may be pretty much screwed. The day we went, a la carte was not available and we had to have the RM38++ set lunch. All the appetizer and dessert you can eat (and they had some GOOD desserts, milk pudding yum), but see the comment about Middle Eastern cuisine. I'm still wondering how my baked chicken tasted like tandoori chicken. Good tandoori chicken, but still...

Souvenir shop has a lot of selection. I ended up buying a canvas bag and a postcard to send to Delilah. :D They have books for the kiddies, too, and I read through one. Somehow it amuses me to think of Moses/Musa flying into a rage and grabbing Aaron/Harun by the hair. By the hair. *giggles*

One thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was how nobody could seem to realise I was Malaysian. Some snack seller outside the museum thought me to be Korean; a guard inside was genuinely surprised to find I was a local. @_@ I wasn't even dressed that outlandishly - just a bit of layered T-shirts is all. I wonder what would have happened had I wore my cheongsam out...:D

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UK Antenna: Shynola's Jason Groves does TOA 16/3/07

Thank you, British Council, and thank you, o Multimedia Lecturers of Awe, for getting this guy to come in. The talk wasn't superbly formal, but it was quite funny. Jason Groves presents a lot like me—runs on for a bit and sputters to a stop. ;) He did have a lot of stuff to show, much of it incredible levels of pretty. And there was a 'documentary' about one of the first live action music videos they shot, which was amusing beyond all compare. I would love to be the King of Siam...

He even had fangirls. Quite a few of them. One of them me. *flees*

Kengchows all in a row: Mr. Groves, BC lady #1, our MMD head and BC Lady #2. Thanks for coming, guys!

In other news, I'm still learning how to drive.

In which one talks of many things.

State of mind: in pain
Current soundtrack: Whatever it is they're playing at the printer's (but bless Mr. William and his wireless connection!)

The world has decided to treat me quite nicely as of late. Ideas and concepts for Motion Graphics and MM Production have been approved without too much fuss and flurry, which is pleasing to say the least! Online Media 3 is still about the same, though. It's a very complicated situation. Suffice it to say the 'client' wants us to sell the product without revealing anything about it and there are two 'managers' who can't seem to agree on what they would like us to do. No wonder my group is 'ResLes'. Yes, I made up that name. I iz smurt.

...I don't think 'real' projects are like this, are they? D:

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I have a penfriend in Japan, back from my school days. Online she's known as Delilah; she runs/used to run a fansite for Koumyou Sanzo. It's all kinds of cute, but now I can't even remember the URL. Or the site name. *swt* We haven't been keeping in touch for some time — my fault here, as preparing for the scholarship presentations and such last year took up a fair bit of time. I did, however, manage to send her a postcard last month just before the CNY hols, thanking her for her birthday wishes, filling her in on the situation here and apologising for the delay between replies.

Today the post came as I was looking out the upstairs window and I knew she'd written back. Would you believe I could pick her postcard ('tis almost always a postcard) right out from the pile of mail we'd received? Two floors down? In any case she congratulated me on the scholarship offer, included New Year's wishes and went on to reassure me that all was cool and everyone had busy times. She went on to add 'Besides...you and me are and will always be good friends after all.' Oh damn, she got me there. I hadn't written to her for so long and she had every right to think this fandom-based friendship was over, but it was like nothing had changed...except for the fact this time her postcard was really messy. ;) I hope she's doing OK. She's not the type to make so many spelling mistakes per postcard, my surname aside..I really must bring that up with her the next time I write.

One wishes one had or could make more friends like this, but in life sometimes you take what you get. Thanks Delilah-san, you're really, really something.
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The ninth day of Chinese New Year (out of 15, for the non-local readers) is said to be the Jade Emperor's birthday. Hokkiens hold this day in highest regard, and on that day we hold certain prayers and rites (Pai Thnee Gong, which is how the papers like to spell it). Marion D'Cruz would have a right good laugh at me, but this is the one day I feel most Hokkien out of the year. The rest of the time I'm the polytheistic Buddhist banana who goes round bending paradigms. At midnight on the ninth day, I may be praying to Thnee Kong in English, but I'm holding those joss-sticks and folding the gold offerings with the rest of the women. It's kind of comforting, and some kind of anchor, if you like. And this year, I have a new phone, so I took some pictures (coming as soon). This I can do. This I can profile. This is my festival.


The preparations start a bit earlier, when the offerings are set up for the altar. Pineapples, plums, pomeloes, oranges and longan Usually my grandmother puts red paper cuttings on top of and below the stuff, but this year we went without. She is 80-something, and those are small scissors...maybe next year I'll take her place. At about 9-10 pm the altar gets prepared for the prayers, and the front is draped (sort of) with this cloth. It's a fairly interesting cloth, what with the lions and the brass studs and the 8 Immortals round the top edge.


This is what the altar looks like after we're all done praying.
Sometimes I forget halfway what I want to ask Thnee Gong and end up with long gaps of silence as I wave the joss-sticks, but it went all right this year. What did I ask for? SECRET.


Now comes the good part. We fold the gold! Every year my gran goes out and buys this special type of hell's money paper, which is stamped with gold leaf and has a stylised picture of the 3 Gods of Prosperity (Fu, Lu, Shou). She prefolds it into these triangles, and after we finish prayers, out comes the paper and the little plastic stools, and all the ladies sit outside in the night air folding up a big pile of gold as an extra, final offering to Thnee Gong. After this there are more sheafs of hell's money on top, folded to look like sheafs, there is a last confirmation of prayers before the altar and the pile of gold is set aflame.


People say that when you see the sparks going up and disappearing into the sky, it's a sign the offering of gold has reached Thnee Gong. Logic tells you it's just little sparks borne up on a hot wind, going out and floating down in the darkness, but then you remember the one year where the sparks did NOT go up properly and your grandmother broke her leg, your mother got stuck in a horrible job and your sports house lost horribly in the school sports. True story, this.


My belief system condones midnight snacking. When the last embers have burned out and everyone's done with flouting the rules against open burning *shifty eyes* some of the cakes come off the altar and go back into the house, where we cut them up and eat them. :D I assume it's kinda like eating birthday cake. All the bright red ones are ang koo or 'red turtles'; the pink one is huat kueh or 'prosperity cake'; the flat white one is bee koh or sweet glutinous rice. I don't know why I like huat kueh — it's bright pink and doesn't really taste of much — but I'll happily cut off chunks and start munching contentedly.

After that everyone goes home and sleeps, hoping that they won't wake up late for classes or work tomorrow. Birthday or no birthday, Thnee Gong's people gotta EARN!

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Circumstances come together in long and convoluted chains (particularly when I try to relate them) and suffice it to say I read a manga called Star of Happiness: Haghall. It's about an alien from the moon who's trying to prove to God-the-balding-disembodied-head that humans need not be destroyed just yet and there are good people still among them. It's part alien comedy, part existential drama and occasionally rather heartwarming.

I had a rather disturbing dream a few days back where there was an animated version of Haghall - possibly a movie. They found him guilty of killing a whole bunch of babies by strangulation, and the way he put it he said he prevented them from becoming the 'flaws' they would have grown up to be. It was a bit disturbing, but it DID fit in creepily with the tone of the actual manga. And I could actually see him doing this, trying to save the Earth from being ruled by pillbugs and telling God see, there are good people, you need not kill everybody off yet.

What I don't understand is how nobody has yet screamed at Haghall "WHY ARE YOU LIGHT GREEN!?" even if he's 'supposed' to be some Mexican masked wrestler on an exchange program. :/

L > T?

State of mind: somewhat confused
Current soundtrack: Heisei High - Ultraman Tiga - TAKE ME HIGHER (V6)

See, this is what you get when the blogger's grandfather was a Latin student and the blogger's mother has taught English for more than 30 years.

The newspapers astound amuse puzzle me sometimes. Apparently a couple of days ago in the Malay Mail (famous for being sexy enough that the government threw a hissy fit and shut the weekend edition down), there was an article on how a 'tomboy' was denied entry to a popular nightclub in K.L. Quotation marks aren't mine, so it's clear we're not talking about a merely boisterous and bustling young woman here. No, we are talking about They Who Must Not Be Named: lesbians. Or sapphists, if you prefer to be less offensive to the long-suffering people of Lesbos.

So. The woman who cannot enter a club because she has short hair and dressed in a masculine fashion? Tomboy.

The teen who spirited her girlfriend off, acts like a man and has a short short buzzcut? Tomboy.

The woman who likes other women but is still feminine and is quite happy to maintain the stereotypical 'female' role in a relationship? Possibly Still A Tomboy.

...Let's try and shed some light on this, shall we? I called upon the 1337 and wordly powers of Dictionary.com and compared our two words. Let's see what it says for 'tomboy'.

–noun
an energetic, sometimes boisterous girl whose behavior and pursuits, esp. in games and sports, are considered more typical of boys than of girls.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v1.1)

Hm. Nothing about alternative sexuality there, eh? Let's try again.

–noun
n. A girl considered boyish or masculine in behavior or manner.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Nothing about liking girls here, either. Something is obviously wrong! D:

–noun
1553, "rude, boisterous boy," from Tom + boy; meaning "bold or immodest woman" is attested from 1579; that of "girl who acts like a spirited boy" is first recorded 1592.

Still nothing! But wait, I hear someone in the back. "These are all American dictionaries! You are following the West!!!11!" Fair enough. Or rather, we're following the wrong part of the West. Let's bring out a big old British English dictionary - the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. It's a bit old — 20 years, to be exact — but I hope you don't mind.

–N COUNT
A tomboy is a girl who likes playing rough or noisy games.

Nothing about liking others of the same gender, people. NOTHING. For that, you have at least three very useful and appropriate words: 'homosexual', 'gay' and 'lesbian'. Two words are already accepted in the Malaysian press, kinda, so why won't you use the L word? There it is sitting in a corner on the verge of cutting its wrists, playing emo music and feeling fat and unloved.

Is 'tomboy' some strange Malaysian euphemism for teh gurlsex that I haven't heard about? Because as a real tomboy, one who preferred Sabre Rider over Sailormoon, eschewed frills and pinkness and went from 'boys suck' to 'certain boys still suck, but damn that one is FINE', I reserve the right to feel a certain irritation. Besides, even if it IS a euphemism, please exercise your sparkling wit to come up with some way to refer to the more feminine lesbians of the community, hm. They need love and reference too.

A word of advice to the Malaysian press at large: 'lesbian' is no dirty word, no dirtier than 'gay' or 'homosexual' or 'triskaidekaphobia'. You will not be stricken, smitten or covered in pimples just because you use it. Honest. :)