We need more articles like this...

http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/reviews/MDY4OA.html

as most of our discussion of the art scenes in Malaysia tend to be rather bland...

What is to become of us?

And no more sexy clothes for women across the board. So, forget about making Kelantan a target for fashionable clothes (according to fashion magazines) and concentrate on clothes that are in fashion according to the new rules.

I wonder what will the muslim women say to this...looks like their hands are tied now.
And teenagers won't get to wear miniskirts, unlike their mothers. Here is the full post. Sorry, no time to translate to English so try using a web translator if you can't read Malay. (:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/37309
Denda maksima jika tidak pakai tudung di Kelantan

Jun 24, 05 4:28pm


Terjemahan Kerajaan PAS di Kelantan akan mengenakan denda maksium ke atas wanita Islam di negeri itu yang tidak memakai tudung.

Majlis Perbandaran Kota Bharu – ibu negeri Kelantan – akan denda maksima RM50 ke atas mereka yang melakukan kesalahan itu.

“Sudah sampai masanya untuk mengenakan kompaun (denda) maksima. Kami berharap ia akan meningkatkan lagi kesedaran (mengenainya),” kata jurucakap majlis tersebut, Azman Mohamad Daham seperti yang dilaporkan oleh akhbar New Straits Times.

Akhbar itu berkata, 80 wanita, sebahagian besarnya pembantu kedai, telahpun dikenakan denda RM30 sepanjang lima bulan pertama tahun ini.

"Ramai Wanita didapati tidak memakai tudung pada waktu malam dan pada hujung minggu kerana mereka menjangka tidak ada pegawai penguatkuasa bertugas pada waktu itu,” katanya.

Menurutnya, penguatkuasaan akan diteruskan bagi memastikan peraturan memakai tudung itu dipatuhi.

PAS, yang memerintah Kelantan sejak 15 tahun lalu, memperkenalkan peraturan pakaian pada 1995 yang mewajidkan wanita Islam yang bekerja di tempat awam, memakai pakaian yang menutup badan mereka, kecuali tapak tangan dan muka.

Mini skirt dilarang

Pekerja di kalangan wanita bukan Islam pula dilarang memakai mini skirt atau pakaian yang mendedahkan badan mereka.

Sejak itu, majlis perbandaran yang menguatkuasakan peraturan itu, telah mendenda wanita yang tidak memakai tudung dan memberi amaran tidak akan membaharui lesen perniagaan majikan yang pekerja mereka tidak mematuhinya.

PAS, yang mahu menubuhkan negara Islam di Malaysia, telah memperkenalkan banyak peraturan di Kelantan.

Ini termasuklah larangan membuka salon uniseks, tempat urut dan majlis menyanyi dan menari di tempat terbuka. PAS juga menggalakkan wanita Islam supaya tidak memakai gincu.

Bagaimanapun, parti itu kehilangan Terengganu kepada Barisan Nasional (BN) dalam pilihanraya umum tahun lalu, selepas berkuasa selama satu penggal.

Dalam pilihanraya umum itu juga, BN hampir merampas Kelantan daripada PAS apabila parti itu hanya mampu mengekalkan kuasanya dengan majoriti tiga kerusi sahaja.

- AFP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And as this guy rightly says, we do have more pressing concerns, though I disagree with his inability to see that some small things DO MATTER. http://www.geocities.com/ummahonline/suratpembaca/050625shatibi-hampas.htm.. Like whether one has the space to interact to learn the art of respecting each other. Over repression of freedom lead to much ugly undercurrents, as Victorian history, and extremist Muslim countries (and Christian countries, though the latter don't really exist in a big scale today),clearly show.

However, if we should be concerned with more pressing matters of the country, why is everyone more interested in petty matters like whether women would or would not cover themselves?? Couldn't they decide that for themselves or do we need to hark back to the age when women are considered, inspite of all their education, too stupid to think for themselves (sounds very Nietzschean)?

A thorn to one's flesh...

I remember once when an acquaintance mentioned that once you have achieved the ultimate goal in one life, you can just slide into complacency and no longer worry about achieving excellence. Meaning, as long as the status quo is maintained, there is no need to worry your head about looking for new and greater challenges.

Well, this seems to haunt Malaysia nowadays, in all fields, and especially in academia, where the ethos has always been to strive to be better and better in your field and your job, whatever post you hold. But here, it is a matter of buttering up just to maintain your position. So, all talks of excellence are rattlings of empty vessels, made worse by a fawning media who seemed to take over the roles of spin doctors.

So, has the fact that system make it so easy for one to stay in one position without continuously proving oneself been a source of many flowering talents that just disappear, or has the system actually been the source of the creation such "flowers" who wouldn't had been there in the first place? This seems to range from excelling in public school exams all the way to the top positions in the country.

Even for those with grit and determination, it seems to now require a more extraordinary sort to actually go beyond complacency and delusion of self-grandeur...

What's the difference between an A1 and an A2 in Malaysian School Leaving Certificate Exam? The ever *yawn* debate continues

Well, in some ways, I really like the Spectator. They do get some good old-fashion ideas right:-

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=6255

Little musings on a slow day

Today is a slow day, and the Internet kept going up and down. I just lost a big chunk of what I had written here when I hit the back button. Drat.

I spent most of the time indoor, with the exception of dinner time, when I went out to have a meal of banana leaf rice. In between falling asleep and reading up theoretical works for my thesis, I was catching up on some short stories by a group of American writers. I suggest to everyone who have not, to get a copy of The Oxford Book of American Short Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates. There, you get to see the various styles of the best of American writers for the last two hundred years. What made them all fantastic were the gripping, beautiful, evocative and imaginative use of words. The most banal becomes sublime.

For a long time, I live half my life imaginatively, within the land of fantasy. Should reality threaten to upheave, the fertility of my thoughts would go into hibernation mode. I remembered, a few years ago, when attempting to study for my Calculus III finales, I found myself building an entire novel in my mind, using conversations and descriptions and vivid images, so much so that I hardly new what of the squiggles on the white sheets had entered into my subconscious. What was worse, I have not even studied much in way of Calculus III prior to that night, and finals was tomorrow. Maybe something did get into my mind, as I managed a C+. That was when I realised that I was not meant to be a mathematician.

AS a physics major, I had to spend a lot of time reading about every aspects of physics. But, I spent even more time reading every aspect of other things, from feminist theories to literature. It seems that I spent most of my hols reading everything, including Literature, except physics. And I love Literature to death, so much so that I did electives in it. I read politics, psychology and other humanity fields, but Literature was always an area that excited me most. Perhaps, I unconsciously realised that I was never going to be a professional physicist. Nor did I think my grades would make me a good one anyway. Maybe that's why I am doing Literature now. Now and then, I still wistfully think about physics.

This is like choosing between two persons, two that you love. You are in love forever and a day with the first person, feeling secure and whole in him or her. Suddenly, someone comes a long and you find your life going into turmoil. Passion ignited and your heart ache. A feeling is kindled that you have not felt before, or have not felt in a long time, or had not felt as strongly. What do you do then? But, you aren't sure if this is a passing fancy, a probably infatuation, or lasting love.

You are not certain...

Petty affairs that preoccupy a petty country

I try to be proud of Malaysia. I am proud of Malaysia as a land but the ongoing drama of pettiness that has become so ingrained in its culture made me want to stick my head in the sand. Oh (blasphemous phrase), looks like we are still very much coolie mentality. The British never left us, they just went and hide and snigger while we all make a fool of ourselves. Wanna know what I mean? Just go look at the country's media (but then, who wants to bother with the pettiness that is Malaysia, right?). Maybe best if you read could check out the letters section of http://www.malaysiakini.com since it's free and you can more or less figure out what's going on from reading the many responses. In a country that likes to believe that it lives by the maxim, "Kepimpinan Melalu Teladan" (Leadership by Example) has turned into a nightmare of "Turutan melalui Paksaan" (Do it or else...)

In a way, I have to feel sorry for the majority of people living in this coconut shell country. They have no idea...

Read this and this and the whole saga on academia (you will find them easily in the letters section).

That said, I've better buckle down and try my best to complete my dissertation as soon as possible to get out of the local ivory tower...arrrgggh


Why should I bother about human rights in this country when a big percentage of the population aren't even humans...

Note from a postcard 3

Lights were lowered, such that one is not distracted by the squashed bodies littering the room, drapping chairs, sofas and floors. Some were quite bohemian, while some are steeped in high-street fashion that is such a rage in Malaysia. This definitely no place to see anyone in folksy garb. Perhaps, when it comes to enjoyment, one will not see a much more multiracial crowd, though mostly speaking the same language. The language of culture, language of communication and language of the body. Curvaceous bodies of wood and plastic, with metal strings, are the stars of the evening, together with their human apparachiks.

Bodies swayed and heads nodded to the rhythm vibrating from the bodaceous neutered creatures, lovingly strummed by men and women, boys and girls. At times, the amplifier threatens to drown out its sometimes mellow and sometimes intense melodies and riffs. Neither whispering heads nor clinking glasses could divert the attention from the performers sitting on the highstool, at the far corner of the room.

The room obeyed the principles of Brownian motion. Bodily vibrations were mostly confined to the occasional jerk when bodies were jammed against each other. The writer wonders about erotic activities that could have been inspired by the penetration of intimate space. Yet, while PV = nRT did not take time into consideration, yet it is probable to plot a graph against the latter, and one would most probably see an exponential decrease between zero and t (where t = time), before plateauing at around 2330.

With the room mostly emptied out, the organisers packed whilst the writer and friends adjourned for supper.


(A review of the first KL Singsong performance launch at La Bodega, Tengkat Tong Shin, KL, on 5th June 2005)

Cliches of life

We have this oft repeated statement that your birth, wedding and death are the three most important events in your life.

For the first, we tend to have very little conscious memory, though by digging through the recesses of our cerebral storage, we might find incidents both pleaasant and unpleasant. I have never cease to marvel at the imprints that incidents can make in your mind, and how a trigger can help you recall a smell, a touch, a taste, a sound.

In our early adulthood and for the rest of our lives, we will be getting invites from friends, acquaintances and strangers. From your twenties onwards, especially between mid twenties to mid thirties, you get an influx of wedding invitations from your peers,sometimes in such abundance that you can choose between going to a church wedding, a wedding dinner, a Malay kenduri and Indian temple ceremony within the space of one day. This of course is also the age when everyone will start asking as to when your turn will be. Perhaps it is great to be married, perhaps it is not. As with every part of life, there are ups and downs, boredom and exhilaration.

Then, you get invited to parties celebrating the various stages of their offsprings' infancy.

As your temple starts greying and you are assailed with various minor ailments that often get blown out. When you start worrying about your cholesterol and blood pressure. When you wish your kids would quickly become independent so that you need not be the tree where money grows on. You start reading about your peers in orbituaries. You begin to get an ever increasing amount of funerals to attend just as the wedding invites peter off, with occasional invites from those a decade or more younger than yourself.


You still get invited to parties celebrating the various stages of their offsprings' infancy. Perhaps you do the same with your children and grandchildren, after you capitulated to the conventions of marriage and popped out kids who go on to have kids of their own. Or you might just eschew the entire institution of marriage and adopt your children (or have them out of wedlock), but then, the flexibility of such arrangements depend on your social and economic circumstance. Or you might choose to lead a life of solitude, spouseless and childless.

The circle of life continues as you grow wrinkled and frail. If you are lucky, the Grim Reaper might decide to come before your earthly body fails you completely.

And then, what?