you see, people now have to start being specific about what they mean in their signages:)

today, i share with you some signages i come across on my travels around malaysia. yea, i know i have published others as i went along, but i happen to be clearing out some files today and found these.

photos taken at both peninsular and borneo malaysia:)

key word is ‘competent supervision’ so if your supervisor (whoops, did i touch a nerve somewhere?) is in incompetent, you can’t use this inflatable swimming pool. the package also comes with illustration warnings:

see, this is why the warning stresses in the supervisor’s competence. in case someone decides to dive or freefall in half a meter or water.

discriminate littering is okay!:)

chinese translation tells you not to lean against the zinc barriers. english translations tells you not to retaliate against it.

first i stared at this signage because i could not exactly comprehend what it was trying to say, and then i swear i almost burst out laughing. english translation – no parking, this space is for spinning your vehicle. note that the signage was located at a very narrow patch of ground between two longhouses.

and finally, not exactly an errorneous signage, but taken in context…

no smoking. the ashtray is just to tease the living daylights out of you. the windows are both bolted and sealed shut. i tried. hey, what gives, man?

 

a letter to me at age 10, from me at age 26

dearest philters,

i know that life seems really glum at the moment. it is difficult for you to make friends. you think that everyone is fun except you. people think that you are freaky and weird.

i am you. i come for the future. and this is what i have to say to you.

everything is going to be alright:)

don’t worry about being cool. don’t worry about fitting in. you are beautiful. and you are special. you definately are different – but this is something you are going to grow to love about yourself. don’t worry about everyone not wanting to be your friend – real friends (and i promise you that you will have them) are those who are by your side when things get tough and will accept you just the way you are.

no matter what people say, you are not a boring person. in fact, some day, you’re going to get a job that will take you places that other people can only dream about going. you will learn about wonderful cultures. and meet interesting people. and do your bit for the community… in style, girl!

be nice to people, regardless of how they treat you. be humble, because i’m tell you kid, you’re going to get more limelight then you’d like as you get older. be strong at heart, because some people are going to be mean to you, but remember that that’s the way of the world and it is not your fault. don’t be mean to people as they were to you. you will grow to have passion, but never forget these days, when everyday is like every other day.

you are going to cry, yes. but not all of it will be tears of sadness.

be nice to mom and get to know dad. you’re going to like his brand of music.

keep reading. ignore cikgu jefry who said that it will spoil your eyes. literature and the way of the words is going to be your thing (you knew that all along!) and thick framed specs are going to be the in thing someday (trust me!).

i know you are going to anyway, but layered haircuts will always look disasterous on you.

so chin up, dear. be brave. so you’re freaky and you’re weird. you are true to yourself and that is the most important thing i need you to be, always.

you’re going to be okay:)

loving you,
philters

 

the sleeping dictionary: a cultural linguistic perspective

the sleeping dictionary was banned in malaysia when it first came out in 2003. don’t get your hopes up lads, it’s still banned. i got my copy strictly for linguistic research purposes.

if the cops come, that’s what you should tell them.

but really, this is a linguistic perspective of the movie. spoilers ahead.

 

possibly one of my most revealing (and not to mention the funnest) travelogue posts thus far

mukoi is an orang ulu ritual which involves a rope – what our group would an eeeeeeeeeevil rope…

[warning... banyak gambar. kalau lu punya loading slow, not my problem.]

 

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an evening at KLIA

i love airports. there’s just so much anticipation in the air of people travelling. someone is always waiting. some are a little more agitated than others. there is always a plane delayed. there are always people looking to impress and to be impressed. i see sweet goodbyes. i see celebrated welcomes. the drama of airports never ceases to fascinate me.

where are you from? – a tour guide asks his guests as he helps them load their suitcases onto a trolley.

korea. – a dashing young man answers.

oh, anionhaseyo!

anion.

i’ve eaten kimchi before…!!!

at this point, i swear i was about to burst out laughing. i bit on the corner of the book i was holding and waited for them to walk a good distance before giggling geli hati giler in public. people around me must have thought that i was high on something to be grinning away like that but i can’t help it. how in heaven’s name does declaring that you’ve tasted kimchi make a small talk conversation any more comfortable. its like me going to japan and announcing i am malaysian and my guide telling me that he has tasted belacan before, with a poker face intended to make me feel more welcomed… so? i swear, if someone did that, i’d burst out laughing. i came to experience a new country, there was a resason i travelled a thousand miles to come here instead of just clicking onto the discovery channel. recommend la something local. haiyo…

i check the arrivals. the plane i was waiting for hasn’t arrived yet.

i sit at the food garden. i look out the window. a host of model like girls are flocked arund a mini bas persiaran. each of them has an average of about six bangs. i counted. two drivers emerge from the bus and tried to organise everyone’s suitcases into the boot of the bus with little success.

in what i assume was a resolution to return for a second trip, the drivers tried to close the already overflowing boot but did not manage to. they stepped back. wiped the sweat off their brow and tried to slam it shut again. tak berjaya. two men and two girls tried the feat. also no success.

the bus boot was still flapping. next, i saw the girls as possible tried to squeeze as much of their luggage into the passanger section of the bus as they could. the drivers must have seen the opportunity to complete everytig on a single trip and helped them load everything into the bus. man, from the bus window, i saw suitcases and handbags and make up kits everywhere. gosh, i can’t imagine the long drive to kl with that load on.

the thing is, still take berjaya. in the end, half the passangers disembarked and half the luggage were unloded. the bus will just have to come back on a second trip for them. as the bus took off, the girls wheeled their trolleys to the side of the airport and sat upon it, fanning themselves.

i checked the arrivals. the plane i was waiting for has landed. i waited at the international arrival hall.

tour guides and hotel reps were holding up little cards and papers to welcome their guests. a stream of new arrivals flowed out the gates. a jostling crowd shuffled in every direction. the guides called out for their guests. others were approaching the lost looking,offering hotel stays.

an elderly lady waits at a little distance, holding a bouquet of roses. an old, solemn looking man walks out andshe walks shyly to him. he smiles. she gives him the flowers and put her hands together in a wai bow to him. the walk off together to a waiting car.

a small troop of young boys, all wearing identical yellow t-shirts were holding bunga mangar. i never found out who it was for…

i had my own welcoming to do:)

 

the tree of life painting

i’m going through a little transition in life at the moment. nothing big, but i’m kinda hoping this is going to be something of a deep breath, before an absolutely collosal plunge.

photo taken at the telang usan hotel, interestingly an orang ulu hotel in kuching (if you catch my drift!)

almost every culture in the world has an interpretation of the tree of life, from the mayan, to the germanic, to major world religions, to even contemporary alternative cults. it is fascinating therefore, to find a version of it in borneo designs, and to realise that they have had it for hundreds of years already.

just a quickie, if you could gamble everything you have and everything you are now for an adventure of a lifetime, what would that be?

 

kapas island’s baby dugong dies

last month, i was among the earliest divers to meet kapas island’s baby dugong. but not while diving. i saw her from the island’s little jetty, as she surfaced for air. she was free back then, and was pretty frisky as far as i was concerned. it was two days later that her first underwater footages was taken, and days laters that she was captured for her so-called own good.

photo taken from the star

now, i am no vet. from what i understood about the situation is that the baby dugong was lost. for one thing, dugongs are usually found in the waters of the southern peninsular, so for this little girl to be in the northern east coast is already disturbing. the fact that she was all alone is also strange because dugongs travel in packs.

she was eating however, that was what we discovered. she mostly lepaked where there was plenty of seagrass and sheltered under boats against the sun’s heat. we don’t know how long she’s been lost from her herd.

what i thought would happen when the report of her finding was made to the fisheries department was that a portion of the waters would be courdoned off so that passing boats will not injure or come too close to the animal. i thought what would happen would be an effort to locate the baby dugong’s herd and let her go back to her family.

what happened instead? the baby dugong was named ‘puteri dugong,’ given a field of media coverege, and put in a 24″ x 24″ pool. a tiny space as compared to the open sea. oh come on, 24″ x 24″ is so small! how is she supposed to swim around. the pool was also so shallow and there was nowehere she could shelter from the sun. the pool had saltwater, but it did bot have her natural environment and most importantly, seagrass. i don’t know what she was fed, but i’m getting disturbing reports that she was starved to death. reports say that she might not have been feeding for the past 10 to 11 days.

like i said, i ain’t no vet. i ain’t no animal expert. i ain’t no marine specialist either. but somehow, i feel a sense of connection with the dugong. i saw it. i was there when it was free. nature has a way of taking care of its own. and now i’m reading in papers that she died in confinement. so i am not too sure where humans fit in nature’s equation, but this incident makes me even more of a cynic where human interference is concerned. i am not saying that nature and humans don’t mix. the debate here is the entend of human interference in nature. don’t even get me started on deliberate human encroachement on nature, let alone circumstantial ones.

i don’t think intention is the issue here. everyone can and will say that they have only the best interest of nature and humanity on their minds, so i won’t even go there. it is the ‘should’ versus ‘should not’ and the methods deployed i am concerned about.

puteri kapas, may you rest in peace.

 

wish you were here (lyrics by pink floyd)

so you think you can tell
heaven from hell
blue skys from pain
can you tell a green field
from a cold steel rail?
a smile from a veil?
do you think you can tell?

and did they get you to trade
your heros for ghosts?
hot ashes for trees?
hot air for a cool breeze?
cold comfort for change?
and did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?

how I wish…
how I wish you were here
we’re just two lost souls
swimming in a fish bowl
year after year
running over the same old ground
what have we found?
the same old fears
wish you were here

 

heigh-ho, the pirate’s life for me!

erk… not really, but i thought since i was meeting a pirate captain, it would be an appropriate song to sing… heheh… i’m just kicking myself about now that i did not get a picture with the man himself.

i am on kapas island, with waters infested with jellyfish! mak oi, i was practically diving into hundreds and hundreds of them, all with long ribbons behind them. i tell you, every one of us kena sting by them. and then there are the ribbons yang putus from the jellyfish umbrella itself when we struggled against them… they were poisonous too. gosh, when we were in the water we were covered with jellyfish. when we were out of the water pulak we were covered with calamine lotion because of the stings. funny wei.

of course, the usual remedy for jellyfish sting is urine. i have to tell you however, that it’s a little difficult to go when you are in a wetsuit. i kena sting kat kaki in the area between my heel and ankle because i wore fins without booties. i kena when i was descending and did not want to surface up again because there was current on the surface and it was already hard to descend that day, so i just stayed down. gatai la! i wanted to scratch it all the time but it was difficult even to do that because of the fin straps and all. i was one of the lucky ones. ada some people yang kena at the hand, at the neck… even some who wore the full dive suit with gloves and cap got kena at the face.

baby green turtles. a little more feisty than those at satang island, because they are bigger, i think. while datuk minister released 49 of them in conjunction with merdeka, i released this little guy… yang selebihnya…

the 100plus can is there just so for size comparison. really. i saw my green turtle crawl over the sand… smart fellow, this one, because while some other turtles sesat in different directions, this one went straight for the water… got beached by the waves a coupla times, but kept crawling anyway… he eventually made it… and swam albeit clumsily through the surface, before disappearing underwater. i followed him out for awhile… alas, i had to be contented to just stand at the shallow water, and hope he braves his way through the big wide world alone…

*sniff!*… they grow up so fast…

 

strangers just like me

one of those things thats keeping me in this line of work is meeting up with so many people. some are one off meetings. some are people you continuously keep in touch with. everyone one of them, for better or for worse, leave an impression in life. call it fate or whatever, but i am convinced that every encounter fulfils a purpose… sometimes its just too subtle to see.

there are also people who, because of this line of work, you tend to meet ocassionally, but often after long lapses of time. friends whom you instantly recognise, but whose name does not immediately presents itself in your brain (but they always seem to know yours) – or maybe that’s just absentminded me.

and then there are those who you meet for the first time, but becuase of the length of the mission and assignments you need to complete together, you just hit on with a good note. maybe just a momentarily space of awkward small talk when you all first meet, but generally all around good company thenafter.

bad apples, as they say in this line of work, are everywhere, but no one is prefect, i guess. that does not mean that you distant yourself from people. i have learnt that while some people may portray themselves as (far more) irritating than others, but every one has (though at varying degrees) a sense of humour to them. there is nothing wrong with taking just a little longer to loosen one’s guards. god knows i have come across some people just let it all spill at ‘hello.’

kuching was nice to me on this trip. but there are some people i miss more than others back home. one man in particular…

 

the blue monkey suit

yea well, i know that meeting some super important people require some sort of protocoland i thought i have seen it all… being scrutinised from head to toe – shoes, no jeans, no ripped pants, no sleeveless, nothing collarless, no v-necks either, bla bla bla…

so was i supposed to be completely surprised when they decided that giving us uniforms would be the procedure for this event?

honestly, i cannot say i was completely unappreciative. i was fresh out of the bush, man, and just about everything else i had was either soiled with earth of sogged from the river. the only really nice thing i has, i used for merdeka. having said that, i now have every right to whine…

the batik they gace only came in one size… LARGE! and walking around with it made us look like some sekolah menengah boria choir group, back in the days where going baggy was the in thing.

vaness escaped. tak aci langsung. you know, i got the batik a day before and stared so hard at it with the hotel’s sewing kit trying to figure out how to alter it. tak boleh la. everything was oversize. dah la it was of soft material. i even tried removing the seams, tapi there were holes from the previous sewing so tak cantik if i took the whole thing apart.

alahai… this is what they call dressing up for the big guys. if it was breakfast with us anybodies, then even if you come naked, you’ll be welcomed. tapi ni orang penting, so everyone has to look their best. i wonder why. i suppose everywhere these people go, everyone dresses up for them. would their worldview then be largely on well dressed people, since people rarely dress in everyday clothes to meet them? i wonder if they think differently if someone did not dress up to meet them… even if that person somes with some brilliant idea, like how to solve poverty or pertinent environmental solutions…?

a few years back, i was to present some of my ideas of the malaysian diasphora in some pretty elite environment. i debated to go in just what i would wear given any other day, or doll myself up in the best i had. i wanted be go as just me, because i was convinced that it was my conviction of ideas that brought me to such audiences. i mother strongly opposed. i went wearing a borrowed silk kebaya, with some awesome costume jewellery (also borrowed). and so i presented my ideas. the audience held fifty people. my fellow panelists discussed it. the forum concluded on an optimistic note. to this day however, i cannot help but to wonder how far of a role did my dressing play in such formal events.

maybe it is better to not know. i don’t know how i’d react if my credibility that evening was a credit to my clothes, and not me.