now, how long have i been screaming about this already?

for once, i think i’m actually on the same chapter as rais.

Rais tells DBP to stop borrowing foreign words
source: the star

KUALA KLAWANG: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) has been told not take the easy way out by borrowing words from foreign languages to be added into the Malay vocabulary.

Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said such a regressive attitude would not benefit the Malays, who have a rich heritage.

“What I don’t understand is why should we borrow words from other languages when we have our own. A fine example is the word iklan (advertisement). I have been made to understand that the DBP dictionary no longer uses the word iklan and has changed it to advertansi,” he said.

Dr Rais said there were many other examples and the DBP had to stop this.

He was responding to a comment by Grik MP Datuk Dr Wan Hashim Wan Teh who claimed that DBP had run out of ideas and failed to do proper research on Malay words.

Wan Hashim said DBP also used words such as bajet (budget) and konsultansi (consultation), although there were words in Malay that denoted the same meaning.

“DBP should borrow foreign words only after it has exhausted all options in looking for a suitable word in Malay,” said Dr Rais at the opening of a RM3.5mil public library by Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan.

the history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. ~ franz kafka

amidst all the mess of massacred trees this evening i experienced a strange sorta enlightenment. and i am quite proud to say that i take a lot of pride in the sculptural arts of language be it for artistic or expressive purposes. this evening however, i worked on this incredibly complex document which everyone else had chucked as hopelessly incomprehensible. from my point of view, it is a linguistic obstacle. i believe the others concur. lingos and jargons aren’t usually very high on people’s “what’s fun” list, let alone stylistics.

well you see, these are exactly the kind of things that make my toes tingle and excites my medula oblogata. it’s like a sweet romantic relationship to me. i approach the new genre carefully. gingerly. almost fearfully. i am delicate to get to know it. legal jargon. oh! some contractual terms. provisions of whereby. fascinating. circumstantial analysis. correspondence and consequences. give me more syllables, my darling!

and i extract its essence. in time and patience, it reveals it secret to me. it shows me its heart. and i discover its blueprint and how it works.

lovingly, i put the words back together. same same. but different. for language has revealed itself to me and i now reconstruct it to my advantage. its now under my control. and these words now work for me. you have no idea what a joy sentence construction is to me. especially very difficult ones. one with all the terms charged with all the whereby provisions.

no my dears, my language is not perfect. i don’t think anyone’s is. but i understand language. and if i am patient enough, language understands me too.

oh but strictly for that starved linguist in me, it was a happy evening. could you call this a superpower? to love the art of language with a passion. no, i have no such ambitions to save the world. just to write a story or a document or whatever… just to write something that will capture the awe in the most anal of critics and make them go, “wow!” in the hushest of tones.

yea man. just that. a heap of tired out policy papers and documents rest on my office desk from a spree this afternoon. sigh!

got just enough religion, and half a tank of gas. come on. let’s go. ~ bon jovi

a coupla weeks ago, i met up with some long lost friends and we participated in the sun motor hunt just for the heck of it. i honestly cannot pin point for sure how it happened or why, but it was an ungodly morning which saw me and three others pile into a car for the event. supplies include a tupperware of popiah for breakfast and some of the thickest dictionaries and thesauruses from my personal collection.

it was an insanely hot day and as it appears, the whole of klang valley had decided to have a day out on that very day at he very same areas that the hunters were hunting at, and we found ourselves running head on into massive traffic jams, all one after another. our team has a driver, a navigator and two spotters. i was a spotter.

you can tell, oh boy can you really tell, that there are some freaks out there who do take such hunts downright seriously. and don’t get me wrong, i find it throughly fascinating. and throw in a play of words and bastardising twists of language, and you have a very, very amused linguist in the car yo!

so of course, soalan cepu emas: did i win? jauh sekali tuan-tuan dan puan-puan…! our team scored like ninety something out of the two hundred teams. okay je lah but it was loads of fun. menang ape for getting ninety somethingth place: dapat rice cooker beb! god knows what i’m going to do with it… cook rice, duh… tapi at least tak balik dengan tangan kosong… heheh!

some may never live, but the crazy never die. ~ hunter s. thompson

the week has been rough, my friends. you know how in form two, you learn about putting different kinds of things in a test tube and how it will seem to get thicker? an then you add in more things and it does not mix well until you heat the whole solution up and it gets really nice and thick and you add more stuff to it again? well, you eventually come to a point where no matter how you mix, heat or freeze the solution, things no longer dissolve in the mixture? that’s where i am at now. larutan tepu.

three days ago, i am told that i have another seven fun-filled weeks of this sort of music to face. now please tell me that at this point, you can tell that i am trying very, very hard not to slip to a very colourful flood of expletives because honestly, i really am trying.

two days ago, an editor – one of those datin wannabe kinds – whom i never knew had much of an eye for anything but her almost fabulous self, casually confessed how she is has always been a closet fan of my writings and commented what a loss the industry is experiencing, now that i have ‘gone corporate.’

yesterday, i was confounded into spending the evening among veterans of the industry who felt that i could use a dose of occupational TLC. this resulted in our strange trio crashing into a party of early evening drunkards and eating chicken satay with black pepper sauce – among other less healthy, vegetarian approved things.

party details aside, i managed to escape the overwhelmingly happy company before getting too happy myself, and arrived home slightly feverish. for the first time in a month, i have had more than a straight five hours of sleep.

saturday woke me up by the crash of roof tiles. my brain craves for an creative expression. i have a few review gigs but all i really want to write now is a long soulful narrative.

playing in the grey area

these few days have been crazy. i simply cannot understand it. i have an itching suspicion that it is in the weather. too many clouds and not enough sunshine. people are getting cranky and for some strange and irritating reason which quite honestly escapes me, i am everyone’s favourite targets in these long PMS spells.

for one thing, i am currently engage in two projects at the moment and they are polar opposites where planning is concerned. both are pretty much screwed, one, obviously more than the other. one project, its processes, protocols and procedures are so anally strict, the red tape spans as long as the wall of china. every step leads to another long list of procedures. everything is so superly so-called systematic and there is no fooling the system.

the other project, is so awfully cin cai, it might as well just commit suicide now to put itself out of its own screwed up misery. no one really cares about what is happening and the permanent rule of the day is procrastination overdrive.

in both cases, you come to a time when datelines come crashing in and in both cases, you jump. they jump. sorta everyone jumps. and that is the sort of world i am currently stuck in. i have two groups of jumping people all around me. on one hand, the rigidity of processes need to to addressed now in super turbo mode – like that is even possible. and on the other hand, their asses have been marinating so long from so much procrastination, can you even begin to imagines heavy assed people bouncing off the walls over here? it is painful. to me, more than others.

so what do i do? i climb walls. bouldering results in a daily dose of sore shoulders but i reckon that if i can develop biceps like some of the people in the gym, other people around me would leave me alone.

by believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. the nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. ~ franz kafka

show me a world where people are generous and all the good (and naughty) things in life are free. no, really. where people give each other presents ranging from potted plants to cars. where everyone is obsessed with hugs. where people pick fights just for fun, just before they treat each other to a round of beers.

i give you lads, the cult of facebook.

oh yes, i have been called the skeptic, what with all the friendster and myspace cults constantly spamming my otherwise easy-to-maintain inbox. so about twenty facebook invites and a particularly restless morning later, i registered. just as i suspected, another one of those online life absorbers.

i’m not here to diss the application. people get to keep in touch and i have long lost friends scribbling on my wall which is honestly quite nice to see. and as i have mentioned, in a world where i am constantly surrounded by half-wits, people are shockingly generous here. and i bet in real life, i’d never receive a unicorn as a gift pet so yea, my life’s dream has come true and i can now die happy.

what i’m saying is, that people should be like all of that in real life. sharing. generous. happy. you pick a fight and then forget about it and laugh about it. i mean, is it just way too much to create a world where everyone’s friends with everyone else and liquid forms of spiritualism is, well, free? this is where cynical me comes in – of course its too much too ask *slaps self on face* hello, la la land, sekian terima kasih!

at the very least is this la, i remember a time when i was insanely addicted to the internet. my life revolved around it and i had shivers if i did not check my email every four hours or if i did not enter a chatroom every night. and it was hard to re-enter into life where problems cannot be solved over a keyboard of letters and solutions are less than a click away. reality is, i had to re-learn, about action. and the cyber realm is mostly words. and as cliche as it sounds, we all know that saying about action and words.

i try to make a change in the world in reality, where suffering really happens. and it is hard enough to get beached whales in front of the idiot box to get their heavy asses for simple things like exercise, apatah lagi diaorang yang asyik melekat kat internet tu pulak.

and i do believe that people mean well. facebook has in interesting application where people can support causes like breast cancer awareness and an end to domestic abuse and a reduction in carbon emissions. all fine and good. great actually because awareness is the first step in activism. but what follows through from there? this, is what i care about. this is where the action comes in.

what defines meaning? how does something translate to become meaningful? and which reality is real? could the online community, where the best of everyone, their passions, their honesty, their generosity and their happiness reflects best – is this the real world? i mean, is this utopia what everyone really has in mind and this physical reality simply the landfill of things we discard from ourselves. because if it is, then maybe it’s just me living in the wrong world.

because over here, i see a community of increasingly unhealthy people. people who, in the physical form is in dire need of exercise and whose spirit really might benefit from gifts of even a chocolate bar. or potted plants. or hugs. or friendly pokes.

it is man’s ability to remember that sets us apart. we are the only species concerned with the past. our memories give us voice, and bear witness to history, so that others might learn, so they might celebrate our triumphs, and be warned of our failures. ~ dr mohinder suresh (heroes 2)

sal, i want another route la.

this route dah clear dah?

sampai that green hold only. susah la, that hold is small and tajam.

then?

sakit la sal…

kalau tak train then macam mana nak jadi kuat?!

erk…

one bruised knee and two layers of skin scraped off my left palm later, sal offers me a purple pocket to support the green hold. i know, someday if i am ever the champion climber of the country… no, make that the region… the world!… then i probably won’t even bat a fake eyelid to moments like this when i have four fingers purple from one stupid green hold. for now, as of every making of a legend, i must endure failures… eh eh eh… constructive failures… like falling on my second attempt of this month’s speed challenge.

aku bengang gila. i know i can do it but that dark imp of fear still haunts me. i tell you, someday this height phobia crap is going to see the worst of me. not that i cannot do high walls. i can and have. it just takes me longer. and psyching myself up the rest of the way when i am already halfway up is a tremendous thing to me. bad thing of it, just when i begin to overcome the fear and get comfortable with a route, it is time to challenge something harder, and i confront the imp all over again. it is continuously an uphill battle for me – no puns intended.

the only good that cam out of it: my discovery of bouldering. lower walls. harder technicalities. crazy need for arm strength – something i don’t have much of – see, another challenge? and it is on this wonderful boulder wall which brings me back to that stupid green hold and purple pocket. ni belum kena stoppers lagi and let me reiterate the insane need of arm strength for bouldering.

sal’s tough but there are amazing jewels in her words. self esteem dah low gila and ego dah jadi kecik gila. i guess that’s a good thing.

so what else in new? the office is turning into a friggin’ kindergarten, school into a ghost town and my photography project – a circus. let’s not even talk about having a social life in these two months because i’m far too busy for my own good.