Independence Day

when i was a kid i used to think that this land was the greatest place on earth to live in. a unique melding of cultures woven into a tapestry of bright colours that dominated my childhood. i loved Malaysia with all my heart.

but that childlike emotion doesn't survive into adulthood, especially in a time such as this. love's a feeling that waxes & wanes with the tides of time. we all eventually grow up & leave our childhood notions behind. i now feel for Malaysia like a love-hate relationship. it's a mess, & there's very little to be proud of right now.

nevertheless, i still love my country, even when it's getting a lil harder to love & a lil easier to be disillusioned. while love comes easy when we're young, you can't seem to settle for just a feeling as you get older. we're all inexplicably tied to the country of our birth, for better or for worse. some days,  it's so hard to love. other days, we live amicably enough without butting heads.

patriotism comes with the understanding that there are things we can be proud of and things that are shameful. there are lessons learnt to shape the nation to be what it is today, & all it will be in the future. we can be frustrated, but the work never ends. it'll always be a work in progress.

Violence

 it seems like some ppl are convinced of the moral worth of violence without really thinking about it. 

what is violence for? what purpose is served? what consequences does violence carry with itself? why do these people reach for violence as if it were the only tool in the box? what problem are they trying to solve?

the reality is that violence is the tool of the unthinking. the resort to violence is an unintelligent & unimaginative way to deal with matters. even those who think that violence is serving some purpose need to realize that it only destroys.

it's utterly destructive, pointless & futile. it achieved nothing. it sent ripples out through time all the way till today. it's a single moment of violence that echoes through the decades. it's the tool of the frustrated & the angry. it achieves nothing for us as human beings. 

Of Being an Outsider

how to respond to the fact of being an outsider & could never be seen as authentic? there are  2 accessible response options, with a good dose of Nietzsche.

1st is to recognize rejection & follow its consequences. even if the group rejects you, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're not part of the group. absorb the rejection & wonder where to fit in. the world is a mix of ethnicities & nationalities, & it's a  typical human desire to belong. of course, there are inclusion & exclusion from groups, but these groupings aren't important tho. anyone can be an outsider by any classification, & it's actually in the outsider position that we're able to observe & think.

2nd option is to impose yourself as the standard & measure others by it. stop accepting others as role models. fashion yourself, knowing that no one could ever be 100% perfect. stop accepting the low & impossible standards of others around you, if you're too different for their standards to make any sense in life as an individual with dignity. this is a more complex way of saying that you have to just be yourself. 

there are one-dimensional social standards for what it is to be a person in our particular philosophical universe. such standards display a misreading of how the modern world operates. each of us has a name & a face & a set of dreams, wishes, & desires. we have our own set of motivations & sources of pride. not allowing for these dreams & motivations & desires to be translated into social mechanisms that afford them the chance to be realized is catastrophic. 

in memory

it was 2006. but it still seems like yesterday we walked along the river banks shouting your name, wishing for a miracle that you'd show up & come out of the water. we knew in our hearts that you're already gone, since you spent too much time in there.. just your lifeless body waiting to be found.

the day you were supposed to meet us all for a reunion was the day we sent you away on your funeral. i didn't know about the others, but the world stopped spinning for me. i didn't have a slightest idea how to face the upcoming days, months & years without seeing you again. i didn't even get the chance to say thank you for the joys & laughs you brought us, for the good times like we played chess while singing Snoop Dogg's in classroom & hit the city on school holidays.

it's been over a decade & some of us still thought about you sometimes. i wonder what a successful, great man you would've been if you're still here. you would be 31 today, my friend. may Allah bless your soul in eternal peace & grant you a place among the pious. al-Fatihah..

My Dark Vanessa

this is by far the most disturbing & painful book i've ever read. it's crushing my soul & like a glass piece cutting thru my mind but i don't cry, just bleed out like Vanessa did. it F me up pretty bad. she's 15, the kind of teenager yearning for adulthood, desperate to be taken seriously. well, who wasn’t like that as a teenager? unfortunately, when Strane, a 42 years old English teacher, starts to give her the attention that she thinks she needs, she falls for his manipulative, mind-twisting sexual abuse. this leads her into decades-long battle convincing herself that it's love, not abuse. 

thing is, the system & everyone failed Vanessa. other teachers do nothing. her friends vilify her. she’s a victim, not a participant, whether she thinks so or not. but we live in society where she isn’t permitted to be deemed a victim, she’s deemed troubled, willing, a slut. it’s a student sleeping with a teacher to get good grades, not a child being sexually abused by a grown man. even her mother drops the ball. it's so disappointing.

well, i think that this is a very well-written & thought-provoking novel about pedophile. it’s important that we learn not to draw distinct parameters of what's deemed abuse, thus marginalizing women who didn’t understand they were being abused, like Vanessa.

trigger warning: the story's a little too graphic at times. understand the shock-value of the explicit scenes, that it’s meant to be uncomfortable. it can be bit too much for some of you.