Rambling on!

Sometimes I wake up briefly at early hours of the morning (6/7 am) and look out of my window (I sleep with my curtains open expressly to do this). And then I see beautiful things, and if I have presence of mind enough, I photograph them. This is sunrise in KL.

Today I am leaving city skyline views for mustyfusty……

View from the library!

….LIBRARIES! And library-views, of course.

Leaving is always weird. I’ve done it so many times now you’d think I’m alright with the whole business – and I am, by & large, but – I miss home intensely at the same time I’m desperate to be back! Last night I was struck by a desperate urge to run to Dutamas and flop down their with shisha (because it is the most chilled out, laid back thing/place ever?!). But of course I had to pack. In the UK, pubs will replace mamaks.

But – ONWARDS HO! I have done NO WORK these holidays, I am going back obscenely late (I know the libraries will be missing me) and I need to start work ASAP!!! Ahharhghg!! I know holidays are for chilling, and I have, so I’m very grateful… but I still feel guilty!

*   *   *   *   *

I am going back late because driving tests in Malaysia are only administered on Mondays, and I was desperate to take mine. KL is a city which was not built (with any conceivable plan, it’s true, but also) for walking. To get from Point A to Point B can be the most painful experience ever for the transportationally-challenged, because it would be too long and dangerous a distance to walk but too embarrassingly short a distance to take a cab, etc etc. I haven’t seen buses in a long time (although I am assured they exist). Miles asked me if there were buses to my area, and I didn’t know what to say: I don’t think so? I’ve never seen any? And he didn’t understand it either, which explains the unique conundrum that one finds oneself in.

Having attempted to take it in September, and failing because my front wheels didn’t touch a yellow line of some sort (bah), I felt I had to get it yesterday! Otherwise I knew my driving plans would be shelved forever (I can’t conceive bothering to drive in the UK, at present anyways – who would give me a car?!).

My driving school is most wonderful an encapsulation of Malaysia and Malaysian life. The place I had to sit waiting in was next to a miniature city-jungle of sorts, hastily fenced off from civilization/the driving school – but the smells of the forest still wafted over. It reminded me of Duke of Edinburgh trips to Belum, and school trips to FRIM.

There was also the most wonderful little old man who would “look after” the test-takers and send them to their first test (the hill-test). He was tiny, and shouted perpetually at the candidates (only ever in Malay, so I didn’t understand much); although he was mostly only shouting numbers, sometimes his face would crinkle up into a mesmerizing mixture of malevolence/benevolence, and he would lean forward and utter (shout) words like “TAI-TAI!!!” confidentially. (I am VERY eager to know what “Tai tai”, phonetically rendered here, could possibly mean. If you know: get in touch.)

His other job, besides seeing that candidates kept going to the cars as they were available, was to bring back the cars of failed candidates (stopped unceremoniously then and there, upon committing the fallacy) to the next candidate. It was the smallest distance imaginable; about a 15 second drive at a slow speed. He would drive it at insane speeds (60? 80?), and take sharp turns at insane speeds also – the tyres would scream, the small Kancil would look as if it were either about to turn over or be driven on two wheels only. This scandalized all the test-takers, who would gasp, whimper, or shriek, according to their diverse temperaments. Some would hiss, “Aiyohhh!!” – the traditional Malaysian/Singaporean exclamation of dismay, despair and disapproval (“Oh no!” would be a reductive but appropriate translation). Others nudged each other, and condemned the little old man roundly: “REMPITNYAAA!!”

It made me laugh A LOT.

(It would be difficult to translate ‘Rempit’ also: I am assuming that it is shorthand for ‘Mat Rempit’, which – though it originally meant a very particular brand of streetracing motorbikers – has, I think, become shorthand for any kind of dangerous street-driving. See ‘Mat Rempit‘, an article as amusing as my little old man and his scandalized audiences.)

Edit: My friend Sara has clarified one thing “Tai tai” means (in Mandarin, I think): ”a lady who enjoys life, one who marries a rich husband, dresses well, only goes shopping at Gucci/Prada, does nothing but that” (Sara). It seems a bit out of place in the context of a driving test, but I wouldn’t be surprised…maybe knowing how to drive makes it easier to be the aforementioned ‘tai tai’? Or maybe no ‘tai tai’ would ever drive (because they would have chauffeurs, of course!), so he was congratulating us on not being one? Your guess is as good as mine!

The last day of 2011.

The last day of 2011 was a beautiful day: the skies were finally blue, the sun was shining through the city – rendering it unbearably hot sometimes, but beautiful – and the whole town was relaxed but buzzing with excitement at the same time; everyone looking forward to evening when the sky would be all lit up. I met up with some old school friends: 4 years and not too much has changed. Nice to be able to relax and just sink back into the chair; not having to worry about what to say next, whether one said or did the right thing – I found myself too worried about all that over the past term in Ox.

I looked out of my window at six pm and saw the Petronas Twin Towers reflecting off the most beautiful, golden sunset I’d seen since coming home. It was a good colour-filter to lay over the memories of the year: golden, shiny and bright! (My life is so consumed by photograph-editing software – AS BELOW – this seems an appropriate metaphor for me.)

ITunes’ Christmas app – 12 days of Christmas, where they give away some secret thing for free each day – gave away an amazing photo editing software yesterday, which makes a nice alternative to instagram. So here’s one from there!

A love-letter to cities (in pictures)

This post will focus mostly on my favourite photographs (& memories, because the two are by and large synonymous in contexts like these) of two particular cities: Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. A love-letter to South-East Asian metropolises; to the shapes of the lines that demarcate sky-space and city-space in this particular region of the world.

μητρόπολις - mētrópolis

Orig. Ancient Greek: ‘mother city’

OED on contemporary usage: ‘a very large & busy city’

So without further ado. (On this note – I always hear people say ‘without further adieu‘ with a very pointed and falsely French stress on that last word. Am I entirely, entirely wrong in thinking ‘ado’ makes more sense? Have I been getting it wrong my whole life? Maybe it’s time for a quick grammar-induced panic-attack Google search…)

What I love most about cities are their lights: the colours they emanate, and the sheer state of life & being it signifies. So lights are for rooms, homes, cities: all of those spaces are lived in, loved in and loved by. The above is Kuala Lumpur, and the bottom is Singapore.

I love this picture for the stories it tells: people are hugging, posing, staring, photographing, holding hands, etc. - all in the glow of the omnipresent city. It watches like a mother; not far away from its root definition - μήτηρ (mḗtēr, “mother”). I guess I'm having a ''plump Buck Mulligan" moment - "she is our great sweet mother". This is a view of Singapore's gorgeous skyline, from the Esplanade area. It's beautiful because people really do live and love in the glow (I won't say shadow) of the city behind.

Dear Malaysian skyline. I see it every night before bed, and every morning when I wake up (though not in such glorious close-up... this was taken from Sky Bar, which has alcohol & the most amazing view - double win!).

Took this just last night, in the pouring rain, in the center of town. Life is lonely for an umbrella in the big city. Capitalism reminds me that life has some sort of sense of constancy: it isn't all tragedy & soul. Some of it is just plain soulless and that's beautiful. It's wonderful.

(This is how I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s too: in a world of goodbyes and love stories, Holly Golightly finds comfort in the clinically mass-produced (and yet exclusive, of course); in shop windows and their perfectly pre-arranged world. Nothing is out of line. Everything is designed to attract. There is simply no room for tragedy, soul-searching, hello and goodbye, love or loss on those window-display shelves, I’m sure. And so Holly goes-lightly. I always find pretty shops and big glass windows with lots of expensive, over-valued things extremely comforting. Almost the most comforting thing in the whole world. Isn’t that slightly disgusting?)

Dawn.

learnt some new words today

ひきこもり(hikikomori)

Noun. A shut-in, stay-at-home. Recluse. Person who has withdrawn from society.

ほんね (honne)

Noun. True feelings. Real intentions, motives. Disposition or nature.

たてまえ（tatemae)

Noun. Official stance, public position/attitude. Antithetical to private thoughts/nature.

Reading a movie synopsis (‘Tokyo!’, for anyone who cares!) led to reading about certain sociological/psychological concepts in Japanese society. I find the idea of a hikikomori morbidly fascinating – people who shut themselves away from all human contact (sometimes), from society itself, from people and the ‘outside world’. What is it about urbanity that drives people into isolation? Is the ‘outside world’ just too easy to access (in some sort of proxy form) through things like televisions, radios, and most of all, the Internet? Are strangers in chat rooms more comforting than people in the flesh (who are not so easily blocked, shut out, silenced, etc)?

I always find myself in phases of life tinged by (Techni)colours, laid over with (as aforementioned) false images of cities or times, or with the heady scent of certain books. Last week I dreamt of New York and windows. This week I am dreaming in Japanese literature: my dreams are redolent of a Banana Yoshimoto-style minimalism, where people live out their urban tragedies in tall apartment blocks and over telephone calls; they are palimpsested over by Haruki Murakami’s sad lonely men and women who run mad through surreality’s night. These tinges are often coloured as well: New York was blue and yellow – sunsets, taxis, and sky-reflecting skyscrapers. This week I am dreaming in white and grey. Minimalism.

I wonder if cities which cram the millions of lives they contain together – cities which, like the king in that folktale from the Dominican Republic, try to reach for the moon – send people into isolation by creating the (inaccessible) sight of millions of lives being lived out. A city in which even the sky is not blank is a city which pretends to perpetually be there for you – when really it shuts you in, confines you to being the observer (watching from behind windows, from inside houses).

And yet they are so beautiful, cities like this:

Kuala Lumpur during a thunderstorm, view from a balcony!