Saturday, August 27, 2011

Wednesday, August 24th 2011


I guess I never took account on how difficult it would be leaving this place. A year and a half here flew by like they were only weeks but at the same time it dragged on endlessly. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s as if time went really fast and really slow at the same time. This would be your typical ‘leaving-a-phase-of-life’ post and if you are sick and tired of those already, you’re welcome to close the blog now.

Back to what I was saying; time flew by. When I first got here, I thought I’d kill myself (well not literally, I’ve gone down that road before, so I’m not doing it again) because of how isolated this place is. And then I met a bunch of people that I felt made my stay here worthwhile. At least for a while they did. But then after a year, you start to learn how hypocritical, judgmental and ugly a lot of people are…especially within their own race. It is a shame really because we could all have accomplished something big together. A lot of things happened while I was here. They are memories of moments kept locked inside the vault in my mind of the bad, the good and the wonderful things that has happened to me (to us) here.

Coming here, I had an impression in my mind; one that has been etched there thanks to the stigmas I’ve heard about going to a remote place to study and people’s expectations of kids studying foundation (especially for science and law foundation students). I was never really smart, in fact I was a below average student and when it came to social life, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I had none, but I’m not really that cool either so I guess I had quite a few assumptions coming here to complete my foundation in law at an isolated campus, 400 kilometers away from home. I thought the people were going to be divided into ‘weird rednecks’, ‘religious folks’, ‘the cool people’, ‘the brick behind the wall kids’ and then the rest of us; who don’t really fit anywhere but somehow just exist. Which I was not completely wrong about by the way, they were all divided into exactly those groups of people but what hadn’t expected was that they would all merge into one and be one big, ball of shallow, narrow minded human beings hating on people of their own race.

I can’t recall how many times people here have mocked us Malays that use English as the main medium for communication. The typical snarly comments like ‘Bajet mat salleh la tu speaking’, ‘aku Melayu, tak reti cakap bahasa Inggeris’, ‘Tak reti cakap Melayu dah ke?’, ‘Lupa la tu bontot sama hitam macam aku tapi bukan main lagi speaking dia’ and my personal favourite when I start conversing in English; ‘Oh, kan kau dari KL’.

At first, their words did get to me. I kept thinking that I must have made the worst first impression in the world, that everyone must have thought that I am some city slicker who refuses to speak in my mother tongue just because I feel like I am better than them and that made me so inferior for a while. It’s not like I didn’t know how to speak in Malay, I just feel more comfortable speaking in a language that helps me describe what I want to say more accurately.

Bukan tak boleh aku nak cakap bahasa Melayu. Mungkin tak sefasih korang semua kat luar sana, tapi hakikatnya, aku tetap anak Malaysia, aku tetap berdarah Melayu, mustahil lah kalau aku tak reti cakap Melayu, cuma, apa yang susah sangat nak terima apabila orang Melayu fasih berbahasa Inggeris dan memilih bahasa tu untuk jadi bahasa utama bila berkomunikasi. Apa yang susahkan korang sangat kalau orang tu reti cakap bahasa Inggeris pun. Aku mengaku, kalau ada unsur unsur bangga diri bila aku ‘speaking’ then it’s just how I speak, I swear, if I am an arrogant person, it wouldn’t be because I can speak fluent English.

Jujurnya aku menyesal sebab at first I conformed to the peer pressure here… Pressured into suppressing what I have always done all my life; communicating in English. I could speak fluently in English, but I wasn’t as good as I’d like to be, I needed to learn and expand my English but coming here stumped that process. Sekarang, it’s like I’m back in primary school… Basic English pun boleh salah, grammar tunggang langgang, vocab dah tak kuat, susunan ayat dah lari kemana entah. Sedih, sebab takut sangat orang ingat aku ni berlagak sampai sanggup memundurkan diri sendiri.

Anyways, it’s 2.01 am and I’d love to go on tapi I’ve class in the morning tomorrow and I have a feeling y’all are also sick of reading. InsyaAllah, I will be continuing this long rant in my next post. Until then, take care.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Monday, August 1st 2011


It’s been a while since I last wrote. Now isn’t that always the case? It’s always “been a while” since my last whatever but it really has been quite some time since my last. It’s not like I haven’t been writing… I have. But somehow, I save them, all my unfinished drafts hidden in a folder on my hard drive where it will never see the light of day. I don’t know why I don’t publish them, my thoughts, when I know it’d satisfy me to know that there are people out there (like you, right now) taking a few minutes off your daily routine to read on what I have to say here. Well maybe that’s just wishful thinking, maybe no one is reading my dusty, old blog. Maybe I’m just ranting to myself like I always have. In which case, I’m talking to myself right now. Haha. That’s sadly entertaining to me, reading my own useless musings. Posting it here, hoping that someone, somewhere out there would stumble upon my blog and find me interesting, at least interesting enough to want to get to know me and then subsequently keep coming to my blog to find out more about who I am, what I like and what makes me tick. All done not to gain followers or popularity like some of the people I know but to gain self confidence, to (sometimes) be in the spotlight because I guess that’s what matters to someone who writes, regardless of what they’re writing, that even just for a couple minutes, someone out there is reading the words they so carefully or thoughtfully chose to put together, forming sentences they cherish so much as a result of their own creativity.

That’s it. I want to write. I want to write well. I want to tell stories about my life. I want to tell stories about how I wish my life was. I want to write stories for those who can’t write for themselves. I want to write. That is what I want to do with my life. I miss being that person I used to be when I was younger. I used to write so effortlessly. I never cared about how it would turn out or get worried that people would judge my choice of words or analyze my grammatical errors (I was never good at grammar), I just wrote and wrote with such gusto and fire.

It’s not true if I state that I am old because truth of the matter is, I am a young girl with such a long path waiting ahead of me, but in other aspects of (my) life, I am old. I lost my flair; at least I think I have. Friends would tell me that I’m rusty, that I just need to practice, that writing, expressing myself through words is just like riding a bike, “once you start writing again, you won’t stop!” they would say. But it has been a while since I last (properly) wrote something worthwhile and to say that my lack of inspiration has dampened my artistic being would be a tremendous understatement.

I miss writing, I miss writing well, and I miss writing for the sake of writing. Sometimes, it sucks, growing up because you hardly ever get the chance to spread your wings and fly like you once could when you were young and free. Now my wings are confined within chains of responsibilities and constrained under the locks that comes with growing old and truth be told, it really is starting to hurt under this self-made prison that comes with age. So please, dear God, help me. I want my muse. I want to be inspired. I want to express myself. I want to write.