selamat hari merdeka

sempena perayaan hari merdeka tahun ini, saya menonton filem dari malaysia, 'sepet.' pada pendapat saya, filem itu tidak merepresentasi masyrakat malaysia secara terus-terang.
tetapi dengan tahap bahasa saya sekarang, saya tidak dapat berbicara dengan komprehensif dan berkeyakinan.
saya perlu merokok rantai dan menulis novel sekarang. selamat tinggal!
satu perkara lagi, semua komen dalam petak komen harus disebut dalam bahasa melayu.

malaysian affirmative action

from an Economist article about positive discrimination in malaysia:

But a surprising number of Malays, as well as Chinese and Indians, argue that racial preferences should be abolished altogether. In line with western critics of affirmative action, they contend that the NEP has fostered a culture of dependency, and so undermined its supposed purpose of Malay advancement. Non-Malays who are forced to study abroad for lack of university places at home actually get a better education, and feel more of an obligation to make the most of their opportunities.

Yahoo Mail

A week ago, I tried to log in to my Yahoo mail account and was countered with an Invalid ID/Password page. I thought little of it, blaming Yahoo's server maintenance. Then a few hours later, I tried again, and again I was denied. A few days later, I log into my Hotmail account (an e-mail address I never use but is linked to my Yahoo account), and it tells me that my Yahoo mail password has been successfully changed. 'Successfully?' I didn't request a password change and I am chagrined that Yahoo trumpets my undeserved triumph in changing my password.
So now I'm locked out and instead of calling a locksmith, I'm moving house to: weeleesim@gmail.com .

dreams

i woke up this morning 45 minutes before the scheduled alarm trying to remember the dream i had. i could not go back to sleep; as i lay in bed, i wondered: What if forgotten dreams are insights into the future or perhaps an idealized past or even better, Ultimate Truth? It's so bizarre.

sunday

i am currently craving a latte and resigned to the fact that i am just not good enough.

neurosis

"There are many different kinds of insanity," he said. "The crazy person is the last one to know."
- Naguib Mahfouz

quotes

Sometimes you have to sink to a nadir of toxic fat envelopment in order to emerge, phoenix-like, from the chemical wasteland as a purged and beautiful Michelle Pfeifer figure. - Bridget Jones's Diary

Haha, pass the chocolate please.

great!

i discovered the problem : the usb port on my new laptop. and i semi-fixed it with my pcmcia usb card and now the ipod is up and running. i'm super happy but slightly apprehensive about the dysfunctioning ports.
also, i saw mandy moore and zach braff in ny this weekend at this restaurant called la marche.

ipod

i am on tenterhooks because my ipod refuses to store any music. i don't think i can survive without having the white earphones secure in my ears, playing a familiar melody while I vacuum carpets and wash bathrooms. i even considered buying a new one today. i realized today, while despairing, that for me, music is my history. i don't have favorite bands or genres, just favorite periods in my life, and i am reminded of them through the songs that i listened to first during that time span.

home depot

that is exactly the reason i'm emotionally unavailable because once i do get emotional, i clam up afterwards and feel guilty about divulging too much information and weighing down friends.
but lumbering on anyway ....
i was invited by my supervisor to go with him on a visit to home depot where he had to pick up a couple of items for ongoing projects.
we enter the store and i am amazed at the utter lack of interior aesthetics, aisle upon aisle of lumber, lighting, ceiling tiles, stacked neatly but depressingly.
i kept telling myself, "i feel like paris hilton walking into wal-mart."
about 95% of the clientele were men, mostly of the strong, swaggering type with accents to match. picking out my two by four twelve feet studs, i felt like a child, with my matchstick arms struggling to move a piece of wood that weighed approximately 10 pounds onto my cart.

a vent

i furiously regurgitate the pent up emotions that i had bottled very carefully these past two summers but now that the bottles have exploded, i find myself storming back from center city and seeking redemption here.
i get mad when people raise an eyebrow at me and say "why do you want to be an investment banker?" as if it were the worst a person could do. it's hard for you understand, it's definitely easy for you to project yourself, your upbringing, your circumstances, and your values onto mine but you won't know what it was like for me. it's very hard for me to admit this, and although my family really isn't that destitute, my formative years were really difficult and i bear those trying times till today. i grew up in a house where coke and pepsi were luxury items, forbidden beverages only for chinese new year guests. and on the 16th day, my brother and i were allowed to consume what remained. my brother would come home from school and drink two, three cans and i would protest to my mother screaming "he drink so many! you said can only drink one a day" to which my parents would reply "share" which i thought meant "let's ration these so we can enjoy them longer" while my brother interpreted it as "if i don't finish it soon, my brother will." i grew up wearing my brother's hand-me-downs, and of course every younger child complains about this. but it was scarring to only have a handful of nice shirts (most of which were gifts), and embarassing when a grown up commented to my brother, "why does your brother wear the same shirt to church every sunday?" in primary school, my parents forbade me to carry a wallet to school, even if it contained no money, I am unsure of their rationale. While everyone else bought nasi lemak or chee cheong fun at the canteen, I had to eat my homemade sandwich. I soon discovered a get rich quick scheme; instead of paying the bus uncle the monthly fees, i'd pocket them. I would do this periodically so the bus uncle would forget, thinking he might have misplaced the fees. And I went to school and showed my friends my thirty ringgit, I bought a few of them nasi lemaks. And so it was that I realized that the illusion of being financially stable was appealing to most people. I waved money around, I dressed nicely even though cheaply, I read books and emulated them, pretend pretend pretend. It's hard for you to imagine the desperation I have for wealth and comfort and security after forfeiting so much. You who have had so much, and so many options, and are now a fattened cow, of course you would want to be noble, "save humankind" and all that nonsense. I want to do that too, but of course my natural instinct is to fight for my own survival first. You lack that.
Of course you are the same person (you are not one person but the same idea embodied in different individuals) who questioned me when I applied to so many different universities in so many countries, because you cannot imagine that determination to match my compatriots given the meagre possessions I had. You laughed and called me over-ambitious, you thought I was undirected but I knew where I was going: Away. I knew the chance was there and if I didn't leap at it, it would have flown by too quickly and I would live like my parents did and how my brother does now. I cannot live the way they do.
You pepper me with questions: Why don't want to come back? As if the mere act of coming back involved purchasing a ticket, packing my bags, and spending my summer sipping cocktails by the pool. I want to come back yet I don't, because I have to face you. And tell you that everything's different now, that I am so far unlike you. But of course I can't come back what with not having the money, as if toiling at a blue collar job breathing in filthy air and falling sick were my idea of good summer fun. But this is why I'm different now, I know what my options are and I'm going for the best one yet, and I'm associating with people you only have read about but are intimidated by.
Please understand.