My thoughts on the general election

And of those whom We have created, there is a community who guides (others) with the truth, and establishes justice therewith. {7:181}

Here we go; I'm sure by now the blogosphere (I hate this word but it is a thing, you know) is already rife with everybody's thoughts on the recent Pilihanraya Umum in Malaysia. I know for a fact that at least facebook is. It makes me sick, to be honest. This sudden surge of candid not always graceful opinion about politics by Malaysians from every walk of life.

I am quite naive when it comes to politics. I used to be very opinionated when I was fifteen but looking back, I realize how irrational and immature my stands were at the time, so now I have decided to look at everything from a wider perspective and not be so kecoh about it.

I say that I am naive because I believe in the validity of the general elections results. I have decided to put my trust in the people behind SPR and understand that Barisan Nasional will be our government again. I am not for BN or the opposition; I am for any personality whom I believe is capable of leading a certain state. I know it makes me sound dated and passive, being aggressive is so trendy these days huh? Let's pick fights and hit all the phantom voters to a bloody pulp! Never mind that we have no authority whatsoever to hurt a living being which has done us no physical harm. Never mind that there is no proof of their alleged crime. Let's just beat them up because we can. We are angry and today is election day.

See, these kinds of people, I don't get how they think they are mature enough to vote. They expect fairness from others but have no fairness within themselves.

Facebook is built up of young people and young people in Malaysia are mostly visibly against the government. At least, that's what I understand from where I'm standing. But I think what we youngsters fail to and should understand is that Malaysia is not made up of only young people. Malaysians are old and young, against and for BN. Just because the opposition lost, doesn't mean the election was fixed, it doesn't mean democracy was gone. Sure, BN has been accused of doing a lot of bad things, proven and otherwise, but the fact is a percentage of the population still voted for them. You know these people exist, they're probably just scared to voice out their opinions as loudly for fear of being unpopular so you don't see them rioting out on the streets causing chaos and mayhem and hurling out insults at the opposition. They don't need to go to those extremes because they were already satisfied with the presiding government. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. Just because they don't complain as loudly on facebook (at least not on my news feed, for all I know yours could be full of Herbalife advertisements or dancing ponies) doesn't mean that they can't turn out to be a majority of the Malaysian population. This is entirely possible.

Personally, I know a few of my peers who don't want Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim to be the prime minister, and I know a few who do.

So what I'm saying is; the fact that BN won again could be valid and is not necessarily a fraud. If you are not happy, try again in five years. In the mean time, let's see what change is going to happen until then. Be cool, jangan gaduh-gaduh and sesedap hati je nak mengata orang.

I should probably start fearing for my life now.

Who doesn't like a wish list?

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
4. Ulysses by James Joyce
5. Dubliners by James Joyce
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
9. The complete stories of Flannery O’Connor
10. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
11. Aldous Huxley, England, 1932. Brave New World.
12. Kawabata Yusunari, Japan, 1934. Snow Country.
13. RK Narayan, India, 1935. The English Teacher.
14. Graham Greene, England, 1940. The Power and the Glory.
15. Jean Paul Sartre, France, 1943. Being and Nothingness.
16. Karl Popper, Austria, 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies.
17. Simone De Beauviour, France, 1949. The Second Sex.
18. Ernest Hemmingway, US, 1953. The Old Man and the Sea.
19. George Orwell, England, 1948. Nineteen Eighty Four.
20. Ayn Rand, US, 1957. Atlas Shrugged.
21. Jorges Luis Borges, Argentina, 1964. Labyrinths.
22. Michel Foucault, France, 1966. The Order of Things.
23. Maya Angelou, US, 1969. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
24. VS Naipul, Trinidad, 1979. A Bend in the River.
25. Salman Rushdie, England, 1980. Midnight’s Children.
26. Margaret Atwood, Canada, 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale.
27. Toni Morrison, United States , 1987. Beloved.
28. Charles Dickens, England, 1861. Great Expectations.
29. Ivan Turgenev, Russia, 1862. Fathers and Sons.
30. Feodor Dostoevskii, Russia, 1866. Crime and Punishment.
31. George Eliot, England, 1871. Middlemarch.
32. Arthur Rimbaud, France, 1873, A Season in Hell.
33. Leo Tolstoi, Russia, 1877. Anna Karenina.
34. Frederick Nietzsche, Germany, 1880. Al Sprake Zarathustra.
35. Mark Twain, US. 1884. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
36. Emil Zola, France, 1885. Germinal.
37. Henrik Ibsen, Norway, 1890. Hedda Gabler.
38. Emily Dickenson, US, 1890. Poems.
39. Thomas Hardy, England, 1895. Jude the Obscure.
40. Anton Chekhov, Russia, 1898. Uncle Vanya.
41. Joseph Conrad, England, 1902. Heart of Darkness.
42. William James, Us, 1902. Varieties of Religious Experience.
43. Max Weber, Germany, 1904. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
44. Marcel Proust, France, 1913. Swann’s Way.
45. DH Lawrence, England, 1913 Sons and Lovers.
46. Natsume Soseki, Japan, 1914. Kokoro.
47. WB Yeats, Ireland, 1917. The Swans at Coole.
48. Siegfried Sassoon, England, 1919. War Poems.
49. TS Eliot, US, 1921. The Waste Land.
50. Thomas Mann, Germany, 1924. The Magic Mountain.
51. Franz Kafka, Czechoslovakia, 1925. The Trial.
52. Martin Heidegger, Germany, 1927. Being and Time.
53. Virginia Woolf, England, 1927. Mrs. Dalloway.
54. Berthold Brecht, Germany, 1928. The Threepenny Opera.
55. William Faulkner, US, 1929. The Sound and the Fury.

Where is Amin and Chen?

The memory of a friend who quoted Mark Twain in his essay, never mind what the contents are, is still dancing around in my neurons. Hopefully it will never cease as I still do not want to lose the awe and inspiration of a friend who quoted Mark Twain. Again, it doesn't matter what Chen has quoted from the great American writer and yet it bothers me, at that time, how does this forever-slim friend of mine knows Mark Twain, and more impressively remembers what this long-dead author said. I miss Chen- the only Chinese who can debate in Malay better than millions of other Malays, at least in my mind, and that is the best kind; it's eternal.

Another memory which hides underneath my grey brain is the hairdo of a dear friend, in fact, the best friend ever; who had a Rihanna-like hair for a very short period of his life. Perhaps he was experimenting his life and in a quite bold way! I miss Amin- the adorable ones who was hungry for power to become the most successful Class Monitor ever, at least in the history of Sultan Ismail School II. 

Our batch is the coolest one, there's no doubt about it. We're not like a bunch of these new products who call SIS II as SID. That's one of the most sickening euw-name ever in the history of Shortening School Name. SIS II, a name of history, class and elegance, and of course a little tinge of Malaysian English-school name; Sultan Ismail School II and so SIS II. They don't call Sultan Ismail I as SIS S! Oh, when the boy who came to me and said he is a student of SID, I felt a surge of vomit crawling through my oesaphagus. Lucky, it did not really happen, otherwise some chicken sate would've their new spots on his face. 

The longing for close knit friends to gossip and mengata-mengata orang yang cakap luar walaupun duduk kat Teranung sejok dinasour pupus (ops!), and yes, menganjing-nganjing made myself thinking of going into a well. Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is the answer to the question "why going into a well?". It's nice, in fact, really really nice if you can just stay in a well, a dry one of course, and look at the world in isolation and completely alone. Dive into the novel and you can feel how lonely I am in Mak Chili Heights going through day and night only accompanied by Haruki Murakami, Khubilai Khan, Albert Einstein, John Green, Niall Ferguson, Andrew Solomon and recently, my new love of Jared Diamond's books. I'm afraid to say that Hilary Mantel is one of my companies in this lonely time. Again, you might ask why. There's a great invention named as Google. At the top bar of this 'the greatest invention of the last decade', click on the Images tab and you can understand how reasonable I am.-The Chukai Insider

Lame lame lame lame lame lame

I rarely write about personal stuffs and even rarer to say them out loud except when the personal emotions involve politics and of course, dumb politicians. I finished Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday three days ago and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars before that. Don't judge me for reading a young-adult novel in which I probably have said that the genre is not my'type'.

I choose books mostly based on reviews which include Michiko Kakutani's, NYT and Kirkus. My strong recommendations to read what books always come from two of my best-ever Kemaman friends, Ain and Ainul. Oh, I've just noticed their names are just 2-letter different. The letters U and L that separate the two of them might explain how different their book choices are. Lame. 

I don't want to befriend my Facebook friend on Goodreads who do not even read, but still want to request to be my friend in Goodreads. 

I like Bill Gates now. Maybe because of his reading choices.

I have a big problem now; I have too many books to read.-The Chukai Insider