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dan jendela pun berbisik...
"Life is not about what you've gained, but what you've done" - Wong Ka Kui (1962 - 1993)
"I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - The Friends of Voltaire, 1906
"A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste" - Anonymous
"If you read, you will judge" - Kurt Cobain
last modified Mar 17, 2005 at 0:17
i am going to be in langkawi for 10 days starting from this sunday. sheesh! this time the event is the Langkawi International Dialogue (LID) 2004. actually this was my second involvement. i was there two years ago.
i'll be doing the same thing, staying at the same hotel and meeting the same people. so, where's the excitement? sigh! yeah! i am definitely whining.
i wish i dont have to go. i am going to miss my family, my friends, my cats, my guitar, my car and my blog. i wish i can bring my guitar with me. over the last five days i've been jamming like crazy every night, either alone or with zal and diy.
i am actually in the mood to learn beatles' songs. last week, i learn to play Hey Jude. it's not too bad though my teacher did help simplify the chord for me. good old james.
last week i learned about 'capo'. What is a capo, and what does it do to the sound? Well, a capo is basically a bar which holds down all the strings at one fret. This, in effect, moves the nut of your guitar up the neck and raises the tuning of your guitar.
Capos are used to change the key of the guitar. They are used because some keys (for example, the ubiquitous key of G) are easier to play in than others (for example, the never-encountered key of Eb)
i do not own a capo..yet. and i have to buy a tuner.
tonight, there's going to be another jamming session at my apartment. i have already listed down the songs that i am going to play tonight.
1. Butterfly - Weezer
2. Don't Look Back In Anger - Oasis
3. Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
4. Under The Bridge - RHCP
5. Wonderful Tonight - Eric Clapton
6. Now and Forever - Richard Marx
7. About A girl - Nirvana
8. The Man Who Sold The World - Nirvana
9. Semangat Yang Hilang - XPDC
10. Kau Ilhamku - Man Bai
11. Akustatik - OAG
12. Buat Aku Tersenyum - Sheila On 7
13. Bernafas Dalam Lumpur - Wings
14. Hey Jude - Beatles
15. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) - Greenday
16. Amani - Beyond
17. Zhen De Ai Ni - Beyond
18. Qing Fei De Yi - Harlem Yu
it will last me for 10 days, hopefully. arghh! God! i dont want to go.
so, my plan is to go back to seremban on Sunday morning and leave my car at home and asked my brother to send me to the airport. i refused to buy any mellamine or arcopal and whatnot except for chocolates, that is. hehehe...
so this is it blog! i will see you when i see you. ciao. ;-)
jumaat kelmarin, malamnya begitu dingin sekali. aku dan diy hampir putus asa untuk meramaikan majlis puisi di muzium negara. namun keinginan yang menebal buat aku dan diy menggagahkan jugak diri menuju ke muzium bersejarah tu.
majlis puisi mainan teater elit yg bekerjasama dgn pihak muzium ni sangat menarik perhatian aku. cumanya tidak berkesempatan untuk hadir di dua sesi terdahulu. ah!ruginya. apa yang bagusnya pasal majlis puisi ni, ia sangat santai sekali dan tanpa protokol, majlis tu begitu mudah dan indah sekali aku rasakan.
masa kita orang sampai, majlis dah bermula hampir satu jam dan ada monodrama yang tengah disampaikan kat atas pentas kecil tu. monodrama bertajuk dialog burhanuddin. mantap sekali bait-bait dialog dr burhanuddin helmi yang disampaikan. aku seolah-olah dibawa ke zaman pra-merdeka dahulu. kalaulah ada terowong masa, mahu rasanya aku kembali ke zaman-zaman tu. melihat sendiri pejuang-pejuang bangsa bertungkus lumus memerdekakan bangsa dan negara.
selesai sahaja monodrama itu, kami disajikan dengan nyanyian lagu-lagu puisi oleh "folk singer" Meor. dia memang antara penyanyi favourite aku. walaupun dia tak famous macam Iwan Fals atau Bob Dylan tetapi hasil kerjanya jujur sekali. pertama kali aku tengok persembahan dia masa festival gitar kat balai seni lukis negara tahun sudah. best giler.
meor nyanyi lagu ciptaan dia sendiri - Itu Padang...Aku Di Situ. sukanya suara dan stail main gitar dia. nampak rusty tapi bunyi memang best.
lepas tu naik pulak kumpulan sahabat palestine. aku tak berapa familiar dgn dia org ni. tapi dia orang nyanyi pun best jugak - a nice rendition of Bukan Kerna Nama.
hidup aku ni memang penuh dgn ironi. lepas habis baca buku erskine hari tu, aku sambung pulak baca buku dr siti zainon ismail - Alam Puisi. tiba-tiba masa malam puisi tu, dia muncul kat depan mata aku. terperanjat gila aku bila tengok dia kat atas pentas tu. rasa berdebar-debar pun ada bila dapat jumpa idola. cantiknya zainon malam tu, suaranya pun gemersik bila baca puisi.
masa zainon baca puisi Suaraku Sedingin Musim Salju yg dia tulis untuk rakan puisi dari rusia - boris parnikel, suaranya bergetar, air matanya bergenang. aku pun rasa sayu semacam. aku tiba-tiba teringatkan usman awang.
lepas tu bila dia berbalas sajak Sa dan Di dengan teman rapatnya Sutung dan Dinsman, suasana menjadi lucu. aku suka sekali bila sajak zainon disambut pula oleh sutung dan dinsman yang berada di bawah. seronok sekali melihat mereka seperti berbalas pantun. kata zainon, ini pernah mereka lakukan ketika tahun 70-an dulu.
aduh, di saat2 macam ni, aku seperti mahu dilahirkan seusia dengan mereka, menjadi sahabat mereka dan tenggelam dalam arena seni puisi dan syair melayu, biar aku lemas janji aku puas. tapi aku fikir, kalaupun aku tak cukup berseni macam dia orang sekurang-kurangnya aku berpeluang menikmatinya.
zainon dah memulakan kembara seninya sejak berusia 19 tahun. belajar lukisan di studio yogyakarta, bergaul dengan guru lukisan hebat seperti affandi, berteater di sana manakala teman-temannya merupakan jaguh-jaguh seni seperti rendra, mochtar lubis dan chairil anwar. malah puisi-puisi awalnya diedit tokoh hebat, usman awang.
aku kagum dengan wanita ini. perjalanan hidupnya begitu hebat sekali. puisi-puisi yang dihasilkannya begitu indah. aku cemburukan kehidupannya.
habis sesi bersajak, penonton diberi peluang membaca sajak mereka tapi aku dan diy tak berani mencuba. lepas tu kita orang dihidangkan pulak dengan dondang sayang. sekali sekala dengar memang best sebenarnya dondang sayang ni.
habis je persembahan, aku dgn diy pun balik. masa tengah jalan tu terserempak dgn dr zainon. kita org macam nak tegur tapi lidah masing-masing kelu, akhirnya cuma berbalas senyum aje.
aku dan diy tak sabar nak menunggu setiap jumaat ketiga muncul. akan ada lagi majlis puisi ini dan kita orang dah janji tak nak miss walau satu pun.
p/s: fabio, since you are the only italian i know who read my weblog, this entry was about my visit to a poetry event. hehehe..
i had sent my appraisal form a week late and it sparked my boss's anger. she had accused me of not taking this evaluation stuff seriously. i was stucked in her room for two and a half hours (which was a record) listening to her babbling about my performance over the last one year.
she said even though i'm great at my job, she sensed that i'm becoming bored with it. she said i was too comfortable with my job and she didnt see any potential in me, in another word i didnt help generate the income for the department. well, if you wanted me to come out with ideas on how to generate income for the department, you might as well let me be the manager. sheesh!
she was right about one thing though. i had reached a point where i just didnt care anymore and that's not a good sign. it wasn't so much the job itself but it's the BOSS that i couldnt stand. my God! i'd never in my life met such a control-freak like her.
i can't believe i have been working here for four years, no wonder i am getting restless. my job has become mundane. however, i do have great colleagues. they are precious. maybe we are close to each other because our boss is such a domineering blackhearted lady. for four years, i'd seen her playing mind games with a couple of colleagues and drove them crazy. it's like you are damned if you do it and damned if you don't. and they did leave the company when the pressure had become too much. and all that because for some reasons, the Lady didnt like them.
actually, i am the ultimate paradox. one part of me doesn't want to leave my comfort zone. one part of me doesn't mind doing the boring job that is basically just a standard operation and i don't want to think outside the box and no matter how powerful my boss is she can't force me to do anything i don't want to. yes, i'd been offered jobs left and right over the last two years but this stubborn part of me didn't want to let go of the comfort zone. i didn't want to leave my friends and the truth was i was not getting any younger.
however, the adventurous part of me had become very dominant lately. it urged me to leave my job and spread my wings and try a new pasture. it's just like robert frost's poem - the road not taken:-
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
am i braved enough to choose the road less traveled? can i just chucked everything and to hell with it? it's very tempting but life is about responsibility isn't it?
how the hell did i end up doing a job that i didn't love in the first place? did i sell my soul so i could have a better salary? do i really want to start again? doing a job that will drain me physically and mentally but so very satisfactorily or doing mundane job that give me lots of spare times (maybe that's why i have time to write my weblog).
a lot of people were disappointed in me when they first found out about my job. they were so not impressed with the executive titled that i have. well, i didn't blame them.
for a person whose original ambition was to be a war correspondent/photojournalist, ended up doing office job is a terrible "sin" indeed...
everybody was in a bad mood yesterday after reading the new signage warning the tenants not to have pets in their apartment.
oh man! we had already parted with the three kittens two weeks ago. it was the hardest thing i'd ever done in my life. even though, wanu was given to my mom, while kutsu went to my sister and pitu lives with zal's family now, it's still saddens me. to give the three of them up after watching them grew. we almost gave them to diy's friend two or three months ago but we cancelled it at the last moment.
in the end, decision had to be made and we had to deal with it whether we like it or not. we wished we had all the money in the world to be able to take care of all of them. we can only afford to have kaka and gendon, the mother.
and now, the new rules, i dont think i can handle losing both cats. we take care of them really well. both kaka and gendon are well-behaved and they never venture out of our apartment. they don't make any noise except for gendon when she was in heat. then she made our life a living hell. ops! she did just that last week. we wanted to spay her but we wanted to do it next month. shessh! please dont let them take the cats away from us.
we gave them a cat food with yucca in the ingredient so that their dropping didnt smell. seriously, it didnt and the neighbours never complained.
they are like a balm to my bruised heart. lying together in front of the television and rubbing their stomachs, it helped me to unwind after a hard day's at work. they are avid listeners whenever i play my guitar. seriously, they would just lie on the guitar bag and look at me playing for hours sometimes. my number one fans. hehehe...
kaka, he's the passive one and he reminded me of garfield. he is so lazy, he fell asleep right after his feed. he did't move at all from his plate. crazy cat.
as for the other three kittens, they are so special in their own way. pitu was the eldest but he was the most pampered of all. he would follow his mother around and drove her crazy. he has a sad face but was a terror. he broke my favourite plate and my favourite mug. he loves to be bathed.
kutsu was the ladylike kitten, the prima donna. she knew that she is pretty. she loves to sleep with us and so very delicate. didnt like to play much and spent most of her time sleeping.
wanu is special because she's the baby. thin to the point of being anorexic, she's the smart one in the family. she's always the first one to try anything. she's the trend-setter, so to speak. she's so very naughty but affectionate.
i missed them yes but i thought i still have gendon and kaka to play with. i just cant imagine my life without them. hey! rules are made to be broken right? and this is one rule that i love to break. hehehe...
akhirnya aku beli jugak kaset spider nazraku. aku kagum sangat dengan kreativiti dia org. pandai cipta lagu,pandai main muzik - ah! jelesnya. memang best gilalah semua lagu2 dalam album tu. rasanya boleh dipanggil killer album. aku suka sangat bila ada penambahan banyak bunyi percussion dgn trumpet dalam album dia org kali ni. paling suka lagu Sumpah Tak Buat Lagi. penuh identiti ska dalam album nazraku ni.
dulu aku tak minat sangat muzik ska. sampailah satu hari tu aku tengok satu band nyanyi lagu menghitung hari (kris dayanti) stail ska. wallau! best giler. sejak daripada tu, aku terus hook dgn ska. nantilah, aku nak try main lagu-lagu spider tapi susah nak jumpa chord lagu dia org kat website. ah! susah2 suruh je cikgu aku carikan chord. hahaha...
minggu lepas aku pergi kelas, aku dah agak dah memang susah nak puaskan hati cikgu aku tu. kena marah lagi. tempo jaga, slow sikit. count, count. ni praktis ke tak ni? eleh, anak cina ni aku belasah karang, baru dia tau. hehehe...
dapat lagu baru, What's Up nyanyian four non-blonde. alamak senang gila. best jugak layan lagu ni, 3 chords jugak. hehehe...teringat balik kenangan zaman sekolah bila main lagu tu. masa tu semua org nak ikut stail linda perry bila nyanyi lagu ni. lawak betul.
kerja rumah aku, praktis lagu wings - bernafas dalam lumpur. dah nak hari sabtu balik, masih tak berapa nak jadi tempo tu. kena belasah lagi lah ni esok. tapi lagu wings ni pun memang best dan ada kenangan tersendiri dgn kawan2...
Wajah kita sama
Beza pada gaya
Itu pilihan masing-masing yang empunya
Mungkin pada usia
Rasa yang berbeza
Yang penting kita saling hormat menghormati
Panduan...
n/b: aiseh! game copa amerika tak pukul 6.30 / pukul 8.30. camna aku nak tengok. dapat tengok sikit2 je masa bersiap nak gi kerja. itupun sakitnya hati dengar cara pengulas tu mengulas. macam nak mampos jer cakap.
i am not what you call a chocoholic. well, i used to be one during my teenage years until one day i vomitted after eating one huge bar of van houten all by myself. i guess i'd to pay for the sin of my gluttony.
and i never eat more than two pieces of chocolates at one time ever since. it's not like i dont love chocolates, it's just that i cant eat em a lot. they are delicious and pretty to look at but i just couldnt eat them as much as i wanted to.
nowadays, the only chocolate i eat is either baci or dove jewels. my favourite is dove jewels and it's really difficult to find except at the airport and langkawi.
the first time i saw the dove jewels, it was like love at a first sight because of the packaging perhaps. it was a variety of chocolates kept in a square jewel box. it's about RM19 and i instantly bought it. well, that was two years ago when i was in langkawi. i found them, again at the KLIA airport a year ago but the price was more than RM40 which was ridiculous in my humble opinion.
when my colleague told me she'd be having her holiday at langkawi, i was very ecstatic and told her to buy one for me. so, last monday, my colleague presented me with the dove jewels and wow, it's my kind of ecstasy.
i think this dove jewels has helped me to like chocolate again but im still taking it slowly. two pieces a day, that's about enough for now. hehehe...
dove jewels anyone????
Mochtar Lubis, a veteran journalist and a staunch critic of two Indonesian presidents, Sukarno and Soeharto, died at the Medistra Hospital, South Jakarta, on Monday evening. He was 82.
Mochtar, who was born in Padang, West Sumatra, on March 7, 1922, was known for his belief in universal humanism and concern for human dignity. Both ideas were reflected in his work.
His journalism career began during the Japanese occupation. From the 1940s, he worked as chief editor for theAntara state news agency, the Djakarta daily and the Indonesia Raya newspapers. The latter publication was banned by Soeharto administration in the early 1970s for attacking corruption in public life.
Besides being a well-known journalist, he was also known as a popular man of letters and wrote novels.
He also wrote an autobiography in diary form entitled Corat Coret di Penjara (Graffiti in the Prison).
But it was his book Manusia Indonesia (Indonesian Human Being), a critique of the behaviour of Indonesians, which became a hot topic in the mid-1970s.
His constant railings against the government meant he was imprisoned for periods in both 1956 and in 1975.
Mochtar received many awards, including the Magsaysay Award for journalism and literature.
-The Jakarta Post-
he was and still my idol. a person i look up to back when i was still a young idealist and naived journalism student.
i had so much pleasure reading his novels especially Twilight in Jakarta or Senja in Jakarta. one of the best novels i'd ever read.
thank you mochtar lubis. you were the perfect example of a "watchdog" in the true journalist term.
my feeling post-euro 2004 is amazement, satisfaction and relief, not necessarily in that order. ;-)
it was definitely less stressful watching the grand finale when your favourite team had already been eliminated. seriously, i found myself enjoying the match fully.
earlier in the tournament, i predicted greece would become one of the best teams in this tournament but i didnt go so far as to think that they would be the champions of europe.
it took shebby singh five games to admit that greece is a good team and it was not luck that brought them to the final. diyana and i fell in love at a first game (if we could call it that) hehehe...
the greeks played consistently and very solidly as a team throughout the tournament. this team is pure teamwork. there's no skilful individual to brag about and if you asked me, i would say that the team comprised 11 football machines. do exactly as what the coach says, must be their motto. their defending style can put the italian's catenaccio to shame.
beautiful defending style, not a smothering or negative one like england but a tight man-marking and a very-very fast counter attacking. accurate set pieces, mutual understanding and hardworking midfielders helped this team to win their first international football championship. clean and clinical, the old german's style.
i love the way they play but like shebby i also think this was a one of kind win, you know. i dont think they will have a repeat of this kind of success in other tournaments. granted they took everybody by surprise, my God! how they did. but for an almost perfect team like this, i received no enjoyment watching them play. i think the team has no soul, did u guys know what i mean???
you know like watching robots play, that's how i felt sometimes. i dont care what they said about modern football but i believe a good football match must have at least a few great individuals showing off their artistry and skills and somehow or rather managed to rise above the teamwork to help their team win.
congratulations to them anyway. one thing for sure, greece does have a spectacular, calm and collected goalkeeper. well, speaking from a goalkeeper's point of view of course. (i'm a goalkeeper for my office's female futsal team). hehehe...the only greece player i'm familiar with was Dellas because he played with Roma but he didnt look this impressive.
my comment about greece may sound paradoxical but that's just how i felt, you know. i have a kind of a mixed feeling about the team.
one thing for sure though, they deserved to be the winner.
as for portugal, scolari being an experienced coach should know that playing against such defensive team, he must used all his strikers at full force. but no, he stubbornly used pauletta again and again as the single striker when the player himself proved how inadequate he was when playing at such huge tournament.
for the teenager, Ronaldo, he's young and still has lots of tournaments to win but it's a cruel blow to the seniors from the golden years like rui costa, figo and couto. this may be their last caps for the national team.
a sad ending for karel poborsky of the czech rep too. i so wanted him to win because he deserved it too. how regretful i was to watch nedved succumbed to his injury when the team really needed him. I love it when milan baros was the golden boot winner because then the liverpool management would realise how talented this kid was. houllier always chosed the unreliabled heskey over him time and time again which used to frustrate me so much. Maybe mr benitez will take note of baros’s success during the euro.
to paraphrase a certain friend from the forum: "One happy team, 15 heartbroken ones. That's football."
that's it guys. end of my euro 2004 mania. thanks for sharing your opinions about the tournament.
in the meantime, dont forget to watch the Copa America. the land where the "beautiful game" is truly appreciated. the land of pele, socrates and maradona
from a non-fan's point of view
it was a touching scene indeed when referee frisk finally blew the final whistle after 94 minutes of a thrilling match.
to watch rui costa hugging luis figo and whispered words of encouragement and words of congratulations (agaknyalah) reduced me to tears can you believed it. i mean the stadium was charged with emotions.
i can understand why figo looked really helpless in rui costa's arms. it's too much for the captain who had been relentlessly condemned by the whole nation for being a flop in portugal's previous games.
i used to admire figo during the euro2000. he looked almost perfect on the field and so very skillful. a hero material just like zidane. but then much of the hype went into his head and the egoist emerged.
even i, a non-barca fan could not quite believe he would switch camp (real madrid) at the last minute during that fateful summer four years ago.
he had never been the same ever since. he did so badly during the world cup 2002, i wasnt sure it was the same luis figo.
and in this tournament, he was simply invisibled, no wonder scolari had to take matters into his own hand. substituting him when the play was so bad but the big man wasnt happy. bad mouthing the coach and a teammate wasnt exactly helping his situation.
but last night, he had proved why he was chosen as a footballer of the year at one time and he had also proved his worth by wearing the captain bandiera. i guess perseverance did pay, at least for him. for 94 minutes at least, i glimpsed the old figo, the player i used to admire four years ago. and that was enough to keep the team going.
as a team, portugal was a whole. their teamwork, passing and understanding were excellent. you could see the flow of rhythm when the team did the attacking.
a young striker like lightning-quick christiano ronaldo is a difficult player to mark. however, why wasnt any of the orange's defenders around to mark him, i didnt understand that. the result of the header was not because it was a great one but because no defender was marking him. an easy goal. still this kid is really gifted.
maniche's goal was clever and beautiful resulting from a quick corner taken by ronaldo. granted van der sar wasnt ready but still it was a great curl of ball.
valente, andrade and maniche and ricardo showed some of the best defense work in this tournament. the own goal was unfortunate for andrade but with that kind of crossing, it could go both ways. besides, ricardo was on the disadvantage at the time and nilsteroy could have scored. no way, better an own goal than letting him got the fifth goal for the tournament. (huahahua!!gelak jahat!)
deco was his usual impressive way although he did squandered a few chances so did pauletta.
a great team and a great football match. ( i just remembered that brazil is the only country in south america which speaks portuguese. see the connection. scolari and deco are from brazil, one is a coach while another a player and they play for portugal) hehehe...
holland, what can i say. they are the champions of the semi-finals. hahaha...in the end, it is a very very ordinary star-studded team. only seedorf and davids seemed alive last night. seedorf, if only you would play like that in milan, we wont have a problem next season. i am a bit worried about jaap stam. he's not so sharp anymore. urgh! more works for Nesta. sheesh!
why the hell didnt they play kluivert???? was the team revolved around ruud van nilsteroy? only advocaat can answer that.
p/s: zaza, in my book, Alessandro Nesta is still one of the best central defenders on earth. ;-)
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