Mahal kita

You think
I don’t know
I swear
That I do
This time
On my hands
I’ve had all this time

And I got a kick out of you
Now I’m falling down
And I’m feeling sick, how ’bout you
Oh I’m falling

But you seem
Out of sorts
But I know
We’ll be fine
These chances
We take
Time wastes
So much time

But I can’t stand up anymore
Without falling down
And I’m getting used to the floor
Forever falling
And I got a kick out of you
Now I’m falling down
And I’m feeling sick, how ’bout you
Oh I’m falling
Yeah I’m falling

If we should fight one day,

either I’ll smash your teeth and ribs,

or you’ll have to kill me.

This photo is about how bad the noodles were and how happy I was today. Thanks to you :)

I am certainly not one who digs into ‘Hari Raya songs’ (there is one by a girl group called ‘Lips’ whose lyrics and video are completely bimbotic), but I like this song because of the diction in it.

It came from a time when people still said ‘takber’ instead of ‘takbir’, ’suboh’ instead of ’subuh’, ‘bawak’ instead of ‘bawa’, ‘hamper’ instead of ‘hampir’, and they felt it was all natural, and right. (Of course, until the snobbish ‘Melayu Baku’ people came along and defiled the language.) And I love songs where the vocals and lyrics take centre stage, because that seems to be the most worthy purpose of music. Simple song, no chorus repeats, just pure song.

But there was another reason for the significance of this song.

I had it on repeat mode on the night of 1st Syawal, and at 4 am that night, a biologically distant grandmother of mine who lived in the same block passed away. It was the first time for me that someone close enough passed away on 1st Syawal, so the day took a really different course from the usual.

A song about missing one’s parents, it was almost fateful, especially when I went to the pusara that very morning.

I learnt of Ms Ris Low’s predicament only through Mr Brown’s podcast, which featured both a song and its music video, which parodied Ms Low’s interview. Any person, even those not generally interested in pop culture like myself, should see it, and read the noise on the Web about it. Some were critical about it, some were amused, some spiraled into lengthy, philosophical discussions about what makes us Singaporean.

It’s crazy, and I think Straits Times shouldn’t go on to publish it online, to do justice to her. Sometimes, such people don’t know that what they are doing can be quite embarassing, and if I were in such a position as Ms Low’s, I would be excessively grateful if someone came towards my help and tell me about it honestly, and protect me from embarassment. But it’s too late now.

Not surprisingly, not many have gone on to question the greater issue: the existence of beauty pageants.

Beauty pageants should be banished once and for all. Miss Singapore, Miss World, Grid Girls, America’s Next Top Model—all of them. Because beauty is absolutely (I say again, absolutely) not something to be flaunted in public, or much worse, contested in the eyes of the public. Women need to learn the proper use of their inward and outward beauty, just as men should learn where to direct their strength and violence.

-

P.S.: While a part of me is sympathetic towards Ms Low, I think she ought to face the music too. She shouldn’t have wasted her time engaging in such trifles, and it was perhaps better if she had just worked on where she is now so well known to be starkly lacking, and become the beautiful young lady (not in the skanky-whore kind of way, of course) that she could without difficulty become.

Group I elements
If you have bad body odour, don’t even bother to come to the mosque. I think a good shower, and some dousing of deodorant (which come cheap from ABC store, or ValuDollar shop; I mean, _come_on_, we’re not expecting you to smell like Hugo Boss or Davidoff perfumes, here; just smell _decent_, _please_) is in order. No excuses for not being able to afford such necessities if you own camera phones (which, I myself don’t use one, by the way) which some of you use to take photos of yourselves beside cars you don’t own. Seriously, it’s not even a mandatory prayer, like Jum’ah, where I would be tolerant, since you might be coming straight from work. It’s Tarawih, and it’s way past work time, way past iftar time, and you could have at least done as prescribed, and not rob others of the potential tranquility of their prayers. If it’s your armpit hair that’s trapping moisture and causing all those aromas to come out, please, invest on a shaver; disposable razor blades are cheap at the stores mentioned above. Body odour is a _serious_ problem, man. Just because we’re praying doesn’t mean we stop breathing.

Group II elements
We have high respect people like you who memorize long stretches of verses of the Quran, and like to read them when you lead prayers. Because of this high respect that we have for you, we didn’t mind if you accidentally stood up for a third raka’at when you’re supposed to have just entered tahiyyat akhir. But I’m sorry to say, we did mind it when some gentle souls among us alerted you of your mistake by exclaiming “Subhanallaah!”—and you did not take heed! Imagine the scene when half of us followed you for the third raka’at, while some others stayed seated for tahiyyat, confused whether to stay seated or to stand up. (But out of respect again, those people stood up, eventually.) Imagine the scene, for goodness sake! Again, just because we’re praying doesn’t mean we become temporarily blind. If the beauty of praying as a jam’ah is experiencing that you and your brothers are in unison, and in tempo, glorifying Allaah, then this utterly spoiled it. In tempo, man, you got to keep everyone in tempo (imagine me snapping my fingers as I say this). And of course, let us overlook for a while that you forgot some of your verses, in which case, even if it is really okay and ought to be tolerable, it is much better for you to stick to some familiar ones which you are less likely to foul up. You read it well and smooth, and we _all_ get the sweetness of the prayer. It’s that easy.

Group III elements
You bring your kids to pray alongside with you. They are so young, they are the height of my crotch. God knows if they’ve gotten their penises circumcised or not. When they pray, they have the amazing ability to move about on their feet, turn their heads to look left and right and up and down. They don’t even bother to close up the row (rapatkan saf), and within the luxury of the space they stand within, they move about. I mean, come on. I say again, just because we’re praying doesn’t mean we turn blind. I said the beauty of praying jam’ah is everyone acting in unison, and in tempo. That’s not going to happen if we have kids moving about randomly, while in the saf. It spoils the sanctity of prayer. And the worse thing is, it looks worse on their fathers, who happened to be there, praying beside them. Fathers, if your children are too young to pray jam’ah, please be considerate to keep them at home. Make them do their schoolwork or something. That’s 10 times much better. And if you really want them to come along, make sure they are mature enough to respect the congregation, and tell them to keep still when their supposed to, and move only when their supposed to.

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Because of these elements, I find it hard to maintain concentration during prayer. I deeply regret it. I don’t benefit from saying all this, but if you are one of these elements, I hope this gets some sense into your head.

What is peer pressure, exactly? It’s when you feel pressured by people in your age group to act a certain way. Positive peer pressure is when your friends expect good things from you. Negative peer pressure is when your friends persuade you to conform or do something you don’t want to do, like skip school, shoplift, have sex, do drugs, lie, vandalize, swear, dress a certain way, gossip, bully, and on and on.

You give in because you want to be accepted. You want to please. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself. You just want to be like everyone else.

(p. 114, “The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make”, emphasis added)

Children abandoning old parents at homes

S’poreans are happy, satisfied: survey

Aged, alone and abandoned
A nursing home in S’pore reports that children are abandoning their aged parents at old folks’ homes.

“For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.” — E. M. Forster, English Novelist

(A reflection on things people admire. ‘Things’, because sometimes it ceases to be human.)

On looking ‘nice’, I could speak of the degree of ‘nice’, or ‘niceness’, as lying anywhere between, and inclusive of,  skanky-whore ‘nice’ and  beautiful ‘nice’. The former is consistent with the commonly heard phrase ‘naughty and nice’, where looking ‘naughty’, though closer to the skanky-whore end of the spectrum, is still ‘nice’. (Surely, it is ‘nice’, looking at the massive amount of attention given to people who characterize that end of the spectrum).

There is really an ocean of a difference between looking skanky-whore ‘nice’ and beautiful ‘nice’. The former is easy; the latter is difficult.

To achieve the former, one just needs to reveal a lot of flesh and figure, and do a lot of unnatural things to one’s natural selves. This includes, but is not restricted to, making some things bigger, making some things smaller, and changing the colour or shape of some things. It’s really easy. Of course, once one has done all that, there’s no point hiding it; so, one displays oneself to the world for the world to enjoy it. After all, there’s a reason why it’s called skanky-whore ‘nice’.

By contrast, achieving the latter takes a different kind of effort and will. It involves searching deep within oneself, realising the greater purpose of life, and knowing the true meaning, value, and context of beauty and ‘niceness’. (Yes, beautiful ‘nice’ has its own context, much like skanky-whore ‘nice’, whose context comprises many external eyes.)