Of My Moleskine Notebook

If you, like yours truly, really reaaaaaally adore love Placebo, like yours truly, and want to see them perform; and get annoyed by shameless people who gloat; I swear I’m not trying to shove this into your face. I just cannot contain myself.

So:

*Screaming* After weeks of bothering them to no end; George or Yin is gonna take me to watch Placebo next week!!!

The standing seats are all sold out; leaving only the seating seats (to which George says: Oh my God, do you know who SITS at concerts?), but who cares if; I’M GONNA WATCH MY LIKE FAVOURITE sexually charged, emotionally repressed, androgynous BAND EVER LIKE DUH!
I swear I’m so ecstatic to see Brian Molko and gang performing; something I’ve always longed to do and have fantasised and envied those people who get to go and take videos of them and post them on youtube that I’m so inarticulate and am starting to use words like LIKE and OMG and AAAAAAAA which isn’t even a word at all but yalah whatever lah.

George tells me he used to go to all sorts of rock metal concerts at my age and even younger and he’s quite shocked to know that this is gonna be my first concert. Ever! (To the exception of chamber music concerts, orchestral concerts, ballet concerts and kindergarten concerts)

Oh well, I’m used to being a social retard anyway. Whatever.

Buuuuuuuuuut-

I’M GONNA WATCH PLACEBO!!!!

(Apologies for not being able to utilise proper punctuation marks in this most)

As I was trying to fall asleep in bed only just 20 minutes ago my inarticulateness got to me and I couldn’t find certain word I needed to think of a sentence in my mind. I couldn’t find the word at all. I found all the phrases to describe the word but I couldn’t find the word itself.

The thing is, this isn’t one of those “it happens once in a while” thing. This is not the first time its happened and its not the first time I forgot that exact word. Around exactly this time last year I used to lie awake at night trying to find that word. I finally found it earlier this year.

The word is Persuade. The only words I could find to describe it is “coax”,”talk someone into”,”influence”, and “coerce”. After exasperatedly searching the thesauraus and half crying my sister finally told me the word I forgot and was looking for frantically is Persuade.

Now I’m looking for another word that other words in my head can describe as “mulling it over”, “appreciating”(like wine or a painting or poetry), and for some weird reason “memperihalkan” though its not the exact Malay word of the synonym of the English word I’m looking for. If anyone is reading this, please help me. I can’t sleep just thinking about it.
Last year it was relatively fine. I still had images of situations which words could be used, persuade having rough squigly outlines of teenage children asking their parents for something. Now everything is getting blurrier and day by day its getting harder and harder to even form a proper sentence.

I can’t even read normally. I find myself reading paragraphs again and again and again. I’m scared shitless, I really am. I know it may seem silly but seriously, thinking hard for five minutes to say things you can usually blurt out on impulse like a normal day to day question does sound serious doesn’t it?
Virginia Woolf’s suicide note came to mind when I’m trying to access the situation.

I feel absolutely certain I’m going mad.

I called the MPH offices just a few minutes ago to find out the results to this year’s prizes since their website is un-updated; naturally, and my not being able to attend the prize giving ceremony due to my being here.

And I checked out the names of the winners in the shortlist, and I can’t help but realise they come from good schools and probably have had a better education than I did and probably have fantastic intellectual and emotional breakthroughs ever so often; more than I do.

One problem that I’ve been trying to overcome, and which many of my close friends realise that I mull over in my head too often and too much is of my education. I don’t know anyone else who rants about the state of their method of instruction, or their intellectual frustrations more than I do. And I don’t mean it in the “I-am-far-smarter-than-this-shit” crap, of condescending a level of the subject being taught but just for the fact that I think all of us have a higher potential of understanding; and that we should be chased around the mill to fully utilise our young, porous, minds.

I know this is really wrong of me, it’s not just unfair to all of you to read this shit, to those very close few who’ve I’ve ranted countless of times to, especially. And no, I’m not trying to solicit sympathy; I just need to rant and don’t plan on wasting my real Moleskines on it.
But I know this is just another hormonal disruption + inferiority complex gone wrong thing and it’ll pass. I am not wronged by the world; being in a shit school doesn’t justify anything of what I am and as I should have learnt a long time ago, there is more to life than being smart. It’s about doing what’s right and that doesn’t include this.
I just need to SUMO; Shut Up and Move On, but right now, its Hippo-Time. (A time to wallow and just mull things over before making a move)
I’m going to wallow, drink lots of soya-milk, listen to Damien Rice and watch evangelical Christian Creationism DVDs. Though rather than amusing me, it pisses me off. No one should be allowed to call Charles Darwin “Charlie”. Especially not someone charged with tax evasion with Dinosaur Adventure World in their backyard.

Hello, my name is Ainaa Azhar, I’m from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and I am currently doing a postgraduate research thesis on French Medieval Literature.Not.

According to Patrick Haggerty, a public speaking and humour coach; The Not Joke is a common favourite in American humour. That is infact what he told Borat Sagdiyev; the protagonist of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

My sister, George and I watched this movie a Sunday two weeks ago; and I completely forgot about it until my eye caught an article in The Guardian about Sascha Baron Cohen (creator, actor, director of Borat and Ali G) getting a flock of lawsuits due to the “mental anguish, humiliation, and loss of reputation” it has brought to the duped Americans. It’s funny, really. And since I wanted to blog about Starter For Ten, which my sister and I got to catch yesterday; I thought I might as well just make this a movie post and mention both movies.

Starter for Ten was absolutely fantastic. Not only was it funny, smart and just plain silly; I could actually relate to it. At certain dialogues and parts of the movie, I was thinking to myself, “that’s exactly how I feel! Exactly!”. Not to mention, two of my favourite actors are in one of the main roles, that is, everyone’s favourite faun, James McAvoy, for the lead role of Brian Jackson; general knowledge extraordinaire and Benedict Cumberbatch, best-known for his fantastic performance as Stephen Hawking in Hawking; playing an irritating mechanical engineering postgraduate.

Yeah, I know; Brain-Eye Candy.

The movie is about Brian Jackson, a first year student at Bristol University who for his whole life has a penchant for random bits of knowledge, facts, and subsequently, gameshows; one being The University Challenge, which is where the movie gets it’s title from. Starter for ten is a phrase which means the first question that goes for 10 points to start off the game.

Young, freshly enrolled in university, and ebullient, Brian tries out for the team, while going through the trials and tribulations of being young and (fairly and comparably) innocent to his fellow peers. The whole movie is about his obsession about being clever, and making the right decisions in other aspects of his life. And University Challenge; a show I never miss whenever I come to this country. I probably get one or two questions right, but I just love the whole adrenaline rush of remembering something in normal circumstances; pointless. Like remembering like what decade Isaac Newton wrote Principia Naturalis Mathematica or some bit of medieval history or shit like that.

The storyline may seem a bit trivial and normal in a sense. But I guess that’s exactly what it is I guess. A feel-good bestseller-turn-movie with idiosyncratic British humour type of feel, not one of ‘em arthouse films or film festival winning films that I seem to favouritise most of the time.

This sparks the question that I just ran my eyes over in an A-Levels General Studies textbook I was flicking through in the bookstore:

Is popular culture inferior to high culture?

And well, I’m not college student who has to adhere to proper context of debating such a question in essay-form -which Shao Min tells me she has to conform to in her General Studies class at Sunway- but not that I shall try to.

Back in the infancy of popular music, film, and mass publication of books for the greater part of the general public, only the rich, the academics, the artists, and the privileged few could enjoy what now everyone takes part in. In this era of fast information; everyone one is near equal in their plight for culture; but the want of superiority of obtaining the less known of such things is sadly still the same.

Well, let’s see. Why do people these days prefer indie-music to that of chart music? Maybe because they feel somewhat special in knowing about a band, maybe ’cause there are a whole load of unappreciated talents out there, maybe to be different and to rebel to the tastes of the general public, maybe as an act of superiority of knowing something most don’t or maybe simply because chart music is shit.

Why do I listen to indie-music? Because the bands are really special and unique in their own right. Because they’re different. Because the charts are full of shit made with polyphonic beeps and drum machines. And truthfully, also because subconsciously, music sounds better when you know some snot-nosed Mat-Rempit or Emo-Loser doesn’t listen or know about it.

Mind you, despite their genre, I enjoyed Panic! At The Disco tremendously when I first heard “I Write Sins not Tragedies” and “The Only Difference Between Suicide and Martyrdom is Press Coverage” (despite their horribly long near-pretentious titles) on BBC Radio One on Jo Whiley’s show in March. Then, when they exploded on the US Charts, subsequently the Malaysian radio and tv stations, getting airplay of three, four times every hour: my appreciation of them went down a bit. Then I heard the other singles, and the fact that they don’t sound too great live on the MTV Video Awards; and the thought of getting their album was brushed off my list; immediately.

In this pretentious era of ipods, literary reviews, specialist book prizes, what you know, listen to, watch, reflects what you are. Book critics and academics acknowledge obscure idiosyncratic books and ignore bestsellers. They look down on Dan Brown, box office movie spin-offs, and the ghastly, (breathe in now) CHICK LIT. Euurghhh.

Not to say that they don’t have the right to.

Same goes to film festivals; the quirkier, the better. Someone licking Penelope Cruz’s nipples in Almodovar films? Great. Girls giving a teenage boy a blowjob with a towel over his head in Me and You and Everyone We Know? Absolutely magical.

The general public’s response? What the fuck?!

Not that I’m saying film festival winning indie-films are silly; they are good in their own right. Most of them are great, touching and special beneath the shallow looking surface; take Lost in Translation and Garden State for one. They do have meaning behind them and are special in a way; but they are only great if you can relate to it and have the patience to watch through mostly silence and soundtrack because the writers decide on minimal dialogue to give a wider and general feel for meaning. You will love Lost in Translation if you’ve felt lost in a foreign country and found comfort and friendship in someone in a brief period. You will cry when watching Garden State if you’ve gone through the social displacement of growing up and leaving home and distance that you find from your family due to a feud or just leaving the nest.

High culture isn’t necessarily better than popculture, it’s target is merely less wide than popculture because not many have the privilege of money and existential enlightenment or the unfortunate experience of depression or death (though both starting to be startlingly “cool” due to arthouse films and bands with genius songwriters succumbing so); and human nature being that being in the minority due to the incapability of the general set (in this context, in not understanding), the people of this smaller movement take it upon them to seem special.

So there. Tell me if that didn’t make sense.

I shall end this post with a wonderful quote from Starter for Ten that he repeats a few times (to a skeptic; obnoxiously) to emphasise its truth. And which I (cliched) can really, relate to. I hope I got it right.

“Ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted to be clever. Some people are born clever, some way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people, so I have to work at it.”

Amin to that.

I find myself awake at the most God-forsaken hours of the night; tossing and turning; for nearly every day I’ve been here. I do not know whether it’s simply jetlag gone wrong (and elongated beyond normal means) or the psyche getting out of whack. I can’t say.

Now, what can I say about my first week here? Just after dumping my bags at the hotel (which thanks to Lastminute.com we got to stay at the Selfridge Hotel; hence why I had the chance to take pictures of the store window displays) and after I refreshed myself a bit we headed off to Leicester Square for dinner and a movie.

After pacing around the place in the rain thinking of what to watch, we finally decided to watch The History Boys, a movie my sister has suggested we catch; a week before I left.
I have to say, its been a while since I’ve watched a film that I enjoyed tremendously. The movie, originally a hit play, is about eight working class boys who did well in their A Level Examinations and are planning to further their studies in History at Oxford and Cambridge. Their headmaster, one who cares for League Tables (why does this seem so familiar somehow?), hires an extra teacher to “train” them to do well at their entry examination; much to the disgust of their General Studies teacher who doesn’t believe in educating for such means.

Their General Studies teacher, Hector, (think: eccentric man with whiskers and bowtie), played by Richard Griffiths teaches them exactly that; music, french, poetry and asking them to act out scenes from random movies; which makes one laugh at every scene they do so; due to the fact that they can wittily transform from loud teenage boys into .. Gracie Fields?

My favourite scene in one of his classes must be when the students have to act out a scene in french, as to practise and utilise le subjonctif (a way of conjugating a verb to imply a possible outcome; a “may be”; which being a student of French myself must say; is a pain in the derriere). The scene in which they find themselves is in that of a brothel and one of them being the client and the others, the prostitutes. As one of the boys, lies on the table, about to be straddled by a fellow chubby classmate; the headmaster walks in, adding to the comedy.

The new teacher, Irwin, however thinks that their way of writing conventional essays are “abysmally dull”. He believes that in order to catch the examiner’s eye, one has to be pretentiously different and take to the other end of the stick. I can’t remember the line exactly, and can’t be arsed to get the book (yes I bought the play script book; I’m near fanatic I know); but it was something like there is a front door and a back door but it’s better to go through the side.

And so there is a somewhat clash between the two schools of thought; though the movie doesn’t revolve around just that I must say. Saying what else would be a spoiler; so I hope my gushing blurb would just leave you all to hunt down the DVD at Summit as I highly doubt this movie will find it’s way on the screens back in Malaysia due to its profanity and homosexual undercurrents. It was a very touching movie, and after reading the original script for the play; absolutely timeless. It could’ve been staged in the sixties, or now (despite the fact that Oxbridge entry exams are now different) and yet still make sense.

Then come Saturday (technically my first day here) my sister and I took the train up to Nottingham and that’s where I’ve been and shall be staying for the next month. I feel like banging my head on the keyboard when I read my posts at this time last year, being in London yet not making full use of being there. I thought Nottingham was going to be another London-like city, (yay, am going to watch a play, visit a gallery) but I was badly mistaken. It’s dead here compared to down south.

You see, my sister lives in the outskirts of Nottingham, in other words a very nice suburban neighbourhood community and not in the city. Nearest commercial parts of town are nearly half a mile away, being a mini Sainsbury’s and a teashop. The other apart is the county library and co-op. Everyone pretty much knows each other, enough to cut each other’s queue and swear at one another only to have the whole co-op laughing. Though the lady who did so was a senior citizen; so I guess it doesn’t count.
So what do I do here? Watch DVDs and tv shows, read magazines and newspapers, drink soyamilk, eat soyameat (sister and brother inlaw are pescetarians, therefore I can say I’ve not had meat for a week), eat chocolate digestives; and get fat. My mother shipped me off here; hoping that I could join a short course at a community college as to have a productive holiday. Sadly, after a week of searching, I can’t seem to be able to join as I need GCSEs to do so.

So what did I do exactly for the first week? Mope around the house. Though do not worry, earlier on this week (being the second), I purchased some Math and History books as to further my scholarly interests. George (or officially now, Iskandar) has also offered to teach me economics, which my mother is very happy to hear. The Sister signed up for a membership at the Library for me to use, and which I shall start to frequent starting tomorrow (as it is closed on Wednesdays alongside the weekend).

I hope this post isn’t too haphazard (I am aware it is very long) and I hope you all are well.

Hello all! I know I was supposed to post something ages ago, but me being be, the chances of seeing this blog regularly updated is; abysmal.
I’m feeling awfully inarticulate and wouldn’t be able to string a witty sentence if my life depended on it. Either this post-PMR languor rendering me insipid and maladroit, or maybe its the jetlag (which I doubt as it hardly bothers me), or dehydration, or just because I am feeling disorientated which I must express is very uncharacteristic of me.

So I hope I can make do with a picture post. Afterall, I had pledged to try new article styles; other than my normal essay-like rant/articles.
This my friends, is one of the many luxurious, harlequin-like and somewhat decadent window displays of Selfridges. It is somewhat a marketing gimmick to attract Christmas shoppers to direct their fat pound-sterling based disposable incomes toward luxury goods and luxury food items .The window is alight all day and night; I myself took this picture at about midnight when everything is closed (another story for another post). Mind you, the Christmas shopping market makes about £3billion annually.
This year’s theme is based on The Highwayman and incorporates many risque but delightfully varified items such as Vodka, designer clothes, and special edition Nike Air shoes; amongst them.

So yeah, that’s that.
And hello Yad.

Of My Moleskine Notebook was originally hosted on Blogger. I cannot really say exactly why I had chosen to move to Wordpress (other than features, versatility, and so on and so forth), but I can roughly say that I wanted to move on from my normal, long, dry, picture-less posts and head on to one with a less rigid structure. Right now you can still read my two year old posts here (or maybe not, I am indecisive and may have deleted it by now), or you can just read my old notebook in its entirety here.
Welcome to my new notebook.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Or it should have read:

Welcome to WordPress, this is the first problem you shall face, the first of many hemorrhaging pursuits you shall come across in this adventure called Trying-To-Make-a-WordPress-Blog-Work. Get ready to feel intimidated, frustrated, stupid, scared, and incredibly no0b-ed due to the fact that you have no absolute grasp on PHP unlike everyone else here. You will be joining a friendly community of web developers, Google programmers, IBM project managers, or simply just genetically engineered humans programmed to code, script and understand every computer language known to man even as a foetus in the womb. Please visit the incredibly lengthy FAQs and Support sites before you give up. We wish you all a pleasant death.

I’ll blog in the morning, guys. My lenses are so dry I am typing this with only my left eye as I’m keeping my right eye closed to stop it from constantly twitching.

I’ve been at this for eight hours. No kidding.