Of My Moleskine Notebook

This is going to be really quick and most probably badly written, but I need to get this out or I shan’t sleep.

Earlier this evening I went out with Sha and Azlan for some dinner and coffee, and managed to get myself the first season of Mad Men. The press are always raving about the whip smart, fresh whatever whatever insert exciting one-liner comment here about it, yet sometime last year The Guardian was raving on about the whole chauvinism around it.

Ok, after two episodes, I have to say I’m hooked. But I couldn’t agree with Hadley Freeman more.

Tomorrow morning, in exactly less that six hours; I will be sitting for a 3 hour test on industrial organizational psychology. We write long ardorous essays on human resource and ‘leadership’. We recite researchers names on this and on that, and we evaluate and argue fact against reason, like we do.

We learn that apparently  women are more likely to collaborate, ask for opinions, and are more people-oriented than task-oriented.

We analyse performance/situation graphs which plot : Good Leader-Member Relationship + High Cohesion + Strong Leader = Low Productivity.

And without fail we find ourselves integrating what we have learnt to what we do, as we do.

I’ve been thinking about my work in societies and club-work more and more now that we’ve started on this topic. What was my management style? What type of leader was I? Why couldn’t I find that cohesive force in the board that I was chair of?

For example; why did I let people delegated with a certain task off the hook more than I can remember? Is it called being weak? Was it because I wanted to be nice? Or was it because at the end of the day, we were all just students and I’m thinking ahead of myself.

In French class a few years ago, we had to discuss the role of women in organizations. We had to read opinions of various executives on what they feel about managerial styles and the implication it had on the women that exercised it.

The conclusion from our group discussion then, for which I still agree to now is this, really. We will never be given the same ground. Men can be decisive and egoistic and sure of themselves and we applaud them for having a stand. Women do the same and end up being called tyrannical and get nicknames such as Nuclear Wintour.

A few weeks ago, the Economist published an issue with a picture of Rosie the Riveter, applauding how women make up for more than half the workforce. As that was the theme of their issue, they also had interesting articles on new human resource research, on new statistical facts I can quote in my psychology essays, on how the oft seen ‘weak’ or ‘humanistic’ approach of women are now seen in better light, as actually being more effective than what was ever thought of.

My father has always given me the room to flex my own thoughts and actions, and has an opinion that I should make my way in the corporate world. I speak my mind, bulldoze my way through, and always felt that my gender roles will only ever be fully seen in the bedroom. There, I grew up telling myself, is only where we can correctly see the difference.

Women in Malaysia share equal pay rights as men, we make up more than 60% of the class in higher education, and our pocketbook is handled by a governor, who in any other muslim-majority nation would not even be given the respect to be a governess.  The glass ceiling, I thought, was giving in; and I was so sure that the cracks will come off clean ‘when I become big’.

But there was something about watching Mad Men that scared me. It may have been filmed in a completely different era, way before the Sexual Revolution, and in a different culture altogether. The world has progressed and we’re in some kind of post-post post Germaine Greer stage, but-

I recognize those looks.

The way the copywriters look at the new secretary, compliment her and show her around; what she mistook for kindness and limelight for her innate charms- are the kind, oh so interested conversation I get plied by during intermission and breaks at debate tournaments and conferences.

I always thought, oh it’s because I’m a breath of fresh air, because I speak my mind and I argue what I believe in. Because I have a sharp tongue and sarcasm that used to shut up the Malay boys back in school, because all that Economist and Monocle gave me opinion and taste. Because, in the end; the privilege of confidence had given me an air of authority amongst the boys club.

But no.

It was because I was eager to charm, ready to be friendly and interesting and make good conversation. A childhood of entertaining my parents’ friends and my doting relatives had given me the practice of knowing what to say to the right people; striking the right chord in the right string. And without knowing it, I had played right into their hands.

It feels disgusting. I feel now like I was just whoring my intellect to be fondled by eager and expectant young men. Just like they do in the 60’s.

Papa, I think I may need some help. The structural design of the ceiling is sturdier than we both thought.

I’ve been spending my allowance on a lot of old magazines lately (oh what a surprise), and two days ago I scored a good find at Bangsar Village. One was your everyday 3 month old Nylon, but I also picked up an issue of American Esquire for eight ringgit.

It was the December 08 issue, so they had this whole section of people who are – or, in this case 6 months later- shaping the world in their respective fields.

One of the articles was about a computer game designer who creates these simple but adorable 8-bit games that have a whole deep existential flair to them. His game, Passage, was said to be by tech-reviewers as proof that gaming is in itself a type of art comparable to music or literature.

According to the interview, he lives in a hut on a meadow with his family, keeps electricity to a minimum and does his coding in a super old-school dell laptop. Like, super cool, kan?

Intrigued, I checked out the game, read the reviews and had a few rounds.

So basically it’s just this rectangular box on your screen where you have to keep moving on to get to somewhere you don’t know any shit about. The far corners of both ends of the screen is blurry, and only gets clear as you walk onto them. Your character is a super pixelated blue-eyed brown haired character. It’s possible to move up and down, step on some chests to get more points, but basically moving itself gets the number tally on your upper right screen going on.

Thirty seconds in, you will meet a girl with green eyes, and just as pixellated as you are. Walk into her, and a big heart will form and the whole game will go on with her being beside you. Being with her means you can’t walk into certain passages where you could get more points from treasure chests.

As you play on three minutes into the game, you realize your pixel-hairline is receding, and before you realize anything, your wife’s hair is turning white. The environment in the screen turns from yellow to red to blue to purple. Your character starts to bend double.

And then your wife dies and in her place lies a tombstone. You could move around a bit, but you too, stop and have a tombstone in your place.

There are no monsters to kill, no quests to partake on, and nothing to kill you; except inevitable death.

In the three odd trials I had of the game, I tried marriage. I tried being single. Then some other strategy came to mind. Do any of you remember in one of the old Mario games, in the first 10 seconds of the game, if you don’t land or jump on the turtle-shell, then you won’t ever have the chance to go back and do it?

Well I tried that out. I avoided the girl, ran on in the game, collected about 300 points and jumped on every goddamn chest I could get my square little legs on. Then I ran back to the yellow environment to get to her. It worked.

We fell in love, though seconds later we grew old. Our hair turned white, we bent double, and she shortly died thereafter. My points were about 500+.

I was reading the reviews and there was this really sweet comment from some guy who said when his game-wife died he merely left his character beside the tombstone and died beside her. He played the game with his real-life wife nearby and couldn’t bear to think about leaving the tombstone.

So Passage tells us that it’s possible to go and run after ‘having it all’, to go back and fall in love. That it’s possible to get great points by chasing treasure chests alone, but that 4 minutes in, it just gets boring and pointless.

That at the end of our five minutes, we will all have to die.

That it actually feels better to die knowing you have loved and lost.

Than die alone with nothing but 700 points you will lose anyway.

And yeah, before you have to ask me about the cryptic past posts, and the new Facebook updates in between, I did meet someone with slit brown eyes. We jumped on treasure chests and hid behind library shelves. But our five minutes was up. And we let go.

Passage by Jason Rohrer is available here. His personal page can be found here.

The lower-ground floor of the library, for the most part of my being here, is usually half empty. All areas between and behind shelves would be completely devoid of any human life, leaving the lone librarian with the 80’s hairdo, ponderously pushing his trolley of unread political science books no one actually reads.

This past month has seen an exodus of students who would lug big bottles of water and their thick, earth-shattering ring folders, making homes out of the otherwise empty carrels. You know it’s exam season when you have to comb through rows of seats to find none un-occupied nor used as a sleeping pod.

In the midst of my own last-minute revision (can there ever be such a thing as consistent revision in the classical system?), I find myself in moments of wanton distraction and thought. As beautiful as it may sound, being surrounded by shelves heavy with discourses on history, to the more often read pop-psychology, to literature and beyond, I can’t help but feel that there is something sterile and unromantic about Sunway’s library.

Is it the overhead fluorescent lighting? Perhaps its the pallid depressed looking inhabitants, blasting bad screamo music from supposedly cool emo headphones. Maybe it’s just that sometimes the library feels like a temporary hide-out for people wanting to get some a/c.

I sometimes wonder how it must be like for the librarians. Do they go to work everyday feeling like they’ve been given a purposeful existence? Do they feel like it is their task, their god-given duty to sow the seeds of intellect into the apathetic post-pubescent? Or do they just arrive at 8.00 a.m. like most of us, to start another 8 hours of card scanning and book arranging?

Philip Larkin wrote a bulk of his poetry while working as a librarian at Hull University, my sister’s alma mater. He’s probably the most oft-quoted British post-war poet (‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, anyone?) who I’ve still not found an opportunity to slip into in any of my GP essays. There’s always this underlying tone of nostalgia and regret, of loss and premature wisdom about his stuff. The sad meaningless sex, the sad meaningful sex, and the constant struggle to search for that something deeper, the intimacy beyond the sex.

Sometimes I wonder if the quiet man behind the check out counter has some sort of Larkin-like life after he punches out at five. Does he take the free shuttle bus home to a small apartment filled with half-drunk coffee mugs, leaving brown stain rings on stacks of papers he’s been working on for months? Does he smoke away his nights, lounging around in a kain pelikat and a milo ais, as he nurses some Perec or Le Clezio?

How does it feel dedicating your life to such a sturdy unchanging place where its visitors are constantly changing and leaving? Do they resent our youth, our temporary existence in the air-conditioned cement and steel space? Do they too hope for a day when they would leave the carpet for better pavements elsewhere? Or do they, like Larkin, find the place a temporary residence to rest their everyday existence, as they nurture their other lives elsewhere?

Either way, while I see the same faces everyday, we never have spoken more than the usual card, grunt, thank you. They don’t care whether I’m borrowing something they know I won’t make head or tail of (Pure Mathematics, Longman Publishing, 1993), neither do they respond to my exuberance upon finding something long catalogued, unread, and hard to find (The Story of Penguin, Jeremy Lewis).

Not that I’m asking for everyday chance encounters with the 80s hairdo man where he would pontificate about Ayn Rand or something, but just that it seems to me everything in the library seems like a transaction.

The sterility of the place comes from how it is only used when it is needed, and never seen as anything else otherwise. A place for a nap, for those last minute homework completions, to facebook your status (is Bored and Tired and omggggg hungry la!), and of course, to study for the tedious exams that everyone’s lives seem to revolve around.

No conversation about some new piece of literature, no soul-searching, existential struggle. No poetry from no prose-filled mind.

Early this year, a friend of mine was having trouble locating the Economics section and was given a rather disgruntled answer when the object of her search was in fact a row behind her.

Dear reader, can you blame me for thinking what the answer would be if I chose to ask, “I am looking for the Critic for Pure Reason”, and being answered,

“We’ve been looking for that for a while, too”.

Here’s a cheer for some existentialism thought-
as I cross my legs
being somewhat sandwiched
between Science Fiction
and art critique;
between the Beckett
and Translated Poems from the Sanskrit.

His skin like
translucent Chinese Moon
eyes all beady and austere-
those hands:
large, warm and damp.

Possibly- (or so they say in GP)
the best things to hold
at 17 and purified-
virginal and terrified;
when all belief and thought
cease to be held on to.

In carrels like pews for prayer
I bent my knees and hoped
that reason would come;
come barreling through
this exasperating furrow of silence-
all rage, all worry-
writhing in my insides.

The warm stupor of weekday afternoons spent languidly slouched over the page of my chemistry notebook. I try to keep awake, eye-lids heavy and mind at great unrest. The man being paid to fill up the gaps of my education tries so very hard.

Between those free hours I have noticed that the boy sitting in front of me has arch-long legs like a raphaelite beauty; the soles of his shoes seeing better days. We  speed past the park and I can’t stop laughing. Minutes later; I am relishing the feel of the humid breeze running through my hair as I zoom past the neighbourhood on a bicycle that is not mine.

So here I am. Sitting in the mamak nursing one two many neslo-ais-kosong/teh-si-ais-kosong, listening to an Indian man reason out why this year Anwar will win. My New-Statesman dealer is off gallivanting in Morocco and Switzerland, and I can no longer have the energy to keep up my old habits. I am growing old.

And here I am, too. Waiting impatiently outside the principal’s office with translated copies of the same proposal. I  am worried, because I need everything in black and white. After all those years of learning, I am now left at the helm. Holding on with fear, holding on happily.

Anna Wintour, Tyler Brule, Marvin Scott Jarrett.

My bedroom floor is littered with magazines that I have yet to finish reading; old and new; and the polo-t-shirts of my brother’s that I have now claimed mine. There is a bouquet of dying flowers decomposing in my kitchen, and earrings on my dresser that I won’t be able to wear. He is beautiful, but he doesn’t mean a thing to me.

My laptop, feeling, looking forlorn. There are so many emails I need to write, too many I need to reply. My Wordpress screaming PATCHMEUPDATEMEDE-SPAMME.

To my friends here and away; hope you all are very well. I am alive, but I am hardly ever here.