Too Many Rivers to Cross...

These sketches of Insects are now the collection of The Penang State Gallery.

I have been tossing around all possibillities about my trip to Indonesia, the whereabouts, the how and the when would be the most suitable way to go about it. In the meantime i also have a few other domestic issues to resolve here before i can make the final decission and most importantly with regards to my two children. Although leaving them behind would not be much of a thing to worry about , however their residency status with the government will need to be looked into as my son will soon finish school and thus his permit to stay in this country based on his student visas will come to an end in a month or so. This nagging pain with their citizenship staus has haunted me for years now surfacing whenever I least expect and making me run in circles trying to fiond the most viable solution. I have been taking this in strides so far as it is a consequence of my own doing that is for registering my children at birth in the US with the Malaysian Embassy there. I take it as my punishment but years of it is becoming quite tiresome to say the least.
I am a Malaysian born and it seems like as far as the Home Ministry is concern I have no rights much less privillages as a citizen. Ienvy the Indonesians and the Bangladeshis who showed me their 'Red' cards and Blue cards even after being here for a few years, how the hell do they do it?

My immitation of Katsushika Hokusai

I was told when I was working as a Health and Safety Manager at the Petronas Site in Kerteh and Gebeng by my foreign workers how easy it was for them to be issued these cards through their connections. My children whose father is a Malaysian and them born born in the United States of all places is having a tough time getting through! AAh, this is but an old song now and all I can do is keep barking at the moon and hope to Allah that He will one day open a door for my children to acquire some form of identification card just in case they are arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Na'Uzubillah!
The Final decission i have come to accepting as far as leaving for Indonesia is conecern to to go to Bali and hang around Bali for the duration of my stay instead of wandering aroung from place to place just collecting mileage. My primary goal is to cature the scene in one form of meadium or another of the place and for this I will need to stay put intead of spend time travelling on the road given that I do not have much time to play with. I find it necessary to try to immerse into the culture and its environment in order to capture the essence of what an artist would need to express himself of the culture and bali is no doubt a challenge for the artist. It is the Mecca for the Arts as artist from all over the globe has fopund their way there at one time or another. I need to go there because I had a feeling for the place eversince I learned of its existance. It is like a calling for me since childhood but I have had no opportunity till now!
Althoug I am sponsored for the trip my budget will still be limiting for me to disregard the cost of transportaton and lodgings so I have been busy asking around about these issues from those who had been there. So far I have had pertinent informations thay has eased my mind somewhat but I have yet to learn more just to be safe and comfortable in alowing me a smooth flow in attepmting to do my art journey through Bali. It must again part of growing old that I am more concern now about these matters although Bali it seems is a relatively safe place to visit and i have visited worse places in my life but then I really did not care what happened to me back then when I was alone foot and fancy free. Burning the bridges behind me was the the practice I had taken upon myself for every decission i made whenever I was on the road and often enough i had found myself not looking back that which I had left behind me. Relationships severed, my often times meagre belongings given up or given away and carrying with me whatever i could afford to cary I had left on many occasions embarking upon a journey of no return.
But as the saying goes," man proposes and Allah disposes', sometimes fate would have it that one does return to the source of one's beginnings, one's original home, the place that it all started from. I am here in my hometown reflecting where I have beeen and the life i have led while the train that i had chosen to board is still running knowing that even this station is not a permanent place for me to make my final stop. I will disembark this train only when I am laid to rest in the ground along some old track and the train will proceed on without metowards its unknown destination, one passenger less. As for me I will perhaps embark upon another journey towards yet another destination and in my case the journey towards the Lord of Power. All the wealth of knowledge and experiences that i had accumulated the good and the not so good, the rights and the not so right, all dropped off locked in the baggage compartment of the ongoing train while i am liberated from my wordly bagagge. Vedanta! The end of all knowledge and experiences, the annihilation of all concepts and preconceptions, the end of life as it is.