Ellections is around the corner!

Wake up Malaysians, time to choose your leaders, those who will lead you into the future, those who will make life alot simpler and less of a roller coaster. Wake up my fellow country men and women lets do our part in making sure that the same dogs do not gaurd the hen house, those that cleaned the chicken and the eggs truted in their care. I call out to you my fellow Malaysians lets look far and deep into this matter of who should be our servants and who our masters for making mistakes as in the past has been costing us too much aggravtion which we can ill afford in this day and age. Lets weed out the shysters and the wolves in sheepskins. Lets expose the phonies from the true server, lets join our efforts and ellect with our hearts those we know will not deviate from promisses made or will not squander what do not belong to them. Perhaps there are still out there the ones who is wise and noble enough that can be fully trusted to carry out the means for our hopes and dreams to be realised and not take advantage of every loopholes and fringe benifits when they are in power. Lets wake up my family and friends, forget the race and the tribes, forget the religion and the creed, ellect those that your hearts feels can carry us across to the other shore without rocking the boat or sinking it...lets vote!
Yesterday I was at the Little Penang Street Market located at the very end of Penang road across from the E&OHotel. This is an event like a flea market which is held once a month on the last weekend of the month. Alot of activities involving the seeling of arts and crafts and food mostly catering to tourists and there were also live music and such activities like reading and short plays being put on by local talents. Its a happening but like most happenings in Penang it is gradually becoming a 'Chinese Thing' rather than a genuine crosscultural event fit for the promotion of Tourism in this country. It is just my obeservation having spent the last four months as a participant at the market. Its not that there is no Malays on th island to make a presentation or Indians for that matter, however, it is the Chinese that seem to dominate the scene, the sound and the taste whereeveer you go here and this is definitely not a healthy scene for the uniqueness of being a multi-racial, multicultural state. Why come to penang when Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan can offer real Chinese cultural heritage.
The old 'Kongsi' culture is very much alive among the Chinese here and this is what keeps them well ahead economically in this State, the spirit of mutual support for the individual as well as between clan groups. Today the coverage of mutuasl help has grown much wider and stronger in the guise of the mainly Chinese dominated political parties such as the MCA and the DAP. It is rarely that you can see these Chinese group extending their help towards the other races the Malays and the Indians. The government may claim otherwise but the real state of the nation is such and cannot be ignored even if ther is nothing that can be done about. The coorperation especially financially or economically between the races is purely business and very little out of the 'milk of human kindness'. The Malays are not without their own blame over the state of affairs, most of it they have brought upon themselves with lack of drive towards securing their share of wealth through the open market. Perhaps their lack of knowhow or their lack of aptitude and attitude that places them a step behind the Chinese when it comes to making money, but for whatever lacking the Government of the day has made great effort towards compensating for the lackings. Among the Malays i found is a serious sense of not being able to share and trust when it comes to money and alot amount of greed and envy to boot. As a friend once said the Malay enjoys seeing his neighbor not doing so well as he does or that someone else has taken a fall, and if there is any success story among the Malays it will always be treated with suspicion or something is not right on how the success was acquired. The Malays has be known to go to lengthy ways and means to discredit their fellow Malays who they found to be overly successful in business or any other venture.Most threatening of all is the use of the supernatural forces like pukau and jampi in order to destroy the guy who made it next door. Ther is seldom a close coorperation between the successful and those who do not make it but alot of suspicion and envy and very little trust except on the surface which the Malays are great at acting it out so much so that to those unaware it would seems like everything is hunky-dori. Sadly enough the Malays of today are slowly loosing their sense of moral and religious virtues even if they wish to admit it or not, giving way to backbiting and slandering as the norm.
The Indians are the minority that has always been under pressure from both the other races, the Malays and the Chinese in all forms albeit economical or social as well as religious. Those who claim otherwise are not being honest just as the White Anglo Saxons in the United States claim against the Blacks. So much so it has manifested in the form of a politicalsocial issue 'Hindraff' whereby the discontentment felt by those being opporessed against rises to meet the oppressors and demand for justice. Given that the ways and means are not condoned by the government it is still an issue that is not going to fade away overnight just because a few arrests were being made. The festered sore has busted open and the puss is splattered all over the sheet, with or without aids from external influences out to exploit the already explosive situation. The Indians very well deserve to make the noise and raise the issue that has been haunting them since the independance, however they would have made more sense to aim their grievances at their party leaders, those hwo have been elected to carry their hopes and grievances for them into the parliament and failing this they should think deeply about replacing these leaders without fear or favor. Aiming their anger at the government will only bring down the wrath of the Malays and the Chinese on them and very little sympathy; this is the Indian Dillema.
Such is a little bit of my political observations of how faror how near the state of the nation is toward accomplishing its goals at the rate things are unfolding all over the land. There are a whole lot more that is going on that needs to be addressed and rectified, corrected and resdesigned, changes has to be made and with changes will come turmoil and with turmoil will come progress hopefully for the best of all interest.

Trip to Bukit Beruntong

We left all five of us in my cousin Mohd. Kalam's car with my two children and their cousin, myself and the driver my cousin Mr. Mohd. Kalam on Friday afternoon. It was a pleasant drive and it was good to be away from the Island of Penang after being cooped up within the confines of the hectic city life. The trip was to visit my brother in law who is suffering from cancer of the throat and also to drop in to say hello to my only surviving aunty who I had long not seen. She had raised me as an adopted child and so i was extra close to her. The kids were happy to get away from it all too and as part of a bonus they were treated to my reading to them from the Napoleon Hill Book, "The Law of Success". It was one way I could grab their attention for some motivational pep talk through the book.
We were originally supposed to go to KL where my brother in law was stating with his younger brother however upon making a phone call we discoverd that he was on his way to Lumut where his daughter lives that very night. Fortunately they were able to drop in at my auntie's house which was located along the their way from KL to Lumut. So that very same night we acoomplished what we set out to do without having to drive all the way to KL. The kids were offcourse a little bit disappointed as they were looking forward to being in KL for some R&R from their R&R in Penang. We left my auntie's the very next day and headed to Lumut ourselves where we made a special trip to the Pangkor Island. The kids had fun there and so it made up for their minor disappointment.
I had a relaxed time myself as I said it was relief to be able to break way from the Island and its routine. Along with reading the "Law of Success" I have picked up the book " The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Afte having read a few chapters of the book I realized that this guy is not fooling around with God, he is all out to grab God by the balls! It is interestingly pleasant to see that no one has threatened his life for some of the things he said especially about Islam! Well maybe it is becaue the fanatics are busy slaying somewhere else in the name of religion or they might just be tired of entertaining the likes of Richard Dawkins and Salman Rushidie (which would be to their credit if they do) having realized that to take on these individuals is giving them free publicity which is what they crave for in the first place. Anyone who knock down a hornets's nest has a reason for doing so and it is not for the sole purpose of getting a painful retribution from the act. The hornets, so long as their home is being threatened they attack regardless of what otheres may say or think over the matter.
What if there is or there is no God? What if there is or there is no Theology or Science for that matter? All these are products of a thinking mind a mind that creates all there is that we see and experience! What happens when we stop thinking all together? We humans are a thinking mamal that survives through the ages despite all the natural and supernatural traversities through our ability to think and act and all we are is still thinking and acting as we progress into the future albeit individually or collectively and more and more the so called scientists, and even theologists and philosphers are in agreement that as we think so we create. So waht have the like of Dawkins and his fellow atheists go to cry about whether there is or there is no God? Whether we evolved into who or what we are from the ape or that we dropped from the sky one day because our number one was booted out of the heavens for his minor discrepancy against his Maker, what the hell of a difference does it makes? Be an Atheist for God's sake! or be a Mullah that's your choise to be! To be or not to be it is your free choice. I hate to quote the scriptures or even the scieces on this matter of free choice or the freedom to choose, to belief or not to belief, or I do not even have to think about it at all and just act as my heart pleases me! It is utterly not the concern of mine if you worship five or ten times a day or that you burned your crucifix declaring yourself this or that to the world and as far as I am concern all you are doing is further adding fuel to the fire that is already burning wildly simply because of your dual thinking mind, right and wrong, good and evil; for so long as you are unable to transcend this dual thinking mind you are trapped in it like a cosmic karma, musterbating yourself over that existance or non existance of what cannot be accertained scientifically or otherwise. As a Zen master once pointed out it is as foolish as a farmer looking for his lost buffaloe while riding on it searching.
But these are what makes money and fame for those who are being given the ability to think beyond the poor farmer and produce such far out proofs and disqualifications for or against such an explosive issue as the existance of God. Dawkins got his International best seller and perhaps even numerous converts which Bertrand Russel and Jefferson were not able to do and he is singing his way to the bank after puking out what has already been known to most of us who ever dwell on the subject but had not inclination to air it in the open much less influence other to our ways of thinking, if nothing for fear that it will further aggravate an already aggravating sore in the heart of humanity.
If there is or there is no God it will make as little difference to the fact that tomorrow I will still have to wake up and face the world and the last thing i would need is another great thinker to inject my already messed up mind with some new ways of thinking things outs that will lead me into whatever freedom that is left worthwhile to be had in this life. I am a beleiver and i find comfort in my belief as I am positive that millions like me all over this planet, painful and rediculous as it may seems at times,feels the same way. I have spent my sleepless nights and read my quota of materials to justify my convictions over the matter of there is or there is no God. The last thing I or most of those like me is asking for is an anti- evangelist or anti-Jehovah witness, anti Imam or anti- Rabbi, brilliant deductionist and salesman/scientist to tell me and my 'God-forsaken kind how or what to believe in in this life.
You cannot obliterate religion or history for that matter by writing one best seller or one hundred best sellers for that matter as the answer is in your own heart of hearts and not in your mind where your belief is concern and no amount of scientific probings can draw the conclusion on this matter nor any number of miracles, but the Heart knows and only the heart can tell if and when it has found what the answer. But first if there is any consolation, look for the heart;for in your heart perhaps is "The Temple of the Living God"' if you happen to find God within your heart and not just some musscles and blood pumping due to some 'scientifically explained' act of nature, then truly you have found your Maker Who created your Ticker! If you find notthing but musscles and blood then be happy to know that you were right, as Carl Jung once said, ' If I believe or do not believe in God, it does not hurt God'.

Peeling onions and potatos

For the past three days I have been working with my cousin's catering business helping out in the preparation of huge pots of Dalca, Kurma and kari ayam among other dishes for the catering orders. I have been doing this eversince I was laid off from my last job at the Jerajak Resort and SPA and it helps to keep me going with the daily expenses. What is more rewarding about the job is the fact that it has become another form of practice towards self observation and discipline from the fact that one has to be up by five a.m. and sweating away for the next few hours while dealing with all manners of human interaction involved in the process of food preparation on a large scale. I have slowly got to know the characters involved from having close interpersonqal communication, their manners and habits their ups and downs. Most importantly i have come to recognize myself in the environment among those who are rellated to me and those who are not and then those who are foreign workers(mostly Bangladeshis).
There are the ladies who runs the kitchen prep like peeling onions and potatoes, preparing the souces and curry mix, cleaning the chicken and prepapring the salad etc. These are the spine of the whole process as without their expertise there would be chaos in the pots boiling over. Then there is the hierachy of men who does the preperation of drinks and one who does the rice, there those who keep virgil over the pots while they are simmering with spicy ingredients making sure that they are well stirred. The delivery guys comes a little later in the morning and begins sorting out what goes where untill everything is being assigned and delivered to their respective locations. My cousin Salleh runs the show and his wife Ana runs the cooking section and they are a great example of harmoniuosoly compatible duo which keeps the business alive and prospering.
The catering business like most food related businesses, can be a very lucrative venture if well planned and managed. It is not an easy task to run such a venture and it demands hard work without doubt and in these days and age most functions utilizes the catering people for their food and beverages, unlike in the older days when food for weddings and such were the worries of the bride and groom's famillies and neighbours. Theere is the good and bad for these changes however the pressures and cost of functions these days seems to favour the caterer than self production. It seems to me the catering business has a bright future in the food and beverages industry as more and more are opting for someone lese to do the preperation and clean up after than to have to be bothered by these themselves.
I enjoy working with my cousins and friends but there are times when the aging body is beginning to rebel against the push for an ounce more of physical force and the tired mind sometimes seems to succumb to quitting before the time to quit. Feeling the heeat from the pots and the wet from soaking onions, reacting to my fellow workers and keeping a straight face over all the vibes around me, it is a great experience in mastering your circumstances and environment. I sometimes keep reminding myself that i had once worked on a fishing vassel in the Bering Sea, off the Alaskan Coast or that i had worked in Downtown San Francisco on the water front or the fact that i had cut meat in Packing houses in Green bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this is but just one more vocation and it is just different in nature only the mind dealing with this circumstances is the same mind that dealt with the past vocations.

Healing a tooth ache?

Can you reverse the process of a tooth decay, or make the migraine that is nagging at the back of your skull disappear, can you renew your emotional energies that has been depleted over the years due to one form of traumatic experience or another that has plagued your life? Well, I can;t either, but I amsure as hell have been working o0n it the best I can as it has been and will continue on being some of the top priorities in my life other than just making sure that i get great art works done that is acceptable by the national galleries around the world.
Can you slow down or even reverse the aging process of you physical form or can you or can you place your spirit at the top of Mount Sumeru among the Gods and shoot the breeze? I cannot do this, nope, but I keep on trying for the life of me i sure keep on trying ans this is what I do with my mind when no one is looking! Some years ago while living and attending the University at Green Bay, Wisconsin I had a dream that I was Lord Krishna, perhaps this was because then I was busy into taking comparative religion as part of my semester load. Yes i was Krishna and I felt the bluish enrgy that eminates from my body, I was blue in color! In the dream as Krishna I performed some far out miracles like playfully defeating the demons that were floating down from the sky to attack me. There were those with large flapping ears and with a flick of my fingers I wrapped the ears over their faces and those with long fangs i simply turned the fangs into flexible rubeer and tied the two together, all these done with a sense of humour and no a bit of fear cause i was the Devine GodHead!
In this dream I was performing these feats in order to impress upon my mother who had seized a child and kept it as her own illegally ( I cannot explain why), and toward the end of the dream I was able to display like on a huge plasma screen before me, the entire process of creation itself like s lside show with the snap of my fingers. This part of the dream kind of reminded me of the Movie 'Altered States' at some scenes when the process of transformation was taking place during the xperiment.
I dont know what exactly happened but the dream was very real and I felt the energy, I felt it from deep within me and how easy it was to use these energies. I felt compassion, unbridled love for my mother not just because she was my mother but as a human, a love without boundaries. I felt what it must be like to be a deity for real or for just a state of mind in a dream! It was real! This is what i had been on a ques for most of my life to touch this state of conciousness in this life at least once more in a more real psycho=physical sense than just as a dreamstate. What is posibbility without putting a dream into motion towards the manifested reality? Is it far fetched to demand my right to become that which i have tasted as a part of my conciousness even if it was manifested as a dream? As those will ever take the time to browse through my journal, these ramblings of the cheeseburger buddha will realize, the very reason i have bveen writing all these mundane activities that is a part of my life is only because they are the disguise of what my true endeavors are, what my mind has set itself to discover, what my spirit has mapped for itself to accom0plish and my soul has printed upon itself as a goal before the curtaon is dropped.

The Law of Success

Found a copy of the book sitting among some items that looked like there were meant to be discarded after a spring cleaning jodb at my cousin's and started readng it, became engrossed and stuck with it. Napoleon Hill's book The Law of Success is like the Bible of 'How To"s a motivational work for those who are not too late to try for the moon. So ar what I have read has been most exhilerating and refreshing for me like a sort of the coming together of my own life's practices being put together in a more organized and analytical manner. Having just read the first hundred pages I have been able to indentify the parrelels o what I have put into motion some o the practices mentioned some thrity odd years ago when I was irst introduced to the book 'The Master Key'. In this book the key word used is the 'Master MInd' which is the prime focus of the whole process in the book.
The scientific analytical approach of the Law of Nature and the Law of Physics which started off the book helped me to better undrstand my own personal practice o 'autosuggestion' based on the teachings of Raja Yoga which suggested that "I am the master of my thoughts and consiousness, I am the master o my body speach and mind etc..... I command the elements, electrons, atoms, cells etc. that makes up this physical body to recharge..regenerate..etc. I have been doing this or years because i understood it way back when I first read it while living in Alaska and has eversince become a par o my Mantra beore sleeping everynight. Now with this new source of inormation I am more fully convinced that I had stumbled upon a good practice. It is uncanny that I shpould come by upon this book at a time when I was looking for something to read or do to get out of a state of mental letargic, I was looking or something to get me out of a rut and there it was!
Perhaps millions o people had read this great work o mapping the route or human succes and I just did not know about it like a great best seller that escaped ones reading list. I believe in right timing in all the events in my life as I believe that when the fruit is ripe will it fall to the ground and this work has arrived in my hands at the right moment in time like it is supposed to. To discover such a piece of work where it had been laying was in itself a curious occurence as there is only my cousin who is an Insuarence salesman who would most likely be the one who would read such a book and basically or the better approach to a better salesmanship. For me the book I amsure will have alot much more to offer as it is like a spiritual guide for anyone with an analytical thinking mind maintaining a good balance between what is scientiic and what is spiritual.I will continue on to enjoy this new find and see what great wisdom it will devulge urther down the pages.

It Chinese New Year and the Rat is in the picture ater the departure o the monkey and what has the Feng Shui masters got to say? I hope for a greater year than the last just like everyone else and am looking forward to ffinishing my hundred feet long sketching of the 'Heart and Soul of Penang'. It will be exhibited at the Penang State Art Gallery sometime in July, so I have aew months yet to work on it. Thus far I am quite content with what I have done and I have found that the use o charcoal as my primary medium is enjoyable and seems to work out fine, only it gets a little messy sometimes as I am a careless worker.
The paper itself was given to me by the former Dean of School of Fine Arts at USM, Proessor Najib who is now the Director of the National Art Gallery in KL. It was just before he left o take up his new appointment that we had a lunch together at one of the Nasi Kandar Restaurant and he offered me the paper to work with. The idea was to do sketching the way I had been doing depicting scenes and buildings of the the Island as I see it. Today after I had found out how long a roll the paer really is I realize that it was a challenge that he had set for me and I intend to give it the best of my ability and enjoy the look on his ace when he comes to officiate the openning. Whether he can make it or not is yet to be seen however the dye is cast and I am half way through the roll aleady. Who knows what the year o the rat has in store for me but I know one thing and that is this year I will have my solo show at the state gallery and it will be the talk of the city.

Gary Harold-Aptos Ca.

While sketching the cannon Ball Tree one morning at the Botanical Gardens I met a gentleman from Aptos, California, an elderly gentleman who was on a visit to the Island of Penang. The first thing he said to me was that he like my energy and would like to take a few pictures of the skecth I was working on and from then on we got along promising that I would call him the next day and take him places. I like the man as he reminded me of a few of my former cohorts at the Zen Center in Sausalito, California when I was living at Green Gulch Farm, in Marin County. Gary is into organic farming and the hare Kirsna Movement and is ahealth fanatic when it comes to food and beverages. He used to teach ESL among other things and was cosidering teaching in any of the countries in South East Asia,Penang included.
The next day I picked up gary at his place called the Hutton Lodge, a new hotel that caters mostly to foreigners seeking for a budget lodging. Later we headed out ot the USM muzium Gallery where I showed Garry the sketches I was working on the long scroll measuring no less than a hundred feet. he seemed to enjoy his visit to the Muzium and later we had lunch at the Minah restaurant where Gary picked out all the vegetable dishes he could lay his hands on and piled his plate with a little rice added to it. It was a funny sight to see tis American vegetarian eating these assorted dishes which normally for a local would seem odd.
I mentioned to gary of the possibility of sending my son next year to the States for his college education and wondered if he would be interested in helping out with the arrangement for his relocation. Gary was delighted to do it and suggested that the area where he is from has a very good college where my son can attend. He would not mind being an uncle and get my son broken into the American life. I saw a glimpse of hope in this meeting for my son's future in America as he will be completeing his secondary education by the end of the year and this means that his foreign student status would end and he would have to deal with finding his way of staying here unless I can get his citizenship issue solved before then. I am torn between sending him back to the States and having him stay here with me and a part of e wants him to have the opportunity to experience America like I did.
Upon discussing with my son about the possibilities of his venturing into the unknown on his own in the States where he is a citizen, he seemed tempted but still held reservations as I am sure he is not overly confident at this time and age. I would want to believe that I had planned my children's life to such that they would eventually end up back where they were born after they had had a good experience of life on the other side to the planet, after they had tasted what it is like to be poor and humbled by the experience of not having. I had every intention of them knowing their father's identity and his religion and cultural upbringing so that they can have a base to work from in their own lives, they at least know their roots and what they choose to do with it is for them to figure out in the future whereever they may end up. I have always maintained that i would like their lives to be as colorful if not more so than mine and returnig to America I am positive would open all sorts of doors and windows of opportunity for this. I know waht they will go through will not be easy but it will always be a challenge and great for their character building.
Gary Harold left yesterday morning for KL and will be there with his brother and his Hare Krishna friends, from there they will head for the Mauritius where they will spend ten days. What will come out of this chance meeting God only knows and if this gentleman is as genuine as he seems perhaps my son will find a footing in the United States and a wise teacher to boot.

The past few months...

I have not been writing much lately simple because I have lost saveral of my entries in the past that I believe it is not meant to be and that it is time to let go of this habit untill such time when it is meant to be. I like to write as it helps me to evaluate my status at the present by reflecting upon my past and hopefuly be able to forge into the future with a better sense of direction. So if this piece too is lost in the mail well then I still continue with the believe that the AlMighty is till holding me back from expressing myself for some unknown reason and no one for that matter will know about it and hence it does not really matter even what I am sayinng at present.
Hoping for the best I wish to relate my life as of the begining of the new year till the present, what major events has transpired since and where I am headed for henceforth. One of the most significant event that has taken place in my lifwe thus far is the fact that I have found a female companion, someone to keep me from totally in a depraved state of being lonely for opposite sex. It is not an easy move for me to make as I have been without any female companion eversince my wife left for the state four years ago and I have not had any sexual encounter eversince my daughter who is now almost sixteen was born! Nope! Not even with my wife and I never swore myself to become a celibate for whatever reasons. Its just a fact of life and there is none to blame for it is beyond blame. I missed having a sexual partner no doubt however out of respect for my marriage and my wife I hads never ventured to have any consummate relationship with anyone and somehow over the years gotten used to it.
My lady friend at present is someone I met by chance and she is from the Philipines. I like her simplicity which attracted me most about her and I enjoy talking to her about life and teasing her about her ways. Who knows where it will all lead to but at present I am happy that i have someone that I can allow myself to be a man again after all these years! Although i have only met her quite recently I am already beginning to feel my old self starting to come alive. It seems like I have been holding back a dam of emotional floatsam within me and they are about to break loose, released from their years of confinement locked within bY guilt and ignorance catering to the needs of others and what they have to say. Today I say to hell with all those who have been passing heavy duty judgements upon my life style and habits and i am goin to rise from my ashes of self deprivation and guilt ridden trips into what is in store for me for better or for worse.
I welcome the new year with a new breath and a new spirit, the spirit of liberation and freedom from cares and wants, from confinement and restrictions and subjugation, I am awaken.

To write or not to write?

The Thaipusam took place yeasterday and there was a good turnout of people from all over the country and tourists from who knows where with their cameras hanging round their necks and sweating like hogs under the scorching sun. As always the atmosphere was electrical with alot of noises and from deafening hindu spritual wailings off the loud speakers as well as live. I love the rythm these sounds cam mesmerise one into a state of spritual estatic and move you to dance along with the crowd accompanying the Kavadies. Devotees with hooks attached to their physical parts some beraing small containers of milk, or lemons attached to the front and backs, there are those that have metal rods skewered through their cheeks while straining against ropes with large hooks attached to the backs like a wild bull trying to pull a cart. Then there are smaller more sedate performers who carry on their shoulders beautifully decorated kavadies with cans of milk attached at each ends, these were mostly women and children. The devotees were all performing a act of fulfilling their vows made to Lord Murugan or to any other number of deities who is a part of the Hindu Pantheon of devine manifestation such as the more popular ones like Lord Kirsna, Lord Ganesha ( The elephant headed deity) or Parvati and so forth.
I enjoy Thaipusam even if I am a Muslim. For me it is a spiritual rite that evokes ancient beliefs that had survived till this day and age linking our human psyche to the Universe collecctively. It is a dance of love and devotion between the devotees and the one devoted to where faith of the one overcomes pain and discomfort all in the strangth of Devotion. It does not matter who you are or what denomination you originate from, to be in the midst of the throngs of humanity marching in full conciousness evoked by the electrical energy generated by the the single purposeness of devine worship can have an effect on you. No matter how jaded and callous one has become towards spirutality or tyhe collective superconciousness inherent in us all one is bound to be moved by the scene and the vibes unless one is a total zombie in this realm of existance.
I enjoyed sketching the scenes and often getting approval nods from those around me as they peered over my shoulder wondering what in tarnation I was up to. While doing these quick sketches mostly using charcoal pencils the beat of Indian drums and chantings filled my being like i was at a reggae concert. I sketched to the rythm and became a part of the scene as though I was fulfilling my vows made to my own personal deity on this auspicious day in th Hindu calendar of worship.

At the personal level closer to the earth, i am still lost in my day to day struggle to make ends meet for myself and my three secondary school dependants. Two are my own and one is my niece who has come to stay with us to help ease her parents from the inconvenience of time and money inorder for her to go to school. It is a little tight for my already unpredictable financial situation but it has to be for the present untill something better couldbe worked out. School is still a priority in my list making sure hat all three kids gets what they need and get to school on time, do their homework have their dinner, do their laundry and most of all watch less CDs and DVDs!!

HAPPY NEW YAER!

This is my second try at writing my new year resolution and also bidding the past year bye bye. The first lengthy entry was wioed out when I tired to have it published! Damn internet! Just when Iw as able to write a whole more meaningful and positive finale for the past year it just wnet up in smokes. Anyway todat the Ch'ng Huck Meng Solo exhibition was just launched by the Vice Chancellor and there was a good turn out. I am working on my project of sketching the longest piece of paper I have ever worked on depicting life and buildings around the Island of Penang, and so far I think I have sketched about forty feet of the paper already.
I have a few minutes before he closing of the Muzium Gallery and so I thought i'd try again to recap what I lost yesterday about the New year. O7 was a roller coaster ride for me with my ego getting bashed in left and right as i was not able to make ends meet ofeten times. This was good for me as I needed these humbling experiences as they are good for my character building as I grow older. I am mostly thankful that my health has been good except for a bout of flu once or twice throughout the year. I am also thankful that i had been able to be productive and had my Second Solo Exhibition in Penang at the Gallery Tuanku Fauziah, USM and then later two one day shows at the Little Penang Street sales which earned me some income enough to cover the cost of my children's needs for their school.
There were moments when I doubted my Creator and myself when things got a little too unbearable but I am grateful that they passed without me loosing too much of my self esteem or stagnated in despair. I had made saveral new acquaintances with whose help and moral and spiritual support I have been able to face my trials and tribulations. my friend Hasnul and members of the Muzium Staff has been ever kind and generous in their tolerance and acceptance of my precence here. I have been very fortunate to be able to utilize the facility here at no cost and with alot of support which reminded me of my three years spent at the Miyagi MUzium of Fines Arts in Sendai, Japan. I guese there many things i am to be grateful for in my life and by right there should be no cause for complains.
I have made it through the year without too much bruises to my body except some to my pride and my ego and this i realize i fully deserve. I have been complacent and at times made judgemental errors towards life as being too much suffering but on looking back the past whole year of07 I see that things could have been alot worse. For one thing i am very glad that i decided to start depending on my artistic talents rather than work for someone else to earn my living;its not easy but I feel more satisfaction even when the times gets rough. I know that from now on my livlihood depends on how I do as an artist and there is no one to tell how or what to do with my time. I enjoy the hours i have regulated for myself in order to accomplish as much as i possibly could in achieving maximum productivity towards my creative endeavors. Having and not having money will always be an issue which I will have to face just like any other Tom ,Dick and Mary, but in this I trust my Maker to provide as i have done my work. Day and night i spend my time creating, painting, sketching writing and finding ways and means to sell them and this has proven often times adequate, I hope it gets better as time goes on and that the year ahead will have better financial hold for me.
Emotionaly and spiritually I am still at ground zero, but my meditation practices and my Zikhr has progressed towards fruition as I feel better about myself and connected to the whole alot more than before. I am able to see mylife in a whole lot more positive light and that greater things lay in store for me this year ahead as it is my year, the Year of the Rat!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! to all you ghosts out there who are crazy enough to have read my ramblings thus far!! I LOVE YOU.

Out 07 In 08

The year 2007 had been another memorable year in my life where the major shift being the fact that I had decided to to be gainly employed with a monthly income guranteed and a boss or bosses to please. I decided to become a full time artist putting my life and my children's daily needs and future in question. I was laid off from working at the Jerejak resort and SPA sometime in the middle of last year after my contract was now renewed, again I was earning too much for a job that was considered too easy and with the availibility of cheaper labor in the form of foerign employees the management at the Resort considered me a baggage to be released. It was time for me to make the change from being dependant on earning a wage to being independant and strike out on my own focussing my attention on my artworks and selling them.
It has been roller coaster ride eversince bothe the ups and down equally educating and humbling in terms of my experience. For the past few months eversince I have had days when I wondered where or how I am going to survive daily, however through my available time which otherwise I would not had I been emplouyed, I was able to meet many new friends and peears and fellow artists who had in one way or another guided me encouraged me and even financially support me to keep me and my two children in the grid. I have come to learn that the time I had been spending at so called being employed had deprived me of many moments which had enriched me as an artist and I had been able to produce more artworks isince than I had ever been able to before. I am also less uptight than when I was working as I have no one to answer to and not have to look over my shoulder to make sure that i am not being stabbed in the back by those that were vying for my position or felt threatened by my age and experiences as when i was employed. Financially too I have had alot better days days than when I was earning a specific amount every month, the sales of my works has been able to keep all three of us afloat and then some and the ehlp I got from sympathetic and understanding friends have made it easier for me and even more so made my life more meaningful in terms of the learning curve- I am more humbled and am beginning to experience compassion towards myself and in others.
With the step I am taking into the upcoming year I feel alot more confindent and in many ways alot happier with what life has to offer and my zest for living out my remaining years productively and with meaning is becoming a reality for; it has dawned upon my conciuosness it is not a matter of if I am rich or poor or that if I eat or not, what matters is that I am thankful for all that i have had all these years, that i have been blessed with a life full of roller coaster rides and I have rode them and survived to write as I am about them. I am thankful for all those great men and women who have shared my life at any given moment in time for better or for worse and I am thankful for those that had been my close companions, my soul mates, my redeemers and my protectors, those i knew of and those I knew not. I am thankful for having a good health throughout my life thus far except for the occaisional injuries and illnesses that an average person might encounter in his or her lifetime, it is a blessing for me that I have been spared of any major life terminating illness. I am ever grateful for my strong mind that have seen me through the best of times and the worse of times allowing me to act and be who I am making all the errors and accomplishing things that not too many can claim to have. I called it HUMIND, the human mind the instrument most powerful in the Universe that the AlMighty have created and i have been able to put it to the test by allowing myself to live this life to the maximum in every respect. Whether in my times of weaknesses or in my times or superior being I have watched my mind, coerced my mind cursed my mind moulded my mind, encouraged my mind and respected my mind for it has faith fully seen me through thick and thin and for this I am forever indebted to this faculty that is a vital part of myself.
Even if O7 has left many scars on my ego, my little mind the year has also seen a moral and emotional booster towards my sense of well being, my sense of who am I? The relationship I have with my two children is a loving and a very happy one at least this is my own inner feelings about it. The fact that I am not able to provide them with the best what life has to offer, (Whatever that is), I feel is a blessing in disguise for them have learned what it is not to have and what it means to take on responsibillities and make the best of what is at hand. Not to expect too much or feel ashame for not having but to keep and open and positve attitude towards what they already have for they from having experienced not having will one day know and appreciate what it would be like to have. I went through these motions and events in my own journey through life and I can really share with them through ymown personal stories, my own personal actions and accomplshments, success or failure is relative for what matters at the end of the day is how I have lived my life and how i will bring it to a fruitful and well meaning finale.

"The Intention Experiment" by Lynne McTaggart

I was introduced to the book by my friend and Muzium/Gallery Director Encik Hasnul J. Saidon who beleicved that it is my cup of tea and so far having read the first two chapters of the book I am hooked! I must confess however that having thus far read the book I have yet to be able to fully, concretely grasp the scientific remifications of this study as I am an artist, not a scientist. Sadly enought maths and science are still subjects that hides behind a veil for my mind too illusive to penetrate but having read saveral books in the past such as those by Stephen Hawkins and Fritjof Capra and the likes of Garry Zukav and Deepak Chopra I am not totally in the dark when it comes to these subjects like quantum physics and the 'relativity theories' of Einstien's. My knowledge of science thus far would hardly make me a rocket engineer but suffice to say that i have enough knowledge to compare and contrast simple premises such as the workings of shamanistic and faith healings and the scientific discoveries that would tend to verify and scientifically authenticate these 'unscietific practices'.
Albeit the discovery of the possibilty of the powers of the mind to control the outcome or the state of matter at its minutest or the interrelatedness of all from the individual to the galaxies as a flux, the book is another step toward the scientific west attempt to authenticate what the eastern minds has taken for granted thousands of years ago. The Hindu vedas have hinted at these possibilites through their analogis and allegorical teachings that most devout minds had be able to accept and put to test but there was not scientifically proven and authenticated experiments carried out at least not for the records to prove these practices were feasible and in line with the discoveries made by modern science.
Islam holds the belive that with all of us is the spark or essence of the Devine light, (Tzat..Allah), that with which man is connected to his Creator (AST). In the Hindu lores the first man or MANU (hence the word Manusia meaning man in Malay and man as in English), was a manifested devine spark that fell from heaven into the Himalayan mountains and upon impact sent miriads of sparks all over the planet and this was how mankind came into being.

" Gary Schwartz had witnessed the coherent photon stream emanating from from the hands of healers. After studying the works of scientists like Popp and Hameroff, he finally had his answers about the source of healing; if thoughts are generated as frequencies, healing intention is well ordered light."
The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart.

The Buddhist Monk Thich Naht Hahn (one of my teachers at SF Zen Center) at ont time talked about the 'Interdependance of Coorigination', as he called it the fact that according to Buddhism the Universe is one complete whole whereby there is an ubroken interrelatedness of all the exist from the Galaxies to the tiniest of amoebas in the form of a dust particle stuck in the toenail of the Buddha. When the dust is removed from its positon the whole universe is symbiotically affected in one way or another, felt or unfelt seen or unseen. Hence the dropping of an atom bomb has needless to say an impact that is umimaginable throughout the Universe and its ripples is perhaps still rolling into oblivion till it settles. The impact was not only physical, it was psychological as well as spiritual in nature that our species has suffered from some reaping positive understanding while others found negative means to exploit human weaknesses through force/fear. No matter how we view the outcome of such cataclysmic event in our history it is a fact that collectively we are affected just as the whole of the Universe is affected. The adverse effects of the climate changes that is becoming alarmingly prevailent is not pure because of the fact that man has been burining too much carbon fuel alone or polluting the rives and oceans but it also is historically connected to bygone acts of stimulating the whole by indiscrimate acts such as nucklear testings and genetical manipulations of nature. Man has often assumed that his existance is independant and superior from the rest of nature and the universe as a whole and thus his actions reflects his inherent arrogance being the only thinking creature that walks the planet. Every once in a while a thought or phenomena,(not unlike a Zen knock on the head), gives rise to doubts about this perception of man in himself and when this happens he jumps at every opportunity to prove himself right or others wrong and in the scientifc realm this is an accepted norm no matter how insignificant the discovery may be, like that made by Cleve Backster of the sensitivity of plants towrds positive and negative stimuli and the ability for the plant kingdom to communicate with our human conciousness.

"Years after he made the discovery...he would think of this moment as one in which his plants picked up a major disturbance in the Force, he had discovered of measuring it.If plants could register the death of an organism three doors away, it must mean that all life forms were exquisitely in tune with each other.Living things must be regitring and passing telepathic imformation back and forth at every moment, particularly in times of threat or death". (In this casethe plant was registering the death of a group of brineshrimp being boiled two doors away).
The Intention Experiment. L. McTaggart.

Dedicated scientists and laypersons such Cleave Backster and Popp who spent a good amount of their time and life experimenting into the mysteries of nature and the simple act of communication has allowed modern man toespecially those in the west to be more open minded with the ways of the shamans and bush doctors, the native hunters and the fishermen whose life is often influenced by superstitions and so called mumbo jumbo by the western thinkers. It is only valid when it is egraved in the stones in black and white, tested and verified and certified before it is legititmate otherwise all thoughts and ideas beliefs and faiths will remain as such.
Despite the prejudices that inevitably has become the norm where knowledge and practices are concern in our civilization the western domination over scientific discoveries cannot overshadow the fact that in the east communing with nature has been a fact of life, that a man has the instinct to know where or what to or not do when it comes to nature is an accepted symbiotic knowledge handed down from his forefathers if notheing else but for his own survival. It is becuase of the lack of faith and later support in the eastern mode of healing and dealing with nature by the west that has inffected the estern minds with the slow but steady loss of their abilities to commune with nature and the rest of the universe which their ancestors had handed down to them. Hence the disregard for the well being of forest and rivers and the financial exploitation of our resources by every means possible regardless of the detrimental effects it creates. Ironically it is from the west that any form of healing towards these malaise would come in the form of knowledge- scientific discoveries and financial assistances as the enticements. It is the old cavalry charge to save the settlers from the impending massacre by the Indians, the west will always act with a certain taint of colonial mentality, the Aryan type superiority complex over the Easterners. The day est and west can come together in a symbiotic merge without pride and prejudice, fears or favors, that would be the day when Global healing can proceed through collective thought processes and hidden latent powers that the ancient ones had been trying to relay to our generation through all the religions and cultural and physiacal practices.
As noble a challenge as it may sound that is to be able to unite the entire human collective conciousness into a healing force in the effort to heal our ailling planet it is yet to be be seen if and when the minds of both eastern and western scientits and thinkers, statesment and religious gurus, shamans and plastic surgeons can at the end of the day come together and unite their thoughts and conciousness and create a Force in the Universe not like any ever encountered before... it might help us save the planet in not the Universe itself.

"You think youself insignificant and small, whereas within you is a Universe far greater than your mind can comprehend."
Saidina Ali (RA).

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Yes even christmas came and went and I hardly felt any jubilation or anything special on this day that in the past used to be a part of my life where i would look forward to going home and finding my family waiting by the Christmas three and eyballing what was underneath. Nope not this time and far from it my children and i spent our day with me working at my cousin's catering business stirring the pots while my kids kept themselves glued to the TV. No one mentioned Christmas as it I felt would only usher in memories of my wife and how she loved Christmas times. Furthermore i had only four ringgit in my pocket which i left for my children to split between themselves for the day's meal. I latter arrived home to find that they had bought a can of tuna spread and a loaf of bread to go wirth which i gratefully shared with them. Yes life's a bitch and then you have to be thankful for being alive! Yessir! God don't like your complains much less listen to you moan and groan about life all through your god given span of allotted time on this planet! Well tell it to thiose who owe me three thousand Ringgit and decided that it is okey for them to delay the payment so long as i do not make any fuss about it!
Suffering without bitterness a friend once told me and this is a tough act to follow even for the best of us and Allah is the 'Tester' and test us He will to the max untill there is no more room for us to back but the corner where we will have to stand and face the ultimate test or perish there in. There are those the so called luckier ones who breezes through life without too much terpidations or even a minor jolt when it comes to destitution and poverty or social and psychological pressures and often enough they have even paid their dues for a ticket to heaven in the afterlife by their piety and chritable acts in this life. Then there are those who are always at logger heads with their own Maker so much so that as they aged and die their lot never seem to improve but gwets worse as time wore on by. They become more and more dejected and succumb to defeatism and despair. They give up their ability to rebound and take charge of their lives as they once used to blaming it on ageing and fate, I am becoming such a one and how I pray that before i die I will snap myself out of this quagmire and salvage my pride and dignity as a man worthy of calling himself the wholesome person created in the image of the Creator.
My most memorable Christmasses were the ones that I had celebrated in the US especially those I had spent in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I was till married to my first wife and spent the Christmas days with my mother in law and my son present. There was always piles of snow and sliding down the hill or riding slegh rides with son was part of the Christmas package. Later in the evening as almost everyone gathered in the tavern for a get together on Christmas Eve it was like in a whole different world where love and joy and genuine handshakes was for real and everyone was into making eachother happy even if it was for a day or two of their lives. Christmas gifts as commericalized as it seems to be makes everyone felt special to give and receive reagrdless of how small or how great they recieved. It was still an act of giving and receiving and it touched my heart everytime i sat and watched others opening their gifts amidst the warmth of the fireplace and chill outdoors. No matter what is said about Christmas or for whatever reasons it is being celebrated, this once a year celebration has my warmest feelings towards it and all the memories i had connected to it will always outweigh the traversities I am facing today. In shaa'Allah, there will be days like those in my life yet before i give up my holy ghost.
What and when was my my most memorable Christmas?
It was in 1990 and my wife had left for Illinois to spend Christmas with ther parents. I had to work Chrisatmas eve because there was an emergemcy at H&H Ship Services that had to be rectified or we would be facing a loss of a vacuum truck. The problem was that the driver, Norman Peterson had sucked intot he vacuum truck waht was wet cement and which was quickly solidifying insde the tank. had we let it sit we would have a solid piece of concrete inside the vaccuum truck. So we had to work emptying the content before it solidifies and it took us all evening obn Chrismas eve crawling wihtin the comfines of the vaccuum tank scrapping and shoveling sand concrete and water out of the tank.
Whe it was all over i was standing in the middle of market street waiting for the bus to take me home to Haight Street and i had bought some chicken and other stuff to cook myself a Christmas dinner in the form of a chicken curry. As i stood there in the middle of the street where there was an island for the bus to pull alonside I noticed a man half laying on the concrete slab struggling for his breath. He looked like he was having a seizure and no one was paying any attention to him as he laid there his body jerking and I felt sorry for him. I felt after a few seconds that I was in a vacuum where there was no sound whatsoever and i was looking at a silent movies with everyone else moving in slow motion, some walking pass by the man struggling on the slab with barely a change their paces. I walked over to him and dropping my packages began to stroke his chest slowly as I felt his chest was about to explode from his struggle to breath. His hand was clenched in a tight fist and his mouth was foaming with blood dripping along with his saliva. I stroked his chest and whispered into his ears to breath slowly and to stop struggling and as i did this he began to come to, his breathing seemed to slow down and his body started to drop on to the slab. As he began to gain control of himself I notice all the details in his features from the tight frightened painful look his facial line for line began to relax, the panic expression replaced by a calm dignified appearence.His fingers began to uncurl and he was letting go settlin into more gentle rythmic breathing. I kept massaging his chest and along came a police officer who asked me to stay with the man for a little longer untill they got help for him. As soon as I heard the abulance arriving I lifted my hands from the man's chest and as I felt the final contact between the tip of my fingers and his chest I felt his heart beating and it sent chills through me. I grabbed my stuff and head for the bus that was also about to stop at the Folsom and Market Street bus stand.
Sitting on the bus i felt the vacuum around me again but this time I felt strangely relieved of my aches and pains from work and my having to face the ordeal of bringing a man back from the edge. I felt very peaceful inside and outside and when I arrived home there was a kid sitting oin one of the houses with a bag pack beside him. He looked like he too was going to spend the Christmas by himself and so I offered him to join me but he turned me down politely and accepted the wine I had bought for myself when I offered it to him to keep himself warm for the night. I found out he was from Phoenix, Arizona and had just arrived that evening.
Although i had to spend the vening all to myself i was fully contented and the Christmas I celebrated that evening was the most joyful one i ever had after I had finished my plateful of chicken curry and topped with all kinds of spicy stuff i could pick from the grocery store in China Town, downtown San Francisco. That Christmas eve I came to understand how great life is and how fragile we are.
Even if life is a bitch sometimes, there is nothing that is not worth living for if your heart is ever thankful for what you already have.
In Islam we are taught to be thankful always no matter how worse off we are as we know deep within us that there are those worse off than we are. We can bitch and moan about the way life has been treating us the injustices and the insanities but we are humans for so long as we are breathing our life will be like a roller coaster or the wheel of life there days when you are down and days when you are up. When you are down look forward to getting up and when you are up look forward to coming down. This is riding the waves or going with the flow even if as the Buddha has pointed out that life is suffering my good friend Peter Oyimbo reminded me that it is suffering without bitterness!
SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL ADHA!!
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROPEROUS AND PRODUCTIVE NEW YEAR!!

Aidil Adha (Hari Raya Haji)

It came and went yesterday and i hardly noticed it if not for the early morning prayer at the mosque which I followed while half asleep in my bed feeling rotten about myself and how worse off i have become especially in my spiritual being. The Aidil Adha is celebrated primarily by those who have gone on the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and it involves the sacrificing of an animal by those who pledge such sacrifice towards the ALMIghty, Allah (SWT). It has to do with the covenant made between Allah (SWT) and his Prophet,Abraham in the effort to test the later's faith towards his Maker. Allah in this case had demanded that Abrham as test of his faith was to sacrifice his only son to Allah and this Abraham willingly carried out despite all his human emotions and attachments towards his only son, Ismail. Only Allah (SWT) in His infinite compassion at the very nick of time substituted Ismail with a sheep thus sparing the life of the boy. Henceforth, the Muslims had accepted the incident as a reminder in their history of their covenant with Allah through their beloved Prophet Abraham. For more detail and correct information on the subject I advise you to read it from amore authentic source and dont take my story to be exact.
I decided to join the festivity despite my feelings and headed on to the mosque where I learned that they were getting ready to slaughter three cattles in the nearby yard. I had always wanted to do some sketches of these scenes in the past and never got the chance simply because chances were that I would be handling the knife myself lending my expertise as a meat cutter of years gone by. I worked as a 'boner' for almost three and half years in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I first arrived in the US sometime in 1974 onwards. I worked in a packing house where we were packing cold storage meats for the making of hamburgers. If I had learned anything from this experience it was that to keep your knives sharp at all times!! A sharp knife makes a difference between making good tallies or going home with sore arms especially at the wrists. In the effort of keeping the knives sharp four things have to be mastered and that is the use of the grinder initially in order to put and edge on the blade, then the used of the sandstone or honing stone to make the edge last,the third and fourth care of the knife involves the expert use of the 'steel' and the 'ceramic' which helps to keep a sharp edge on the knife for a longer period of time. The mastering of these techniques makes one a master boner. The packing house I worked for at the time used to process about 900 to 1000 heads of cattle a day. The cold condition and the wet floors, the fierce compettition and the nature of the works itself can eventually turn one into a cattle. It was a dehumanizing work but ti was created me as a man who survived the worse that America had to offer for the next twenty years.
So watching my fellow kampong friends slaughtering the cattles did not have much of an impact on me as far as blood and guts goes. I took it all as another visual set of images that is in its raw form both aesthetically and emotionally invigorating. I enjoy the sense of being a part of an age old practice as primeaval as mankind himself except for the use of the chainsaw. The crowd gathered for the occaission were just as pleasing to observe and enjoy and the day went by with somethigbn positive manifesting instead of just another product of a manic depression or even despair for me who lately these days have been waking upon the wrong side of the bed.

Why do I Keep This Justifying Myself?

I am fully aware of the fact that I have been complaining,trying to justify, trying to make sense out of what is the mundane in my life and from any philosophycal or psycological perspective most people would agree that this is not a healthy or productive practice. "No one like to read about your complains or your need to explain your life away." I have been told by one or two close friends and i agree with their views on this matter. Life is too short for one to spend so much of it analyzing and scrutinizing it till there is no more room for one to make any mistakes from it when all is researched and verified. It is not my intention to do this from the start but it seems to have developed along the way as I keep this on going journal, I find that writing about my day to day experience has some form of benifit for me. I am by nature a ver y careless individual and I have always been careless about what my life is all about least of all in trying to explain myself of how or wherefore i am at. I like to believe that i live in the moment like most great philosophers or intellects profess htemselves to be doing but who am i kidding?

KFC Time!!

Saturday! I feel like a fool as I often do whenever I get kicked in my butt and it is always time to reflect upon the small miracles that my Maker awards me with in the nick of time. I got my one thousand ninehudred from my friend Shaparel who got paid for the works purchased by the USM Gallery. The monay was handed me yesterday not half an hour after I had moaned and groaned about how life sucks on the blog. When he handed me the cash for the purchase of my works I felt goosebumps all over relfecting on fast the Al MIghty decideds to teach me yet another lesson on perseverence and of being patient. I have always maitained a love hate relationship with Allah (SWT) throughout my life but I have the feeling that my Creator has more in store for me than meets the eye;He is not going to make it easy for me, nope, not in this life. He tests me every step of the way to see if I would make it or break, if I can remain steadfast or buckle down under a little bit of pressure, if I am greatful or forgetful whenever I am given the bounty that I had received.
Today I spent one hundred and fifty Ringgit worth of KFC for the staff at the Muzium as a token of my appreciation for their help and support of my being in their midst utilizing the facility and all the tools and equipments available at my dispossal. I am very fortunate more than most and realize it and appreciate it no doubt in my mind as in my situation as an artist who for the first time am trying to remain a full time artist earning my daily bread through my works as an artist to support myself and my two children. The rent has be paid in full and my son got his school uniform and his walkman which was waht I had owed him from using his money earlier. I have paid back the ferw ringgit here and there that I had owed people and I feel alot lighter in mind and spirit and on Monday I hope to drive to the immigration office and collect my children's visas and pay the 240RM fee.Oh what a relief it is at least for the moment.

My Son is drifting...

What has he done for his school vacation not too much anything but alot of watching DVDs at home all by himself like he is hoping for something to happen to his mind after all is watched and rewatched for the umteenth times. I am both sad and disturbed by the fact that he has become worse that a couch potato, as we do not have any couches and he watches the movies from the bed instead. I watched alot of times when I am home and we talked some about what we watched I try to slip in a lesson or two in English or geography or sometimes the psychology behind the scene and so on whenever he is paying attention or he ask something. Thers is the pros and cons to this situation as he spends alot of time off the streets and seems to be looking for something is all these. But of the other hand he is not out there like other kids his age chasing girls or building his biceps.
I am a little disturb about my son's lack of enthusiasm in living in the real world and tasting success and defeat hands on. I know he is not unintelligent and as a matter of fact I think he is pretty way out there in his mind except when it comes to doing the simple things in life like picking up after himself. it is a common phenomena for all kids to behave in like manner but some kids are just total loss when it comes to taking care of the little tings in life. Its like they believe there is someone else out there who is assigned to follow behind them and pick up the pieces after them, like their mother or a servant. I cannot blame my son for lack of passion about life as I am not either and this he sees and he hears from me day in day out. He knows the fact that if it is not against my belief and principle and if it is not against the common laws I would have gladly ended my miserable existance right now. I am living for sake of fulfilling my alotted time and hoping for and end as soon as possible. I learned a long time ago that I am a coward when it comes to suicide and so I have become an expert at justifying knowing that I am not convincing anyone not even myself. So it is with my son, I feel sorry for him and the more I watch his condition the more I feel the regret of making the move to return to this country.
It is Friday today and i spent the afternoon at the muzium working on what might turn into my longest painting, a scroll of that will be filled with heritage buildings around Georgetown in black and white. I don't even know why I bother to waste so much time and money over this project but I feel it is keeping my mind from tilting towards insanity if not despair with life and God. It is also perhaps because I was offered the scroll as a challenge to carry out the project by the Dean Professor Najib. I should have gone to pray at the mosque but my heart is bleeding too much for me to concentrate on God and begging Him again to forgive me for my ever incessant weaknesses. I miss my family,my wife, my daughter and even my son who is drifting away from me into his own world of make believe, a safe heaven from the madness that i have dragged him and his sister into after loosing my wife to her illness. Who do i turn to or what do I turn to when even God is not a comfort anymore? I spend my time making pictures and my heart is not into it. It seems Fridays always brings me down, spiritually it is the nadir of my life for the week and as a Muslim it is an irony to be at odds with your Maker on this day or days.

Climate Change continued...

"The bottom line is that the Global energy system is out of alignment with the ecological system that sustains our planet....Realignment will take fundamental shift in regulation, market incentives and international cooperation". So stated Kevin Watkins of the UNited nations intergoverment Panel on climate change. There is an inbalance in the Force! as Yoda the Jedi Master would have muttered to himself with a sad shrug of his shoulders signifying the futility of dwelling upon the inevitable. If it is up to humans this planet would be turned into one huge condominium complete with swimming pools and gymnaziums, a market place and shopping malls, parking lots and garages,(we are addicted to motorised vehicles), if it is up to us humans we would turn this planet into
one huge nursing home for the elderly and whatever else that we deem would serve our purpose in our short span of life on this planet. Balance? What is the need for balance if all our needs are met with and not only are they met with they are met with in style and comfort unparralled in our own history. We are a living organism that has come to realize our potential and that potential is inexhaustable or so we believe. So long as we are hardworking and productive we will keep on creating as we will and manage this planet till there is no more of it to manage.
Does an average man on the street realize the imbalances in the nature of things in this planet of our? Is he aware the the ocean is rising due to the melting of the polar caps and so on? Off course he is and he does care or that is what we who write and read about these things would want to believe but in reality the man who repairs the engines of broken down cars and motor cycles has these thoughts as far from his mijd as the thought of a meteor coming crushing down on his head one bright sunny day. Talk to these individuals sit and shoot the breeze, have a teh tarik and browse upon these subjects and see if there is any concern for them over the matters that you believe is of life and death importance for this planet of ours. It is best to talk of the latest model of cars coming off the lines or the latest sex scandal or the political climate of the kampung and you will find better response, not of climate changes. The most that you can learn from these members of our human race is the fact that it is raining more than usuall at the wrong sides of the mountain ranges for this time of year and that is not good for the Durian trees or for the rice growers.
Those participants who are presently sitting at the conference tables in Bali deliberating the state of the Planet due to Global Warming and Climate Changes have the work cut out for them. Nature is going AWOL, Nature is no more respecting her predestined courses nor is she sticking to her regular schedules. If anyone of those who are there in this Island Paradise is not aware or refuse to acknowledge the state of this planet's well being is in jeopardy they aught to be sent home in a box sooner than they can say Tsunami! Nothing really profound came out of the KYOTO Accord other than the ladaisical smooth talking and lips servicing that most governments gave over the years each dragging their feet towards taking any significant action towrds finding a solution to the predicament mankind as a whole is facing. How many more years and natural disasters, how many more species and land masses are lost before there will be a real collective effort globally to address this impending spectre that is threatening our very planet itself?
Is the planet heating up from within?
Is the Planet heating up from without?
Is man affecting this changes in the planet's climate?
Is there a need to be concern?
Is there a need for change in our mindset in these issues?

What do we leave our future generations and what are our excuses?
What is holding us back from seeing the obvious and acting collectively, intelligently?
What would it take for us to wake up before it is too late.
What is the sense of calling our era a civilized one if we are the cause of our own demise.

The UN Climate Change Summit-Bali

I was at the Kyoto COP-3 UN climate change summit and had not be able to participate because I was not a member of any NGO or any government bodies representing a nation, I was there as an individual artist who happened to have put together a year' worth of Newspaper cuttings frome the Japan Times of anything and everything that had to do with the environment. These were displayed outside the convention center where arriving guests to the convention were able to catch a glimpse of what was going on with the environmental issues at the time. The four pieces of display foam boards covered with the news paper cuttings were later borrowed by an NGO contingent from Washington DC in the USA and taken into the convention center where they were hung on display. I was proud to have done my part and for my effort to be taken further than I had expected by chance. The boards were later sent to me back in Sendai whaere I was living after the Convention was over with a beautiful thank you note.
I had most probably wrote about this episode somewhere earlier in my blog but I cannot help it whenever there is a UN Climate Convention happening I am reminded of my trip to Kyoto curtesy of The Director od the Kawaijuku Bunri in Sendai. Thats who sponsored my trip when I cpould not get the Malaysian Embassy or the Japan Times to do it. I found it hard time and again for an individual tomake any significant impact without some form of support from those who has the means and by humanistic rights should offer help for anyone aspiring to be of use to the benifit humanity for whatever cause. Artists are those who more than often fall into the category of needing help when it comes to this situations. They are most passionate about these issues that often does not attracts the average person on the street as there is no financial gains to be made for one thing and for most there is lack of awareness or even interest. But for the artist and i can speak for myself at least what happens to the environment, the state of the planet as a whole and to humanity in general affects me personally whether I like it or not. I dwell on issues that an average normal person would care less about throughout my life i remember dealing with global issues of one form or another in my mind like trying to find some form of solution to the problem with AIDs and the wars being fought all over the world, the famine and starvation plaguing poorer nations and the impact of global warming upon the planets' well being. I keep reminding myself, how dumb it can be for me to think that there is anything worthwhil that would come out of it except mega migraines at the end of the day. I keep reminding myself that I am no Bodhisatva of Compassion and even if i am the destiny of this planet and its inhabitants are foretold and has to be played out with or without my intervention.
The water will rise and the temperatures will rise and the species will one by one disappeare and there is not much that can be done for so long as there are humans like me plaguing the planet with my needs, my Greed, Hate and Dellussions. I am the thinking creature that is capable to create, preserve or destroy this planet and at the rate and direction my kind is heading it dont seem like there is much to hope for in terms of saving this planet from slipping into darkness. I wish as a collective concious there is some form of telepathic wavelength that we humans could stay in touch amidst all these scream of death and destruction, or thirst for power and lack of compassion. I wish we could all hear the voice of silence every once in awhile so that we could take a clearer look at where we are at at this point in time and what we are doing to ourselves and to this planet of ours, to our fellow creatures and the rest of sentient being inhabitting this small atom in the galaxy of galaxies.
How can we not feel responsible, how can we not feel the loss of extinction of species or the cries of desperation from those that we in our ignorance and lack of awareness have exploited and trample upon just so we can get our wants. We would dare to do whatever it takes to survive but when it comes to the survival of the rest of the creatures we turn a deaf ear and make believe that they dont exist or dont matter in our lives. We would kill in the name of our belief system, our race or religion but we cannot save a tree from being cut down or burnt to the ground just so we can grow crops that financially benifit us and us alone. We can never have enough or play second fiddle to anyone else in appearence or intellect, we are creatures that often forget that we are fragile and that our life can come to an abrupt end at any time and all that we have been craving for, killing for making others miserable for is all an illusion. There is not a dirt or an atom of what we are or who we are remains when it all comes to an end in ourselves. The planet itself may still keep on spinning despite all that is going on aimed at its self destruction but we as individuals matters no more when we let out our last breath of air. Our physical self is left to rot in the ground, food for the miriads of worms and maggots, this body the we so proudly fought and defended, cherished and cared for.

Blogging under scrutiny?

The Star Sunday 2 December-Focus article entitled 'Caught In a Web- Spin' is the latest take of prominant leaders on the pros and cons of Blogging. How it affects the polls or the individual characters who are the loudest in the country, the way the government is run or the fish is bought and sold legally or illegaly on the the high seas. Blogging had captured the attention of the who is who in the itellectual as well as the government bureaucracies just like the illegal processing of belacan in some off the road hidden boonies. Just as bad belacan affects all of us lovers of the fermented shrimp paste that is most popularly used in making The Sambal, blogging is becoming a threat to many who is feeling insecure from having to share their sense of well being and intelligence, their limit of understanding and compassion, their comfort and security living within ivory towers. The Blog is becoming like the Blob! It is becoming a boogieman that spells danger, that is beginning to be seen as somethig that can shake the foundations of higher learning around the globe as it is the result of collective universal thoughts that will eventually be expressed when all is said and done in the blog! The blog is within the Net or Jala!or Jaring! You need to pick up one strand of the net and the whole comes up at you with its force and weight, here you are dealing with the ultimate collective Mind! It may not be as apparent as it is now but in time all decisions made concerned with humanity and its self preservatiion will come via the blogging or better programes yet to be discovered by the collective unconcious. The Blog is only the beginning just as the Net itself was a beginning. Welcome to 'Cyber Space!'
There are and will always users and abusers just as it being the case of alcohol or drug users in the human realm, there will be morons and geniuses out to proof their points, let the world know their existance and how great or how small they actually are. But all in all the Universal Collective Spirit, the Collective Mind that rules the Net even at its subconxcious state is the ultimate Creator and Preserver of the sanctity of the Blog.
A comment by the MCA Kota Melaka MP, Nai Chee is and for sometime from now be the normal stance to be taken by those who feels the need to make comments or be heard on matters,
" The Government is still trying to live with the new development. We are still in the infancy stage but one of the guarantees of the Multimedia Super Corridor was not to curb the internet content except maybe using certain legislation to control the situation."
Here is the kind of oxymoron that we humans in our present state of mind still live by, it is the few attempting to silence a storm that the very few hard helped to generate in the past. The few whose thinking process is haunted by insecurities of their own positions and advantages in this day and age and cannot see beyond the sense of letting things grow into its own maturity and drop to the ground of its own without any form of control or force.'...maybe using certain legislation to control the situation', control what? Governments has done nothing but strived to control anything and everything that it cannot understand, refuse to understand or assumes that it understands in history often enough failling to realize that the very act of controlling itself is what fuels the growth of what is deemed needed to be controlled. Only the insecure and comfortably positioned individual would resort to such antiquated ideas AND THE NET IS NOT AN ANTIQUE, IT IS AN ALIVE AND EVOLVING ENTITY! If you are not par with the thoughts and ideas that is floating around in the blogs today you had better reserve making any judgment about how to control it. By reading and analyzing a few politically motivated entries by individuals whose narrowmindedness could only see the means to exploit and abuse any god given grace to their own benifit one has failed to understand the nature of the Blog.
Nai Chee went on to admit to this as he said,
"We can't control it, we just have to acclimate ourselves to it."
Acclimate ourselves to what is currently floating in the collective expression of the universal mind is more acceptable a statement from a minister than suggesting control. The need to control has its validity when it concerns the exploitation of net by unscrupulous degenerates such as those that ply their sexualy oriented wares making it sure that even children can excess them or those who has no sense of self respect voicing out obscenities so the world can hear their grievances, but these too has their rights in the scheme of life it is for those who makes the difference in making decisions that affects other lives to seive acclectically through what is acceptable and what is not. The politician is a genius when it come to politicking just as a fisherman is a genius when it comes to fishing and the two has to learn to respect eachother's roles in life without taking advantage of the empowerment of status or positions one has in life to dictate.

I have been writing these thoughts of mine for almost three years now and have almost become addicted to it. It seems to grow upon me and have become a part of my creative repertoire the collective expression of my thoughts and ideas about life as I see it. Having had the opportunity to live in the US for 21 years and 3 years in Japan and having travelled to twenty odd countries in between my mind is no ordinary mind that simply likes to sit a weather away with age into oblivion. My mind is in a constant state of aggitation and flux and when it sense that there is an injustice or a radically wrong stir in the heavens or a bad taste left in the mouth, it rings out to be heard, to manifest its own obeservations in the hope that it can calm itself down with some form of sanity or peace. MaKING SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE, most of the time I write to myself just to help clear my own cobwebs that is constantly accumulating in my head. A futile effort at cleaning up my own clossets, my own toilet, my own soul before I am called to account for what it was that I was created to do in the first place or who am I or what the hell am I?
So I blogged! I keep on rambling of things that I doubt if it matters anymore one way or another so long as my mind sees the need to express itself. And why Not! Just got done reading Alan Watts's article ,"The World as Emptiness", from his seminar given on the subject of Emptiness. It is ironic that after having read this whole article I come to realize that what i am doing is actually emptying my mind, letting go of whaever that is stuck in there or got attracted along the way like having read the Star news paper article on Blogging! It is not the most important thing in my life at this moment to view my thoughts on the subject but it is something to do. I would rather very much like to sit somewhere doing a sketch on my piece of scroll given to me by the Dean Encik Najib but I am procrastinating for no obvious reason and i hate to push myself to become involved in creating when my mind just could not get it together in the first place. Creating has to happen without any formn of compell or coercion, it just has to happen and for it to just have to happen there has to be an empty space in my mind or my being devoid of transgressions of feelings that is occupying my mind. In other words i have to find peace of mind a mind free from worries of what is beyond my control anyway. To do this I have to sit and let it go and all these while i have been sitting and letting it all go through writing all these that i have written. Now i feel a little empty and enlighten! if anyone had the nerve or taken the trouble to follow this piece of scatology he or she might have caught a little of the wisdom beyond wisdom of the whole principle of form and emptiness. I may have procrastinated about doing the sketching but i have sat and wrote a long piece of my distorted view of life, sat out of harm's way for the day and caused no grief or commotion to anyone but myself and watched another day passed getting me closer towards my self anihillation and becoming one with the void.