ribbit! ribbit!

1st syawal this time round marked many 1st in our family;

1st raya without both opah + nenek taiping
1st raya wawan sembahyang raya with us since he started flying
1st raya our cat, fatty bom bom, balik taiping
1st bakar lemang attempt by ayah chik ... sedap ok!
1st time my sister, bibots, visited my granparents' kubur
1st time my brother, wawan, met our cousin's baby, adeeb
1st time since i came home, i raya without any duit raya from my aunts + auncle ... like hello!

it also marked my first encounter with kundera's work. the unbearable lightness of being was really heavy + dark, it made me sit quietly for a bit to think, reassessing my 'being'; life + attitude towards life.

people are capable of change, right?

seperti katak di bawah tempurung. i'm sure many of you are familiar with the pepatah melayu. i personally think kataks are cute. i used to sometimes get greeted by "ribbit! ribbit!" during secondary school, thanks to the infamous acronym. for 'them' to associate my friends + i with kataks, kataks must be adorably cute. (shut it them who are thinking of going, "eh? perasannya minah ni!!!")

i've read all sorts of newspapers retailed by the mamak in taiping. i discovered, i merangkak when reading utusan melayu. harks! arwah opah would be very upset with me for forgetting what i've learnt if she were still around. somehow, to her it's important to retain an acquired skill but that's the hardest part - retention. learning is easy.

anyways, back to the newspapers, from the content i somehow felt malay newspapers assumed that their readers are all malay. even if that's true, wouldn't that presumption alienate non-malay readers? having considered that i bought a copy of dewan masyarakat + i saw the same approach to it's content. how would that help in making all malaysians appreciate bahasa melayu or is it bahasa malaysia now as our bahasa kebangsaan when malay medium magazines/newspapers are delivering contents targeted at their malay audience only?

or do i think/worry too much? (suddenly, the star's "bloggers beware" headline went flashing in my head. harks!)

the newspapers content triggered "seperti katak di bawah tempurung" to go flashing in my head as well. consider this, a katak is normally seen as soft, passive + vulnerable, according to the pepatah, hides under a hard, seemingly sturdy tempurung shelter. the katak is convinced that this was all the world could be + that it was safe + secure as long as it remained there.

isn't it ironic that many who live in a slightly bigger tempurungs like to tell the smaller kataks to get out of their lair + join them kataks in a bigger tempurung?

i'm an asian, i too have a tempurung, to some extend. having been abroad (yup! that was intentional. i had to do it to prove to 'them' who condemned me for singing "dendang perantau" that i too had a fair share of being away from my family. haha!) i did leave my tempurung, went thinking + experimenting + go getting. somehow, now that i'm back, i start building a flimsy tempurung i call my own. call it peer pressure. (it feels good to blame your decision on others. *evil laughter*)

i too, subconsciously, am guilty of inviting other kataks to have a tempurung as similar as mine. after all, i'm human too. wait! not that i think my tempurung is any better than others, honest. (it is necessary to point that out since i find that here we are being measured by another person's definition of what we are saying/our behaviour) i reckon, it's just that when another person accepts my design of a tempurung, it makes me all warm inside. (meow! i really sound like a true asian, by my sociology lecturer's definition) :op

i bet you must be wondering, why am i blabbering incoherently over kataks + tempurungs. well, it's just that i'm worried of the implications of this tempurung attitude asians are notorious for, in the context of our future survival, malaysians especially in the wake of the pre-raya anisism riot. i hope the day would come when we can convincingly teach our children that it's ok to be a thinking human - it's ok to question + learn about the unknown, not kataks driven by the instinct of fear.

have a good weekend!

note to self: 7th november birthday shazlan! don't forget to call!

that's all. (ala ala miranda priestly from the devil wears prada)