Still Thinking…

I have been wanting to update this blog but the Summer sun distracted me. Sometimes I think blogging is detrimental to friendships because no one calls you anymore, citing “I read you did this and that on your blog…” as a way to catch up. What bull. Nothing replaces real time spent talking on the phone, email or hanging out to nurture friendships, so all of you out there guilty of doing this own up. There are maaaaannnyyy…lol.

So this week was our supposed vacation week. The past 3 weeks or so were hectic; fireworks, expo, friends from overseas staying over and of all things, our car broke down. We are pretty sure the time is almost up for the Honda Accord, and so we have been amusing ourselves test driving cars and reading reviews after reviews.

Thank God Cookie is healing well, out of depression AND up and about. In fact, enjoying too much of the outdoors may I add. He has been behaving more like a dog lately, extremely obedient on command and he walks with a bounce beside us on cue. Weird cat. DH swears Cookie is a dog incarnate.

The best news lately is the family goat farm in Malacca. The goats finally arrived and so begin our foray into making an abandoned land into something productive.A long, long time ago my great-grandparents left a chunk of land to my mother and her sisters, but the land was left abandoned for decades. Until someone (I still don’t know WHO exactly! I am the youngest in my generation and get left out of important information often…hahahahah) decided to set up a full service goat farm. This is a major milestone for my family, as we have never ventured into a business in such a scale as a family before, and definitely not farming! Between us are people who specialise in engineering, technician, accounts, entrepreneurs, administrative, parks and recreation, journalism and broadcast, IT and management. Note that NONE of us have any experience in farming, let alone setting one up. But I suppose our motivation is to make good use of an inherited land, something that our ancestors will be proud of and the kids can call their own.

Talking about kids, I think they had a blast visiting the family goat farm. Being the urbanites they are, this venture brings them back to their roots.
I will let my niece tell the story about how that visit was (now that the goats are in!).

Perhaps I will never look at a goat the same way again. Then again, I don’t get to see them in its full glory here in Canada – only the cut ones.

Oh my…where do I start?

Cookie, the Ragdoll has not been taking our move to the city very well. For the past 3 weeks, he has been hiding under our bed, will only come out for food, loo and to sleep with us (sometimes) and then he runs all too quickly into his little dark hole under our bed.

His nervousness is understandable. The little kitty (well, he is 5 – I wont say little too many times !) has NEVER lived in the city before and is so used to the old house’s huge lawn and backyard. Back in Ruskin, he has the creek to explore, a few neighbourhood cat-friends to play with, and also Smoky (another family cat) to terrorise. Summer days like now are his favourite – he would disappear for long hours outside and then sometimes return home with a ‘gift- – be it an unfortunate bird or a mole. Yes, we do have a little animal cemetery in the Ruskin garden to bury all of Cookie’s victims. DH and I usually have a little ceremony to bury those little creatures. Poor them.

So when he refused to spent time out of the house, stay under the bed and get extremely nervous with the sounds of passing cars (our new place is on a street and not by a river!), we thought he is thought he is acclimatising.Cookie is a country cat after all, so we let him run for cover under the bed anytime he wants. It is his ‘safe house’.

Little did I know that cats can get depressed. You know the same way how humans need serotonin from the sunshine to feel happy (which explains why there are so many suicide cases in the West in winter due to lack of sunlight), cats apparently suffer from it too. Cookie has been depressed and what’s worst – it took a toll on his animal brain.

It started on Wednesday. We can hear him growl and seemed annoyed with his tail. We thought he was just chasing after an insect, but he wasn’t. His growls became a full-blown psychosis, and the once cheerful and jolly and very playful Cookie literally became a monster. Think the horror movie Child’s Play and that little doll Chucky.

His episodes became more common, and he was so scary it freaked me out. He behaved like a cat possessed, growling, hissing, and biting his own tail!. The last straw was when he jumped in bed with us to sleep, and the he suddenly got an episode and started biting his tail so hard it bled. Of course our very virginal white comforter did not look so white any more.

We took him to the vet on Saturday. She found a deep wound on his tail due to his actions and the whole thing reminds me of Edward Norton in Fight Club. The doctor treated the wound, and he now has a bandage around the tail and he has to wear an Elizabethan collar cone to prevent further licking or biting. We read about all his symptoms and knew he was depressed. Some vets would recommned Prozac – but we both were adamant against that. Drugs for animals? Are you kidding!

When he returned from the vet yesterday, he looked funny with his Elizabethan collar cone and a bandaged tail. But I still speak to him, and he seems tired and was meowing for attention. We both spent time playing with him quite a bit yesterday, and we bought him new toys, catnip sprays and special food treats to keep him happy. We both also know that animals are intuitive, and a lot of their intuition comes from the will of God. So we prayed a lot for God to heal the little Cookie, so we don’t have to end up having to give him Prozac.

Cookie is now out in the garden, all on his own. This is is his 1st day being outside alone after 3 weeks, and it has been 2 hours and counting ! I guess his Creator answered our call.

Never underestimate the power of du’a. Even with animals.

I am willing to bet my last dollar that one of the biggest hurdle of emigrating is the fear that one day, you will get that weird 3 am phone call from your family back home, with a family emergency.
When Mak Ngah passed on last year 3 days after I arrived for production purposes, I knew God knows me better. He knows that long 18 hour journey home would be too long for me to take, calmly.

A very good friend of mine here in Vancouver, one of my first few closest buds since I emigrated – had to go through the very thing I feared. She lost her mum. She rushed back to South Africa on the same day we had planned a tea party in my new garden to celebrate my move. After all, she lives only 10 mins away. I was planning to get DH to set the Wii, so her teenage boys can play while DH and her hubby can chit chat. We girls – well, we will just sit pretty in the patio with teacups and scones in hand.

When SJ returned from South Africa a few days ago, we sat on a swing at her balcony. We chat, and I offered whatever I could to ease her pain. I can only empathise, but I do believe you will know the depths of pain only when you are in it. I have not lost my mum, but one day I know I will. Or perhaps she may lose me first. Both ways, it cuts deep.

Then SJ shared somethings that actually threw light on her depths of grief. She showed me pictures of her mother, a very beautiful woman. She also shared writings of her brother, ZM who penned his feelings about losing his mum best. This is, one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever read. Perhaps it is because it is about a friend’s mother, but perhaps too – it shadows a fear I have.

In Memory of My Mother
(and in dedication to all our mothers)
ZMY 30 September 1933 – 1 June 2007

“After a long painful illness, my mother passed away this Friday at around 19h30. It was soon after I landed in Durban from Cape Town, and 15 minutes short of me seeing her alive again after three months. She had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease about 20 years ago and in the last seven years it was terrible for her, and for her extended family, who loved her very much, to see her suffer so greatly. In Parkinson you become a prisoner of your body, lucid in your mind as your body slowly shuts down. In the last years as my mum lay unable to walk, eat or really talk (except at some very rare points and with extreme difficulty), she was in constant prayer, her lips always moving in Zikar. Islam says that extreme illness wipes away all sin. For us she is now in a better place, not just because she is free from her body, which became a prison, because she prepared herself for the next world. I have not been a terribly religious person much of my life, but I do know (and many remarked on it) that as her body lay in our lounge, after it had been washed as per tradition and as my family and her friends sat around praying and weeping, there was a very beautiful and peaceful calm in the home, a light radiated from her body. My sister, NM, from Pretoria sat throughout the night watching her body and praying, another sister, SJ, in Canada got onto a plane to make the long journey here. Relatives from our close and interrelated family came from Nelspruit, Barberton, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Trichardt. The relatives in Durban were amazing, they did so much, organised everything for the funeral, which, as per tradition again, took place the next morning. Just before her body was taken to the graveyard, my cousin’s husband, Yusuf, read a beautiful prayer for her, for a brief moment it seemed we were all united together as one in her memory and with God.

I rode with her in the hearse with the driver to the small graveyard which is a short distance away, behind the mosque which I most often attended Jummah (Friday midday prayers), Taraweh (special prayers during Ramadaan) and is the mosque where I was married. I wept throughout the ride, it was a route my mother and I travelled a lot to the Pick ‘n Pay for grocery shopping, the mosque being next door to the shops. As we past the old post office, now a depot of some sorts, I remembered the first time I became politicised, as a very young child not even 5 years old. I first experienced petty apartheid then, when my mother took me into the dingy back section of the post office with its single post attendant and long line of people, while we passed the front section, which was clean and sparkly, had three attendants and one white customer. As a young child the fact that my beautiful middle class mother was forced into a situation of symbolic indignity was the beginning of a consciousness about oppression and a desire to make some difference.

As her body lay in the mosque, which she had never entered and where I had come so many times for important moments in my life, we performed the prayer for the dead. We carried her body to the very peaceful and small graveyard behind the mosque, two cousins and I entered the grave and lay her light wrapped body in the earth (Muslims don’t use coffins). We covered her with sand, I remembered that she loved to garden and that this was such a green graveyard, Yusuf again read a beautiful prayer with my family around, I recognised then (a fact I sometimes forget) the importance of family, of community, of land and belonging, of spirituality and of love. Over the next few days as we received so many phone calls and visits, and as we sat for hours and spoke to cousins, aunts, uncles and others, I realised more and more my mother had not left us, but that she had left a little bit of her in every person who gave condolences – a loving exchange, a cooking tip (she was a great cook), kind words, a home to stay in, advice when asked, support in times of need. I only appreciated then how big in stature this small, quiet and beautiful woman really was. I feel her within and around me still, more so then ever before, wishing me to be the best person I could possibly be. If you read this, please give a prayer (in a way that is right for you) to my mother and to yours. Parents are one of the few people who can give us, to the best of their abilities, unconditional love. ZD

Many of those who left the TV fest on the mountains this week would be thinking – TV is dead. At least for those who also attended another event on digital content a few days before. I find myself scouring my brains every night thinking of various ways to make a TV show multi-platform, and itched to get back to Vancouver to run my ideas to my trusty supergeek husband. DH is usually the best person to criticise my ideas anyway (and he does it mercilessly!) and takes me through the methodical aspects of their practicality.

Anyway, I was bowled over by 2 projects that have been kicking ass in the US right now. CurrentTV and LonelyGirl15.

If you are not in the US, chances are you won’t know that there is a riot going on about the above two. CurrentTV is an online aggregator of shows made by users, for users. It is like a professional youtube with an editorial mandate. It is citizen journalism in the digital age. The site even provides tutorials in their online studio on how to edit what you shot, and had roaring success with users shooting commercials for various sponsors. You cannot get more exciting than that when it comes to handing power to the people. The users are also paid for their content.

LonelyGirl15 is a phenomena on its own – it is about a girl who vlog on youtube about her ‘life’, except that she is an actress. There is an entire storyline to her life – she is running away from a cult, an evil order and her entire life is semi-dictated by other online youtube viewers who also try to solve puzzles for her. This, mind you, include the users attending live events where the entire story premise is lived out as if it is real. How’s that for interactivity?

It is uncanny that one of my last few posts was about how digital Hollywood, and compared to the above two – my theory is so outdated.

Is going online, dictating story lines and acting out stories the future of entertainment? I don’t know. But I am damn excited.

So tomorrow we are moving in to our new place in Vancouver,and a week after we will both be moving out to different locations for work. DH heading south to San Francisco for his usual Mac convention, and me to the Banff mountains.

I have heard so much about Banff World TV Fest, I am beginning to feel I am about to attend someone’s wedding. You know the Malay kind. You get ready for hours, rush to the wedding just so that you arrive at the best time (that’s usually 1-1.30pm when the groom and bride are together on the dais) and then only to eat for 20 minutes, smile, nod and then leave. Errr…hardly a celebration yes? I have always wondered the rationale behind such weddings and why bother to invite the whole world who couldn’t care less about you tying the knot. Having said that, holding conferences in resort towns are equally baffling. The paradox is unequivocal.

You see, everyone in the film and TV industry will tell you they are a busy bunch. Yet the biggest festivals are held at faraway places like Banff, Berlin and Cannes. To get there, you need to fly to the main city, change flights, take a shuttle, ride a boat – you get the picture.

Take Banff. To get there, I need to fly for 1.5 hours, wait 1 hour and then take a 2 hour shuttle before arriving at the hotel. Funny eh. I thought we are all busy. So why on earth are meeting in the mountains?

Anyway, the good people in marketing will tell you it is the crisp mountain air, the shiny morning sun, the melting snow yada yada yada that will help all of us funny TV people to mesh our brains and work out the finances to produce yet another TV show. We also hope to move mountains. Right. Even so, I thought everyone is busy? Can’t we have a conference in a city where the airport is 20 mins away?

I don’t know. I was in another conference in Washington DC and it was so jam-packed with meetings I only get to go out of the hotel for 5 freaking hours in that entire 4 days. I look at my schedule and I see a repeat. So what crisp air are we talking about here?
I’ll probably be inhaling smoke from the patio.

O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: And spy not on each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it…But fear Allah: For Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful. (49: 12)

This was posted by an American student in Atlanta, Faraz.He is into filmaking, but I am not sure if he authored this. It is one of the best 1-minuter I have seen. Very aesthetic, but very powerful in delivering the message.

You can check him out here.

Anyone who has been to Hollywood will tell you it is over-rated. It is nothing like the Desperate Housewives set you crave to see, the Beverly Hills 90210 streets you desire or the action-packed streets of 24 where cars get blown up every hour while Jack Bauer jumps from helicopter to cars, like a kid playing hopscotch. Hollywood, is like any other North American cities. Its people are just like you, me and Dupree. Druggies, rich families, artists, wannabes, homeless, illegal immigrants, professionals…everyone makes Hollywood home.

But Hollywood is also a celluloid factory. It churns ideal images of the perfect life, the perfect look within their perfect shows. Even if it is a tragedy, the show it produces has a closure, very unlike life where we have to wait. After all, a story has to close within the hour, the episode or the series. It has to have a story arc, a conflict, a resolution, at least 2 cliffhangers before commercials, and a sub-plot to keep the main story compelling. It is very unreal, it burns hundreds of brain cells in finance negotiations, hours of scripting and filming, tonnes of caffeine, nicotine to sustain the long hours of postproduction and yes – that’s not inclusive of the campaign pre-release.

I have a theory about blogs. It is – the new digital Hollywood. A few years ago (or was it last year?) a gf shared with me that she had coyly asked a blogger (who is well known in the c to write very sunny, my life is perfect stories in her blog) why she writes the way she does. Her answer was simple – “Because I want people to think my life is perfect!”. I can be up in arms in a second with that kind of shallow response, but I respect the girl for her honesty.

My SIL has made it very clear to me why she does not blog (but she lurks! Ahah! 😉 , and that’s because she does not like the idea of an open diary. I agree with her. A diary to me is about heart-to-pen (excuse the pen, you can also read it as ‘hard’ to pen). I don’t like the idea of writing your ENTIRE life for everyone to read, but I don’t like sunny-side up types of writing either. Writers who are like that make me question more – like, hmmm...I wonder what your life is REALLY like. Are you hiding something?

So the blogsphere to me is a digital Hollywood because it can create the celluloid ideal. (Technically that word ‘celluloid’ cannot be used here lah). People read, get excited over ‘perfection’ written by thousands of writers and then fantasise. Isn’t that what Hollywood does to us? Hands up those who hate watching a BBC documentary because it is all grim facts sans the music. See.

Having said that, there are tonnes of money in digital Hollywood. Which is why I cannot wait to hear what the pundits say in this conference.

I am on the hunt again.

This time, I think age equates to experimental and what-the-heck attitude (read: more confusion!) and so I am about to embark in one of my most never-thought-of decorating theme I have ever done. Ever.

Now that I have done a Mexican theme with my Tampines flat and Japanese Zen for the KL studio apt, I was pretty bewildered on picking up a theme for our new suite in Vancouver. This suite is not big (but so isn’t the KL studio! ) – but it is very close to where we work, near the beach and more importantly – near downtown where our addiction to book stores and good films will be satiated. I can also afford to have late-night brainstorm sessions with writers and directors at Calhouns.

I was tempted to pick a very Western warm, mountain-cabin theme or a very Asian wood-inspired look. But alas, true to every single time I am on a decorating hunt – I choose to do the crazy and the risky. Sigh.

I wanted to honour DH with his supergeek tag, and my own love for colours. I don’t seem to be able to shake off my love for bold coloured walls ( Tampines flat had Ashley Blue and Sunshine Yellow walls, along with a Turqoise TV room with Dark British Green ceilings, and Green carpet). The one time I tried to move away from colours was when I was doing the KL studio, and because it is Zen-ny, the theme has to be in natural wood colours. Arghh! What pain I had to endure! I was so tempted to splash one wall fire-engine red – they do have red on the Japanese flag, kan? Cannot eh?

Anyway, back to DH. So we went furniture shopping yesterday and was soon bored with the same looking furniture store after store. Until…DH spotted this super retro sofa that flips back and forth, and mind you, in fire-engine red! I so love the colour, and he so love the Jetson’s look of the sofa. The price was reasonable too. And so we bought the red piece, and that’s about decide it for us on what the look of the lounge area will be.

As if the stars were aligning itself, we went to another store and saw a most gadgety looking coffee glass table. It swivels and expands to double it size – and I swear to you it can fit perfectly on the set of Stargate Atlantis. Its pricey for a glass coffee table, but I saw DH’s eyes sparkle, and caught myself salivating too. Gosh, that thing is soo beautiful. Along with a metal floor lamp that arcs 3 metres across a room, we are so sold into the whole Jetson’s futuristic look. And we bought those too.

So now, I am caught with my pants down on how to manage the space-age items with good, homely sense. I spent a good part of last night researching, imagining and watching HGTV. I finally came up with the combination theme of Jetson-French Venetian marriage and oh it is so dangerous to do I will pee in my pants. Seriously. The only thing this Jetson-French V theme will have in common are mirrors.
If I screw this, our suite will the be the next set of the HGTV show How Not To Decorate.

Let’s see where this will go. And I promise, I will post pictures if it is ever done. I should listen to Mak with her now universal advice – “Jangan buat lagi, Uja. Bahaya.”

I don’t know the answer. Truly.

All I know is that I cry EVERYTIME the 18,000 fans at GM Place sang the Canadian anthem, I shout (almost) bad accented Malay insults to the attackers when they could not shoot the puck straight into the net (never mind the fact that they do NOT understand Malay, obviously) and I get so very moody when the Vancouver Canucks lose.

When the crowd boo the Canuck’s goalie, Roberto Luongo – I get all mother-henny. “Dont you boo my Luongo Duongo!!” – I will scream at the TV.

Sigh. I don’t even remember being THIS emotional during past break-ups.

I just told DH if we have a son (or another cat), I want to name him Hanafi Naslund Abdullah, after Markus Naslund, Canuck’s centre. Bad sign there.

But Hanafi Naslund sounds better than Hanafi Luongo, no?

I did the unthinkable. I knew I shouldn’t have, but the little girl in me said I have to.
I did it, and now I have to bear the consequences.

Mak has given a blanket ban on anything snowmobile for me, and DH. She said it nicely of course, something like: “Dah jangan naik-naik lagi benda tu…bahaya. Jangan berani sangat…subhanallah…selamat tak ada apa-apa. Jangan berani sangat…subhanallah…“
Notice the repeat – “Jangan berani sangat” (don’t be too brave) and the many praises to God.

I have heard this statement from Mak before. She says that to me everytime I do something reckless, or reckless in her eyes – whichever takes precedence. Lucky for me, Mak is a pretty adventurous person herself. If she had her way, I KNOW she wants to scuba-dive but alas – that didn’t quite happen. She is content with just swimming at the beach complete with a piece of kain batik, oversized T-Shirt and a serkop kait as her swim couture. But her adventurous side has limits, and some things I do (or did) – she does not understand.

I am a daughter with a conscience. I have no one to blame but my darling Mak for this. She raised me to be one. Everytime I have a new adventure, I will tell her – excitedly – drama and all. I always feel I have to let her into these new things I experience. I have told her among other things, very specific details of what goes on in an agogo show in Thailand. Or Tiger Shows in Bangkok – however you know it. Yes, very technical details of how that goldfish came out of the performer’s nunu.

My Mak, if you don’t already know – is an ustazah by profession. She embraces life with a passion, never judgemental and always curious. I know where I get my traits from.

So when I did my usual biweekly call to her yesterday – I was in a dilemma if I should censor the snowmobile ride up the mountain at the Rockies, 10,000 feet high. I told her about the dog-sledding, which she responded passionately. She loves animals – so any adventures involving animals is a big winner with Mak. I was trying hard to think HOW do I describe ‘dog-sledding’ to a 69 year old, when there is no such Malay equivalent term for it. So I said something like: “Mak tau Uja naik beca atas snow – lepas tu anjing tarik,” I started. Nice and slow, I thought. I need to give her a visual idea of ‘dog-sledding’, so beca (trishaw) and anjing (dogs) are good keywords.

“Mak tau! Mak tau! Mak pernah nampak kat TV! Eh bestnyaaa….kau naik tu? Eh bestnyaa…..”.
Yes, thats my mum for you. Animals? Sure winner.

When my 10-minute elevator pitch on how fun dog-sledding ended, I had exactly half a second to decide if I should move on to snowmobiles, before the topic of ‘dah ada baby ke belum’ crops up. So I told her. The truth. The full story. Complete with sidebars on how cars looked like ants when you are that high up a mountain, perched on a snowmobile, with plunging cliffs barely half an arm’s length away.

She was amazed, but she was mad. She wanted to ask more, but she also wanted to remind me to not dabble with one’s precarious life. Her questions were confusing, and I know I am heading towards the Blanket-Ban-Land.

And slowly, slowly …the words came out. She said it to me in her usual, soft-spoken ways, laden with power because it is usually those that will stick to me for years. Once Mak ‘advised’ don’t do it, I usually don’t – because defying Mak’s advice on a new adventure holds a lot of weight.

I told DH this morning about it. He, being the usual male species that he is – simply said, “so next time you want to ride the snowmobile, tell her you are riding on flat terrains”. Which is what I should be doing anyway. And not think I am a superwoman who can do stunts on a snowfilled Canadian mountainride, when I can barely run wihout panting around a small Tampines park.