Still Thinking…

I am one of those lucky ones who have all the windows in the house facing a mosque. It is the atypical, contemporary Singaporean mosque – built from the thousands of contributions from the half a million Muslims or so here, along with 67 others around the island-republic.Its design is modern – with clean and straight lines contouring the edges and large, flat blue slabs plastering its facade. There is nothing curvy about Darul Ghufran, very unlike the usual Moorish architecture that often draw gasps of oohs and aahs from observers. There is nothing historical about its design too, just a functional piece of work designed by an architect salaried by the Housing Development Board, and built for 4,000 Muslims residing in good ol’ Tampines. Very Singapore, if you ask me.

There was something about it today that made me almost cry, however. I rushed home early from Oak 3 just so that I will not miss the Eid takbir with my mother, which I painfully missed during Hari Raya Puasa eve. I was fussing about in the kitchen when the first melodious sound of the Takbir came cascading out of the mosque’s speaker system at maghrib, and I was stumped.

It was a strange feeling. I have heard this same Takbir before, from the same mosque every Raya eve. On some years, I was also in the congregation takbir-ing together with the jemaah. Yet, this year the takbir seems louder,and poignant. I looked hard at the mosque’s blue minaret resting against a reddish sky, and watched the clouds slowly pass above the looming tower as the Takbir resonates God’s beauty. It was so magical. It was, as they say – a moment.

In ancient Sanskrit philosophy, reality is a string of moments sewn together. I felt that I was trapped in time when the moment of awe struck me earlier, and therefore, it did not feel like reality. It felt surreal, and I am not very sure why but I sure felt lucky.

The flat design of Darul Ghufran beat the day I witnessed the majestic dome of the Mahram Al Reza in Iran, the too-huge Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the hundreds of staircases of Sagrada Familia, the famed Catholic church built by Gaudi in Spain, the rustic Jumeira Mosque in Dubai, the very pink and pretty Masjid Putra in Putrajaya, and many others I do not instantly recall in my days of travel. I am always very fixated with how man build tall structures, as if to reach out to God – when building places of worship. This time, Darul Ghufran – in its flat, unartistic, blue sort of way – hustled history and heritage and showed that all it takes is a willowy and poignant call of the Takbir, to win hearts over. Beauty, is in the sacrifice of the material and design, and indeed deserves a moment all of its own.

Eid Mubarak to all. May you have found your moment too.

W passed me two of his band’s discography CDs earlier at the office. The usual Friday rendesvous with cousins in town today resulted in me having platefuls of Ayam Penyet and tonnes of bad jokes spinning in my head, so the first thing I did when I reached home was to play the CDs – LOUD, mind you, in my room.

The moment I heard the first riffs and W’s basslines, I was immediately transported to a realm so familiar yet so distanced at the same time. Sang Froid is incredibly tight-sounding, and I must say that for a non-heavy fan – I became an instant one.

Right after the last song, I caught myself dragging a big box of CDs from under my bed just so that I can find CDs of my own former band recordings, many eons ago. Those jamming days were the kills! F & C, the first band I sang with – was actually a group of tired journos, me included – not of the profession, but the sometimes stupid demands of the newspaper editors we worked for. We used to jam on the 7th floor of Times House, in the same room where journalists were trained to report world affairs succinctly. For SSM (our lead guitarist) and RLB (our bassist), it was a case of getting the chords right, and nothing beats those better, not even a former DPM being accused of sodomy.

The Boon’s studio at Macpherson was our playground on weekends. Tucked in a small street in an old rundown area, Boon’s does not actually cater to drivers. I remember always, always fighting for parking space with the rest of them whenever we jam. Sometimes, when I am lucky – the guy I used to go out with then would send me there -but not until he gave a long face as a mark of disapproval that I jam at all. Ah.. sigh. One of those holier-than-thou cases, if you ask me. Glad I didnt marry him!

Our first public gig was at No.18 at Mohammad Sultan Road. That fateful night, CB, our other guitarist chose to wear a huge colourful wig. He ended up blocking the drummer with his head and in another gig, where I was absent, he could not even hear himself cos the wig was an Amazon. The night we played at No.18 we had the club packed with …well…almost all the journos from the entire ST newsroom. I am pretty sure strangers who walked into that gig must have thought we were one bigtime band with the amount of media personnel there. But alas, my offkeys would have been too much of a tell-tale that we were not.

After almost a year of jamming, we decided to record. We pooled our blood money from reporting and spent 3 days on a weekend at Lions Studio. I remembered sweet ol’ Tian who was mixing for us, and MS (our drummer)crazy antics. I shudder thinking of the tense moments between RLB and SSM abt the tracks, and me wearing a hat instead of the hijab while in the studio. Alas….the exuberance of youth.

I thank God for those sessions. Notes From a Lost Weekend was the name of the album. Call it wild, but they were defining moments of creativity, if you want to call it that. I am sure W, and many others who ever had a band would agree.

Rock on. Music lives.

How the mind escapes.

Last week, a riveting scene of a man standing alone on a beach in Thailand, with an impending huge wave engulfing him froze me. I sat there silently, stumped and numbed all the same time, on the blue seat in my TV room as the BBC docu unfolded scenes after scenes of real-life video footages recorded by the tsunami survivors. The reality of me being there only 2 days before the disaster, right in the heart of Patong last year, was something I never wanted to express in writing. It was ironic, that only DH can write about it in this blog and I could not bring myself to pen it down. The scenes of men and women running for their lives in Thailand brought waves of emotion, but I did not want to identify them. The emotions were just as quickly engulfed by other more pressing worries, like work and how the scripts and filming of JALAN are turning out.My mind did it again…it escapes.

Just yesterday, I caught myself feeling a very sharp pang of nervousness when someone mentioned about the possibility of SIngapore being hit by an earthquake in Sumatra. This prediction was by the same guy in Thailand who predicted last year’s tsunami, whom everyone ignored then. I have read about this before, and at that time I remembered thinking – apart from this prediction, I have 24 books to see to publication. Singapore and the tsunami can wait. My family will be in Malaysia and I will be in Vancouver by then. We will be safe. That was my mind escaping again then. But somehow, the mention yesterday was a bit more biting,if not reflective.

Today, I flipped through the newspapers and read a review piece on the tsunami documentaries that will be flooding the tv screens over this next few days. One of them, was about how a group of scientists is racing against time to see if the Cascadia Fault will reap apart again and cause a ruckus it did in the 1700, when the first recorded tsunami destroyed Japan. The scientists are fervent that North America will be hit by a tsunami soon, killing half a million. Vancouver may be one of the cities possibly drowned by tidal waters. So where do I go now? And to where, does my mind escape to?

God has a way to press the point that our minds have limited capacities. He has taught mine.

Six million dollars.

That was the amount a certain British company was paid for making a 3 hour documentary on the history of Singapore. I, on the other hand, am making an 8 hour series on various aspects of Singapore history (and this is tougher mind you, since we are not going chrono with the stories) with slightly more than 2.5 percent of that. Do your math.

This entire production has been an eye-opener for many involved. It showed many with industrial experience what demands documentaries make and a reaffirmation in others of the dearth of talent in Singapore. A quick word with colleagues only ascertains the suspicion – that generally there is a lack of story crafting and depth in thought-process when sewing pieces together.

So will $6 million dollars give the room and capacity to any producers to churn the best out of the best? Did that $6 million documentary knock the hell out of other Singapore history docus with that big a budget?

I saw an hour of the docu and I was already irritated with the repeat archived stills, too many topshots of Shenton Way, various angles of PSA-corporate video materials (read: containers being lifted left, right and centre) and a rather, chubby and flabby Raffles in the reenactments.The VO script was content-packed, but only for a cursory chrono view of what happened from the year Raffles landed. They had good interviews with Tim Barnard, Mary Turnbull and Wang Gungwu but it was Lim Chong Yah who stole the show with his very Singaporean accent. Who else would be most interested in the history of Singapore if it is not for the Singaporeans. Everyone else would have an agenda.

Documentaries are point of views. Only this time, it is one that chips away at six million dollars. I reserve my most critical comments for my own learning journeys in producing the best.

Watch ‘JALAN’. It is on 15 January now.

My eyes were fixed on the speedometer. 100km/h…110km/h…damn Apek, slow down! The dial slowly moved up and touched the 125km/h mark, my heart was pounding, and I swear to you I thought I saw the Apek smiling as if he was so happy to terrorise me. The speed reached 130km/h, and as he signalled to filter (yes, at that speed!), I wanted to shove my middle finger to his face and declare, “I am a tudunged woman, HEAR ME ROAR! Lu ingat gua tarak family ah Apek?!! Lu mau mati lu mati sorang la!”.

That was me a few hours ago. That was also me every other day for the past 2 years whenever I am in a taxi in Singapore. I am rather confused at this change in speed-tolerance. Only a few years ago I was so addicted to speed it was not funny. I get a high driving long distances at high speeds, the fastest, if I can recall – at 175km/h. I can do the exact filtering-at-130km/h that the Apek attempted and scared the shit out of me earlier, only much faster! I can do all that while yapping on the phone (with headset on) deciding where to eat and have coffee. Worst, at one time, driving to work meant reading the news from my PDA at traffic lights and flipping through the CD bank to look for CDs while the car was revving on the highway.
So that explains my fixation with Formula One then, and how I can almost see myself taking over Alex Yoong whenever his pokak Minardi stalled on Lap 3. “Pigidah! Muka aje hensem, kalau race-day mesti keter stall!”. That would be my dialoque to him, I fantasised. But of course, this would be before my eyes caught his and I melted like a candle under that really glazy, super cute stare. Ok, I digress.

I dont know when I became more paranoid about speed like how I am today. Whenever I am in a car now, even when DH is driving, I say a silent prayer. My eyes will almost ALWAYS glance at the speedometer and I check the blindspot more times than the driver!

In some strange fashion, I only trust the driving of 2 close friends at top speeds, while I am at the passenger seat. Din and Redha – both in their late thirties now,both parents to lovely 6 kids in total, both still F1 fanatics, and both still thinking they are Schumacher and Jordan reincarnates. I remembered sitting coyly in the passenger seat with Din driving at 180km/h and I chatted away with the other friends in the car many years ago, how cosy. Fast forward to today, I will probably be asking everyone in the car if they want hot Milos with cookies…and then maybe snore to sleep while Din do his thang… That is how much I trust his driving.

I wonder if those who were in my car back then in my speeding days trust me the same. I wonder if I made these people stare hard at the speedometer the way I do now. I wonder if I was a Din to them.

Hmm. Maybe I should do a test drive. Anybody? Helmets provided, promise!

So finally a post on what have been occupying my days and nights these past weeks.

There was an interesting discussion today at Starbucks – possibly a result of my 6 hours of brainstorming and discussing with directors and Y’s 8 hours of filming in the sun. It was a battle between differing philosophies between what makes a good documentary, hey wait, what makes good TV (since we are not shooting on film that takes a whole lot of picture quality from the equation. Digital enthusiasts – pls dont throw eggs here. You will only end up smearing your screens, kan? 😉

Y, who is playing host on the new documentary series my team and I are working on, is also writing for 2 of the episodes. His first script was reviewed today, and in the course of giving him my feedback, I understood what his approach was which, I must say, he took great pains to explain. He wanted to make a documentary that provokes the audience to question, BUT with no closure to the issue addressed. I, on the other hand, favours one with a partial closure. Basically he wants to tease all the way while I just want to tickle.

So there goes the mayhem.It was hilarious at some point, and I was lucky that SO was not there or it would be stretched to at least an hour more. Throw in ZB and it will be the whole night.

Some of the scenes and transitions cut were so well done I was so happy I hired the creators involved. Yet there were some that have been rather dissapointing but still, I am hoping for the best will come through after hours of discussions, and am sure, lots of sweat and frustrations on their part too. It is this creative weave of energies that excites me in production .

Newspaper journalism, magazine editorship, book publishing and tv all have something in common. It is about crafting a story – and therefore, not about me. It is about the readers and the viewers. It is never about what I dont know, but it is about what THEY want to know. Thats the mark between good journalism, good documentaries and bad, self-indulging ones.

The making of this series is not going to be an easy one. We are at the mercy of many factors (including the most uncontrollable – the weather!) and hard, hard work on making this one solid docu series. Lots of prayers help, and I am constantly reminding myself to doa for God’s blessings too.

Let’s see where JALAN’s journey is. Stay tuned.Mark Jan 27 on your calendar.

I have grown stronger.

As I typed away on the keyboard in the middle of the night, DH is far up in the skies crossing the Pacific Ocean to be back home in Vancouver within 10 hours or so.I didn’t cry much today at the airport – just very very teary but the bigger deal was, I was okay with having other people sending him off at the airport too.

You see, farewells are sticky situations for me. Whenever DH leaves for CA, I will request that no one appears at the airport because I dont really know how to handle myself being emotional in front of others. So the walk from the last hug and kiss at the gate is always, always, a painful and lonely one. I remember dashing out of the terminal every time, only to get into the car and let my tears flow endlessly in my own privacy.

This time, I could sense myself becoming stronger in my handling my own emotions as I get more used to the farewells. Also, it is a shorter separation since I will be in CA in the next 2 months or so, right after I wrap up the ‘Jalan’ series I am currently working on.

So, I had my cousins over, his grandma, his uncle and auntie all trooping down at the airport to send him off. The banter and chats helped to ease off the pain. Also, mum’s fall yesterday which had us staking out at the A & E till 5 am while waiting for the doc to stitch her cuts on her head distracted me. I had two worries – mum’s injuries and his departure. Both subjects are my deep love.

I thank God for managing well. Without Him, I dont really know how I can handle such situations.The timing of mum’s fall and DH’s departure was not the best – but that’s exactly what it is, isnt it? A test.

God knows better. And He always have a ray of sunshine tucked somewhere beneath the dark clouds. And me? Always can’t wait to have a peep at it.

Why do people get away with murder all the time when they do shoddy work? Because the humans are gullible that’s why. And these people are smart to outplay that.

In the course of the past few weeks I witnessed quite a fair bit of this game being played. Some mind you, were not intentional. The charmer did not even know he was charming the ass out of his clients and over-promise everything – resulting in quite a fair bit of non-delivery.

A recent community exhibition I helped coordinate nearly made me fell off my bed on event-eve. The exhibition is a big hoo-hah on the national metre, was graced by no less than high-profile politicians, had every community leader scrambling for their best batik shirt to wear and cost enough for me to pay off my Riana Green studio apt mortgage, and another. It was a BIIIIIGGGGG event. Yet, at 9.30pm the night before the doors were to open for visitors – I and my teammates discovered major screw-ups.

Let me recall. And I am being kind here cos I want that company to succeed.
1) A panel explaining the meaning of the event’s logo was coloured light orange, with white stencil letters. What do you get? A wash out.
2) Archways were painted light apple green, with, again, white letters. What do you get? Another wash out.
3) Sponsor’s names were printed INCLUDING THE SPECS (read: font size dimensions, etc) beside it. And this mind you, was on stage!
4) They wanted to use white funeral chairs for all the 240 seats in front of the stage, including those for the VIPs – I nearly fainted.

At midnight, I did the unthinkable. I asked them to change the mistakes done. The guy begged and so did I. We were both begging. I asked for him to change and he asked that I don’t. It is too late, he says. “No printer of mine will reprint those panels at this ungodly hour.”. My weapon? “XXX, pls. You do this one right, everyone will remeber the good parts. No one has to know what mistakes you made the night before.” And so there we were sitting on the edge of the stage, looking quite dejected, exhausted and trying to keep a sense of humour, my husband in front of us observing how his wife handle the pressure cooker – and XXX made his calls. H ebegged and he pleaded his suppliers. I could not bear to be near him and walked away. The next morning, all was fixed.

That’s what happened when you overcommit and over promise. Our expectations of his performance, given the quality of his presentations were very high – and his charms did not help but elevate that further. How did it get that way?

I learnt such an important lesson during that hullabulloo.

Don’t nod when clients talk. He did a lot of that.

And so this Raya came and went. But it was so special and so very busy. I dont even know what I ate, who I salam-ed and whose house I haven’t visited or did visit!

It was not a case of over-celebrating. It was really a case of bad-timing. All my projects reached a climax on Raya week and the week after, starting with Ra Ra Bazar live show on Raya eve. Then it was the deadline for the museum’s first research draft, closing HRA survey project, and then just when I was about to breathe – the Jalan project landed on me. I can never forget the night Zai and Yen called me downstairs to have a meeting at the void-deck on a Friday night to propose the deal – thats the avant-garde executive producers for you. Muruku in hand.

My husband, my dear dear sweet husband is my pillar of strength. This is his first Raya here in SG after migrating to Canada, and it was awesome. It was a good thing that me and Manja, my cousin planned our flower shopping 2 days before Raya. We did our traditional ‘curi daun dari kubur Cina’ too – from where else but Onraet Road. Ajun was amazed, but hey – Raya is abt tradition, no? Everyone knows about the curi daun custom me and another cousin, Azman, started sometime back. It is a case of kelakar-seram every year. PArk the car by the cemetery, quickly take out your parang and slash the beautiful dauns away, and quickly drive off. Oh yeah, baca ayat Kursi while you are at it.I shld really stop this silly routine 😉

My poor mum had a malam raya all on her own since I was on site in Geylang for the filming. I missed going to the mosque with her to takbir, as I had promised – and I remembered feeling so sad when the takbir bergema while I was with the rest of the crew in the OB van. I secretly told myself – “zuzan, never again. Never again should you work on Raya eve.” It just does not make sense to me but it was a commitment I made and I had to stick it out.

Raya day itself was joyful. We managed to do the octopus thing visiting both my side and Ajun’s side of the family with smooth coordination – thanks to the rented Subaru! The last house was Uncle Yem’s house around 11pm – where he cleverly served the BR clan with deep fried steak – what a nice wash for the already currified tummy!

The climax was of course kampong. It was hilarious, to say the least. Firstly, I made with a deal with Ajun that I will drive there,and he will drive back (clever right? cos I know it will be tiring to drive after a BBQ!;) I kept on gloating that the drive to Melaka is chicken feed since I do it all the time, and it was. Until I got lost. Sigh.

When we found my Busu’s house my other cousins were hard at work on the BBQ. I was greeted by a very icy look from my sister – the bossy one (surprise – I am NOT the bossy one in the family, you guys have not met my sister, the wanna CEO!). She hated the fact that i arrived late.

30 chickens, 26 kg of fish, 10 kg of rice and 1 big kambing were sacrificed to feed our family. The 200 or so chocolates from Canada that Ajun brought were also snapped up within seconds by the 40 kids we have in the 4th generation of my family – and the firecrackers did not stop exploding even though it was 5 pm in the day! Budak-budak bandar kalau dah pergi kampong ini jadinya – JAKUN. Haha. It took 30 full minutes just to gather everyone in front of Busu’s house for a family portrait – satu masuk, satu lari, semua masuk, satu nak pergi toilet, semua dah line-up, ada yang main bola. You get the picture.A big family isnt easy to manage.
And yes, my Busu BOUGHT the kambing we BBQ-ed since her missing ones never came back. Dah berhari-raya kat rumah lain lah tu kambing-kambing tu.The best part of all this are the smiles on the elder’s face. I just love that.

It is all this that I will miss. But I will try to return every year for all the chaos that make any Raya a celebration indeed.

Tonight I depart for my native homeland to celebrate Eid’ul Fitr with my wife. My wife, – sometimes its easy to forget that I have one – we have been apart for so long. This is the first time I am returning to Singapore for Hari Raya, ever since I left Singapore for my new home in the north, in what seems ages ago but in reality, it has been almost 17 years.

I have forgotten how Hari Raya is celebrated back there, but I can imagine nothing has changed. Lampu ‘lap lip’, new baju raya, new curtains, new everything — some things never change. Over here it is decidedly a small affair (for me anyways) — praying at the mosque in the morning, visiting my uncle and his family, and usually that’s it. My mom cooks lontong (delicious as always), with rendang, and other fixings. Usually the last night of Ramadhan we invite people over to recite the takbir, and have a mini-feast during the breaking of the fast. Undoubtedly the atmosphere is not the same as back in Singapore, because the Malay community is smaller, besides there is a multitude of other ethnicities here, each celebrating it the way they know how according to their tradition, with their various Eid delicacies.

Ramadhan here is not without its own politics. The mosque we most frequent, and the closest — Masjid Al-Hidayah — has always gone its own way in determining the first day to fast. They always follow the Saudi ruling, while the rest of the mosques (I believe) follow ISNA (Islamic Society of North America). So, this led me to fast one day before the rest of my family – which will mean possibly that I will celebrate Eid one day before my family. I was following ISNA, while unbeknownst to me my family was following the other way. But in it there was a blessing – it didn’t matter anyway because I will be in Singapore and I will follow Eid there (which has a fixed date). And I don’t even have to make-up any days (even though in travelling to Singapore, technically I lose a day from not fasting). Long story!

Coming from a quiet part of Canada I wonder how I will take the hustle and bustle of Singapore during Raya time. I’m sure I will be exhilirated and frustrated at the same time! The night before Raya in Geylang at my wife’s Ra Ra Bazaar TV shoot will be an interesting experience. At least at the end of the day I can retreat to the full-blast of my wife’s air-conditioned room and her big fan…

I can’t wait to experience a bit of kampong life at my wife’s Busu’s house in Malacca. It’s been over two decades since I lived in a kampong – at my grand-aunt’s place in Jalan Ampas. I loved the animals there – chickens, cats, and there was even a monkey once! What I didn’t look forward to were the snakes – sometimes I found snake eggs and baby snakes in old furniture stored underneath the stilts of her house (“bawah kolong”). But then all the kambings are gone at Busu’s house 🙁 🙁

My “Malayness” is literally a snapshot of what I left Singapore with in 1989 – me and my brother have memorized lines from P. Ramlee’s movies, and we enjoy them still. Are there no high-definition transfers of these films to DVD? But our fascination for P. Ramlee is considered ‘kental’ by our Singapore cousins (and my wife too! but I don’t care, hehe). “Ah jaga Cik Salmah jaga… ah… jaga… ah apasal tak jaga kan dah jatuh tu…” “Ini cat ke kapur? Bedak, tuan!” Both of us still reminisce about the rock bands we loved during that time – Search, Wings, Headwind… with Wings being our favourite. Whatever Malay culture that we had resided in those tapes (and VCDs). It is never easy having one identity being usurped by a newer one (out of necessity), but such is the life of a (young) immigrant.

Last year I had to console myself with celebrating Hari Raya without my wife – it broke my heart. I sang to her “Dari Jauh Ku Pohon Maaf” during my phone call that pagi Raya, which I found had the appropriate lyrics to explain our situation (with some of my edits):

“Dalam dingin subuh hatiku terusik
Kenang nasib diri di rantauan
Bergema takbir raya menitis air mata
Terbayang suasana permai desa

Rindu hati ini inginku kembali
Pada istriku yang mengembara
Tetapi aku harus mencari rezeki
Membela nasib kita bersama

Hanya ku sampaikan doa dan kiriman tulus ikhlas
Dari jauh kupohonkan ampun maaf
Jangan sedih pagi ini tak dapat kita bersama
Meraikan aidil fitri yang mulia”

I am glad that we will not have to be in that situation again. Insya’allah, we shall have our first Eid under one roof, and many more together as we grow old in the years to come.