age of destruction

They came in a yellow pick-up truck. Four men, three were youngish and their leader was probably in his forties with longish hair. They brought with them familiar tools: a total station, parangs and a map. The head was constantly yelling at his young charge to move the station a little further this way or that way or to cut some foliage that obstructed his view.

Boy: Akak boleh potong ka ini pokok?
Me (Akak?): Pesal apa? Ini pokok sudah lama tau, you tak boleh potong, kalau nak potong kena bayar.
Boy: Sikit saja, susah mau nampak la nak ukur...
Me: Tak boleh. Ini pokok dalam saya punya tanah la...
Boy: Tak tau lagi..belum ukur.
Me: Kita sudah ukur la...
Boy: Tapi kena ukur 200 meter.
Me: You ukur dari belakang sana sampai sini, kemudian you ukur dari sini sampai depan sana la.
Boy: OK, nanti saya bincang sama boss.

I suspect the boss said CUT because when I came back later I found cut several slashed twigs on the ground outside our fence. The tree will no doubt grow back but the fiasco signaled a beginning of a much bigger destruction: soon the entire belukar (see previous blog entry) that I grew up with will be destroyed to make way for houses. My sister told me about this when I went inside the house to tell her about the stuck-inside-fence tree. My heart just sank.

So many questions needing answers:
1. Why sell an 18-acre multiple ownership Malay reserved land to a couple of non-Malays to build as many as 100 houses?
2. Where would the animals go?

tea drinking commoners

As far as I know everyone in the family loves a cup of tea - with or without milk, but probably only one of us likes it unsweetened. Mother taught us how to drink tea mixed with condensed milk or with sugar since we were very young. In the family tea is always black not green or any other colour!

Minum tea is at around 5pm in the household unless mother is ill or out. In which case we go to Kedai mamak to have teh tarik!

I grew up with a forest!

what do you normally see and hear when you wake up?..

Do you see this?


Or this?

For at least 5 years of my life I would wake up in the morning to the sounds of the forest because my bed was only a few meters away from it. It's not like the forest was always outside my bedroom window because about 30 years ago it was actually a watermelon farm. For whatever reason, the farm was abandoned and the forest came back (because it was forest before the farm). So I can claim that I grew up with a forest! (that sounds so dramatic).

Since the house is very close to the forest, some of the forest denizens do come to visit, some like the long-tailed macaques do so more regularly than others like this scarab beetle.

Roses are smelly - where are they from?

Several weekends ago I went back to visit the family in kampung. It was already near maghrib time when mother and me decided to smell the roses just outside the living room downstairs. I asked mother about roses-sniffing-men.

Mother said,
Apo salah eii.... asalkan bungo tu haghum
Kalau bungo busuk, sapo pun tak hingin nak cium...

I ventured,
Tapi omak ponah nampak oghang lolaki cium rose?

Mother replied,
Ontah lah...itu tak ponah topikir dek sei nak poghati...

Mother is so complicated (read: infuriating) sometimes.

peasantry

Old houses and their compounds are good grounds for hunting ghosts! I have limited memories of this old house that I have renovated (and am still renovating) so I have few ghosts to capture but the house and the land on which it is standing has given me so much to learn from the past. For example, just two weeks ago while taking a student around the house I suddenly saw a small round object on the ground. Instinctively I knew it was an old coin – but my student said it was an old mirror. Of course the teacher was right. The reason why it was easy for me to know what it was is because that wasn’t the first time I’d found an old coin half-buried or fully exposed on the ground. Before this I’d found 2-3 old coins at the same house. Based on a better “specimen” this coin was from the Straits Settlement “period” and it’s made of copper and had a value 1 cent.

I’m sure one cent then was a lot so my forebears must have really been careless with their money to lose it like that. Maybe they had holes in their pockets? Poor peasants with holey pockets!!!

architected space

I asked an architect what architects do and she said, "sculpting space".

I think my house is changing space and time.

In Memoriam

Kak Mon (2007-2009)

cats have a way to get really close to us. Just last night when I was out exercising at the Taman in front of the house, a teenage cat just simply joined me and then followed me back until to the front gate. At home in kampung, Kak Mon had until earlier today, been keeping father company. Her presence will be sorely missed by him.

My first pet-cat was Bob. We had him a long time ago but he left me a scar, literally, and it's still visible on the back of my right hand. Our family never keeps a dog because mother is religiously allergic to them. But some day when I have to manage a large farm/ homegarden I may need to enlist the help of a rotweiler. god willing.