Archive for

June, 2010

...

June 30, 2010 3:20 pm

That Wish

5 comments
by Idlan    in Featuring,Travels, Travails,Up Close (but not quite personal)

I rang my mom yesterday – I do this every day now – and I spoke to her about my upcoming trip to Cape Town. As per normal, in the days leading up to any major trip that I take, I fail to feel excited; instead there is an unexplainable desire to cancel everything and just stay home. This time it is the same. Things change once you land at the airport, experience dictates.

I write a lot about my dad but not my mom. Perhaps because stories come from conflict and the former, of whom I am a carbon copy, gives me a lot more reason to fret about. My mom, on the other hand, has always been the steady rock that mediated our disputes and translated our grunts to the other. I know for a fact that she always regretted sending me off to boarding school at such an early age, because it effectively meant that she ‘lost’ me before my 13th birthday. I can understand that – had I not gone away I would very much be a different person, I think. Or maybe not. Life has a funny way of working things out.

However much she regretted it, though, she told me she would rather I be far from her but happy, rather than near her but miserable. I suppose I took this a tad too literally and moved abroad, but she knows how happy I am and she also knows how miserable I was during those last few Muadzam months.

Looking over Granada

Living abroad has also allowed me another freedom I didn’t exercise when I lived in Malaysia: that to travel. Despite living in the UK in the 1980′s and coming to England again in 2000, I had never set foot in any other country until 2007. It was the year I turned 30, and I was due to go to southern Sweden for a conference. I would like to say that since then, things have changed but they haven’t. I have only ever been to Spain and France. South Africa is a completely different kettle of fish.

I told my mom about my earliest memory of watching football: Spain ’82 on a black and white TV in our old house in Sg. Kantan, Kajang. The next World Cup, I watched in England, and Maradona made be bleed. Don’t you find it blasphemous to call it the ‘Hand of God’ when it’s cheating.. it’s like saying God condones cheating haha. It should’ve been the bleedin’ hand of satan.

I never thought I’d ever go to another country for the sole purpose of watching football, but here I am, on the cusp of departure (give or take 28 hours). It’s been a lifelong love affair, me and football. I hope this trip takes our relationship to a new level.

If airplanes were shooting stars and I could have that wish right now, it’d be to be able to explore a new continent with child-like curiosity, innocence and wonder. Setiap kembara itu ziarah dalam mengenal Yang Mencipta. Aku harap aku pulang dengan keimanan yang lebih teguh setelah belajar akan kehebatan alam ciptaanNya.

tags: , ,
5 comments!
June 28, 2010 4:29 pm

What would I do without you?

8 comments
by Idlan    in Featuring,Up Close (but not quite personal)

I think I once said I hated my office on Mondays because it was so cold. Today I loved it because it was like stepping into a cooler, away from the scorching heat. Love and hate are never two sides of the same coin; they are one side. The other side is really indifference.

It’s been a weird weekend of sorts; with it being a month after things felt like they were crashing down too fast, I tried to claw my way out of the pits and I suppose it worked. If the light at the end of the tunnel was once just the oncoming train, now I think I am pretty certain they are rays of sunlight.

I think.

Or maybe it’s not, but things suck so much you gravitate to it anyway; not because you’re suicidal but because you think things can’t get any worse, life could never let that be the headlights of the Orient Express. At the last minute it may still well be, but I guess if you’ve got enough faith you can still pray that it will go slow enough for you to duck beneath it and lay flat on the tracks vertically so you don’t get run over.

SW19

On Friday I traipsed over to SW19 to queue up for Wimbledon tickets in the wee hours of the morning that was so warm and sticky, 5am felt like 8am. It was an interesting experience, one that no doubt I will make you read in the TMI column instead of here. I know I am sparse with details here and the rather subdued tone of this entry might dampen the whole thing, but the truth is, it was a pretty awesome experience. Heheh.

It was a nice, hot, sticky weekend – I spent Saturday taking friends shopping and Sunday watching England lose in the balmy heat that was more Londang than London. I found myself lost in Tottenham Court Road on Sunday morning, staring at a map with a bottle of water in my hand and a knapsack on my back. It reminded me of Barcelona in June 2007; the year I turned thirty and still believed greater things were ahead. I think they still are.

On this I tweeted, “Me. Bottle of water. Feckin awesome hot London weather. No agenda. Best I’ve felt in weeks. Feels like barcelona 2007 again” because I knew my two companions that day are both on Twitter; one picked it up and responded with a smiley.. the other is probably knee deep in elephant dung on safari. It wasn’t entirely true, though, because there was no agenda in 2007; but there was an agenda yesterday. I was looking for Chinatown because I had to buy belacan.

June’s a funny old month. I turn a year older a day after the summer solstice. It is often when the sunniest of days appear; and yet over the years I’ve learnt that sunshine mocks as much as it cheers. This was the first weekend I’ve really been able to enjoy the good weather. Of course, with a dash of heartbreak because it never really goes away but that’s okay; I think all else equal life is best lived with a dash of hope and a tinge of melancholy. It makes things real.

I said, over the first few weeks of June, that in a matter of ten days I felt like I’d aged five years; having turned 33 last Tuesday I stand by that. Which got me thinking about this poster I have on my office wall.

The cusp of greatness

That was the year I turned 28, and I got Anuar to print off this collage to mark that particular year: 2005. I think the plan was to do it every year thereonwards, but I never got round to documenting 2006, 2007, 2008 or 2009 in 64 pictures or less. But now I think there is rhyme behind the reason. That poster is up there because 28 is the best age to be. You’re past your quarter-life crisis (mine got me doing a PhD!) and things are shaping up. You are on the cusp of greatness. Whether you make it or not is up to you, whether you take things forward is your prerogative. But to be standing on that cusp is pretty magic. I miss 2005, being 28 and innocent of the sins I have since committed.

So if there are two things I can still be quite confident about, in the mess of everything, it’s this:

1) Nothing, but nothing, is ever random.
2) You should never, ever find out your mother is in the Intensive Care Unit via Facebook. Ever.

8 comments!
June 23, 2010 2:28 pm

Jitters

4 comments
by Idlan    in Featuring

I am writing this approximately three hours before kick off, when my World Cup team of choice, England, will determine where the team bus takes them to this weekend: Rustenburg, Blomfontein or the airport. A lot of the money is on the airport, it seems, after a shambles of a performance against Algeria last Friday.

If it is home they go, then yes, it will be an embarrassment of interesting proportions, especially given the amount of hype that preceded their stint in South Africa. But anyone familiar with Team England would already be all too used to this: as a footballing nation we are indeed a bag of hot air; even our much heralded Premiership thrives on the presence of foreign imports than local talent. But it’s okay, I love hot air anyway.

Ahead Only!

Ahead Only for England?

England fans, let’s face it: we have a shite team. Our goalkeepers are useless, our defence crumbly. We have a decent midfield and misfiring strikers (you can diss Rooney all you want but even Messi’s not broken his duck..) but we all know it’s a team that makes winners, not individual players. But it’s okay that we have a shite team. What’s important is we support them anyway.

But the devastation felt by English fans will probably not be much relative to that felt by fans of the France team. Unlike the England team, the France team are actually quite good. They’ve actually won stuff, and in recent years too. Their fall from grace is much more spectacular given that they were finalists in this tournament four years ago, compared to England who were lucky quarter-finalists then, and no shows at Euro 2008.

The seeds of disintegration with the France side should have been apparent at their lacklustre showing in Euro2008. A first round exit without a win – an exact mirror of their dismal showing in South Africa – two years ago in Switzerland would have often resulted in a culling at the top, but ‘enigmatic’ coach Raymond Domenech continued to baffle fans with his appearance in the hotseat.

France, it seems, has taken over the mantle Holland has held for so long as being a side brimming with talent and rife with internal problems. Quarter-finalists after a good show in Euro 2008, they have quietly gone on with their work this time round, and convincingly entered the second round sans fanfare or hype. They may quite be the team to watch.

England’s exit would be probably make me bleed, a joyous occasion for my friend Atok who’s sole mission in life is to see this team fail, and a good week of tabloid sales in the UK as an inquiry to the ‘failure’ in the World Cup will clearly overshadow the crappy budget Boy George gave us yesterday.

4 comments!
Older Posts »