thnks fr th mmrs

"See that? That's where we keep it." Zip pointed to the horizon. Sea breeze blew his tanned face. Zip's eyes are always sharp and shined with piercing earnestness, like eagle, but this time I could see some sadness in it.

"That's far away..." I looked at the him, "too far for a thing like that to be kept at.. I mean, what if either one of you two need it one day?" I knew I was starting to talk like a busybody.

"Not far. Not at all," Zip answered slowly, "You'll reach there, whether or not you need it."

Only the wave and sea breeze defining the silence between Zip and I. Both of us looked at the line that separating the blue sky and the blue ocean.

******************************

"Cepat ooi!! Cepat!! Jangan biar dier bangun!! Cepat!!" chaos, mixed with girls chuckling and guys shouting out of excitement. A guy among them was buried by his friends, yelling for help. They built breasts for him on the sand pile that covered his body. They even erect a bottle at the abdomen part of him. The poor guy screamed, yelled and shouted, because of the ticklish sand, and also because of the 'excitement' he enjoyed.

There was this group of young people having their beach BBQ party. The wave splashed with the mood of celebration, under the big sun, everybody kept on piling up the sand on the guy's body, and to make sure the sand pile was compacted enough, another big bold guy leapt and lay-prone over the sand pile...

"ARGH~~~~~~~" the wail pierced through the warm and salty air on the beach.

A seagull flew by, crossing the blue sky.

******************************

A seagull flew by, crossing the blue sky.

"Elle and I was so much in love with each other," I didn't know whether it was the seagull that flapped off the silence or it was the loneliness in Zip's tone that made the silence more obvious. ".. and I still love her.." Zip continued.

And Elle too. I believe. I knew Zip and Elle so much. Yes they were so much in love with each others back then, and they ARE still loving each others, but things happened. Some frustrations happened between them, and they just chose to ran away and closed the door of their heart.

"... that's why you still keep that thing over there?" I asked, looked at Zip, then extended my eye sight to the horizon. That thing was kept somewhere along the horizon, according to Zip.

"Elle wanted to throw it away, but you know, she can't throw away that thing, nobody can."

"Because once you had it, you're part of it." I nodded.

******************************

The BBQ was fun. And yummy. It was undeniable that the secret marinade did most of the magic of deliciousy. The guy who prepared it is indeed a good cook, but never a good barbecuer when it comes to play time.

"Sorang-sorang je tau, semua orang pergi main kat sana..." The lady complained to the vid-cam holder while pointing her fan to the crowd that was playing beach volley ball at the other side. Before the vid-cam holder approached her, she was fanning and barbecuing alone, sitting in the shade of coconut trees. The rest of her friends were having fun and exciting time on the beach, and they all knew very well that, the chickens and sausages would be ready by the time they had enough fun time and started to feel starved. Like kids going back to mum for food after play time.

Poor barbecuing mummy.

******************************

"Have you ever wonder what's happening on the other side of the ocean?" I asked Zip. Zip looked at me and I gave him a simpering smile, yeah I know, lame question, huh?

"Yes I have," Zip gave back a simpering smile, "I still remember back then in my university days, my course mates and I were celebrating our graduation and I was caught and buried by them..."

Zip paused. He understood how surprised I was from the way I starred at him, ".. YES Spidey, I DID have all those young sweet time..."

"O....kay..." I nodded slowly. That's new. I thought those high-tech-high-skill 'professionals' would have their own academy, hidden deeply in the forest or maybe somewhere technically unreachable in Himalaya mountain range.

Zip continued. "I just couldn't hold the ticklish feeling of being buried half-nakedly and I screamed like hell asking for help," Zip looked far to the horizon, with a light smile on his face, "..but out of all a sudden I thought I heard echo of my yelling, I thought it was coming from the sky, and then I started to have this question.."

Zip intentionally paused. I raised my eyebrow, waiting for him.

"... 'If the sky could echo my voice, will people at the opposite side of the ocean, at the end of the sky, hear me screaming?'..." Zip looked at me, with his childish smile, "pretty lame, wasn't it?"

"NO" I answered immediately, "Not at all. In fact, I was actually thinking, maybe right now at the opposite site of the ocean, there's a bunch a young people laughing and yelling out of excitement, celebrating their graduation, having somebody buried......"

"Yeah, young sweet time... and they are actually creating that thing too." Zip looked at the horizon, as if he could see these young people having their fun time under the sun, spreading their excitement of being young along the horizon.

******************************

Elle couldn't help but chuckled at the group of young people who played volley ball in front of her. They were so funny and so loved to show off their youthfulness. Those were the days. Elle sighed and took a deep breath, looking straight to the line that separates the blue sky and the blue ocean in front of her.

The horizon always made her blue, it reminded her about Zip. She hates him but she loves him more. She wanted to get rid of the feeling but now looking at the young people, she realized that she IS part of the thing that she shared with Zip, which she once said she wanted to throw it to the horizon where she'd never reach it again.

Elle took out her cell phone and searched for Zip's number.

******************************

Zip's cell phone vibrated. An SMS came in. It was Elle.

"Rmmbr the mmrs v had tat u said u ll keep it on the horizon? U re right, v cant throw away things that v r part of it, it's jst like v cant escape frm being on a horizon, cuz v r jst part of it.

Thnks fr th mmrs. Lookin at a bunch of young people celebrating their mmrs made me feel tat i should say tis. BTW where r u nw? I m sitting on a horizon lookin at anthr horizon, wondering will u be there..

...Anyway, again, thnks fr th mmrs."

I looked at Zip. He looked far to the horizon in front of us, "you think keeping memories on the horizon is too far for us to retrieve?"

"Ah..." I couldn't react to his question.

"Elle is with the memories now, at the horizon.." Zip smiled, "..and I'm with the memories too, at this horizon."

A seagull flew across the sky, flapped the silence off, tore the blue. Thanks for the memories, Elle. Zip send the message back to Elle, carried by the seagull.

******************************
******************************

'Many-much sorry' Foot-Note:
1. Kill me if you hate me writing in this way, I might have split personality problem recently..
2. Bury me alive if you think I'm being sentimental AGAIN, I'm having blue to think of leaving UTP and Perak...
3. Yes, this is my last entry that posted from Room5, Block3, Village4, UTP -- I'm checking out on this coming Tuesday..
4. For those who dun know who Zip and Elle are, go to ULAM, period.
5. ..and yes, those cool faces in my pictures are my course mates. We had this beach BBQ last Monday at Teluk Batik.
6.. Ok lah, 'mmrs' is 'memories' in case you STILL don't get it.

Photo-hunting with Mat-Deck the cool

1. Let's don't talk too much bout this cool guy Mat Deck, what you need to do is just go to his Fotopage here and here.

2. Let's don't talk too much bout the spot that we recently hung out, what you need to believe is Perak has all the beautiful scenes and buildings and girls to make you madly fallen in love with.

(2.1. ... that's why I guess a lot of internationally-famed movies were shot here.. Malaysia Yasmin Ahmad's Sepet, Gubra and Mualaf, Hong Kong Patrick Tam's After This Our Exile, Hollywood Andy Tennant's Anna and the King, etc etc.. .. well, let's don't talk too much about those.., what you need to do is just watch them..)

3. Let's don't talk too much bout how I still post my photography works here while I've just got myself actively updating my very own Flickr, what you need to do is to tune into my Flickr and have a look.

4. well..., let's don't talk too much craps cuz I believe not everybody is reading it, ..

.... what you need to do is just scroll down to see my lousy works and then leave me some comments and tell me how I can do better to not insult the beauty of Perak in my photography works.






..5. Let's don't talk too much about how thrilling and exciting the story of ULAM July has come along so far, what you need to do is just think what I'll logically tell you what you really need to do.....

More than meets the eye..

No I'm not talking bout the spectacular Transformers and I *am not* going to talk about it, although together with Die Hard 4.0, these two movies really stir up all my hypes and excitements in this holiday.

With "More than meets the eye" as my title, I'm actually talking about a movie trailer, which has heated up the internet world recently, if you're aware of. People Google it, blog about it, You-Tubed it, and even doing some researches on it, but the interesting part is, even with all those heat discussion going on and on, the main question that keep running around the table is still the basic one:

----"WHAT IS THAT?"

Here's a quote describing the trailer:
"It is from the perspective of people's camera in NYC. A huge earthquake breaks up a going away party. The people at the party go to the roof top just in time to catch lower Manhatten erupt into a ball of fire! They make their way to the street to witness the head of the statue of liberty fly down the street, end clip with screaming! Insane! "

Nobody knows what is THE TITLE of the movie and the rest of the details of the movie. The only information obtained from the trailer are: 1) it's a production of J.J.Abrams (picture) (producer of 'Lost'); 2) it's distributed by Paramount Pictures; 3) it's a disaster movie, perhaps sea-monster; 4) it will be released on 18th January, 2008.

.. and as this most-talked about mysterious movie DOESN'T YET HAVE a name, forums on www give a codename 'Cloverfield' to refer to.

So now you can try to google the keyword 'Cloverfield' and look what you'll get. I've tried, and what I got was an amazed feeling.

Talk about PUBLICITY STRATEGY, they attached the trailer to the premier of Transformers, playing it before those gigantic robots hitting the screen -- Yeah perfect timing to get the widest coverage of their publicity, what a commercial cliche! I wasn't impressed by it; and the trailer is actually scenes that captured using a home video camera, which we'll get a lot of shaking (while running) and up-side-down scenes (assuming the camera holder falls down..) -- OK, 'Blair Witch Project' debuted the idea years before, nothing impressio.

.....but... they *DO NOT* put a name for the movie, and they **DO NOT** share any copies of the trailer on www!!! and now this is impressive!!

OK fine with the 'Title-less strategy', at least the codename managed to solve the problem, but what if nobody care enough to give it a codename? How on earth people are going to look up for something which it doesn't have a name?

And the issue of the availability of the trailer on www is BIG. I mean if you want to introduce one cool stuff to everybody on earth, you gotta show this stuff to them, at least fragments of the entire; but as far as I could search, the 'copies' of the trailer on www were all sneakily recorded using camera-phone, and sometimes, you'll see this as a damn turn-down to your curiosity:

So I say this is a "More than meet the eye" publicity strategy, and if it is NOT a mistake (like the trailer was mistakenly released by Paramount Pictures or whatsoever), then this IS truly a BRILLIANT PLOT that gets everybody's appetite whetted, and the heat of the relevant topics happened on www is a vivid proof for their success, at least at this early run of their publicity campaign, but I don't think the heat will remain if Paramount Pictures doesn't come out with something more solid besides this 'mysterious aura' they had created for the untitled 'Cloverfield'.

One question. I know heating up 'gossip' or 'controversy' is already an obvious lame publicity strategy which most marketing teams are still highly relying on, then bombarding belief or trend a.k.a. chaos into the market is another marketing strategy which apparently need huge load of dollars, and now we have this another cost-saving but rather risky option of publicizing a work: boosting curiosity and creating 'UNKNOWN'. It's not new, but just not popular, because it needs other factors to support it like BIG NAMES BIG BRAND BIG ISSUE behind, and precise market psychology analysis, etc.

-- so my question is: for a product/piece of work that only practices a very very basic 'publicity marketing' which might seem to be less than nothing compare to those biggies stated above, would you still buy into it?

Well, I'm talking about my little ULAM project.

(Jom lah...)

Merci beaucoup!!

I have to read back what was my feeling like when I started to feel sentimental about this batch, this MSc. Programme, and this campus in my previous previous post in "We are FIRST BATCH" dated April 18.

The truth is, I never get wrong bout my feeling towards all these stuffs, even at this very end of our journey in UTP.

Maybe you can say that I am too much on exaggerating my feeling, well let me show you the way of seeing this:

-- I am more a grateful person rather than a sentimental one.

It is the gratefulness that pull all of my sentimental feeling out of my heart. No matter what my friends say about this batch, this programme and this campus, I will still insist that I have the coolest coursemates in FIRST-BATCH, study together in the most insightful MSc Programme, in the most beautiful and and fascinating campus of UTP.

Only gratefulness allows us to see beauty from ugly, realize love from hatred, live life the fullest from boredom.


Too many inexpressible gratitudes but all and all, allow me to express it sincerely with this one magic word:

Alhamdulillah.


Ps.. yes u're right, the "soaring and flying" jumping shot on top is so CLICHED but I believe this is how people will see our excitement of graduating, don't you?

The psychoanalysis about waterfall.

There's a psychology test which sounds like this:

You're entering a forest and finally you reached a waterfall.

Question 1: with the scale of 1 to 10 which corresponds to weak to strong, how would you rate the strength of the waterfall?

My answer: scale 9.

Question 2: what would you do once you saw the waterfall? Would you test the water depth and strength first before getting real wet? You access all the possible danger around first? You just want to get your foot wet so you just sitting on the bank? You close your eye and listen to the wonderful sound of waterfall and enjoy the relaxation? You just want to enjoy the view?

My answer: jump straight into the waterfall -- I wanna feel the strength of the water hitting on me , I wanna get my body and my mind and my soul completely mixed and messed up with the splash of water and the aroma of the nature....

OK I'll reveal the analysis later, pick your answer if you care/dare to take part of this psycho-test. While waiting, please allow me to do some self-defense.

Azwa gave me this test to me within a week after I came back from the marvelous private waterfall hidden in Janda Baik. For sure we had damn good time having great fun in the waterfall, and when this psychoanalysis test came to me, all I could relate and imagine, was all the fun and coolness I got from the 7-8th scaled waterfall deep inside the jungle of Janda Baik.

-- My point is, giving the answer of "Scale 9" and "Jump STRAIGHT into the waterfall" perhaps were NOT my intuitive answers, which will be unfair if they are taken seriously into account to analyze my personality via this psychological test.

....why bother explaining?

Well, here is the psychoanalysis bout the waterfall: Waterfall ==> S-E-X. (OMG!!)

Question 1 -- the answer for this question should be a number that indicates degree of strength.
Analysis: The number reflects the eagerness/desire level to the subject matter. (OMG OMG!!)

Question 2 -- the answer for this question should be a response or action.
Analysis: The response or action reflects attitude or behaviour towards the subject matter. (Please, I beg you, please believe my statement of defense above...)

Please, don't pronounce a sentence on me. I mean, if you happened to be with us having great fun time in the waterfall we had in JandaBaik, your answer will be equal or maybe more than mine. Trust me.

I rest my case.

Rise Up, O Flame.

Special note to Shuttersyndicate: thank you for your photo-editing tutorial dropped in my previous post. I really appreciate and feel so much honored to have the attention of a snappy "Sifu" like you to my lousy works of photography. Thank you.

.. ... and to you all guys, receiving, I wouldn't say 'tremendous', but positive feedback from y'all regarding my pictures and my recent outing really hyped me up.

-- Hyped-up here simply means too excited, and...

N-E-R-V-O-U-S .

.. cuz I'm going to show you pictures that I DON'T think it'll be any TYPICAL 'nice piece of works' to most of you, but I can shamelessly tell you that they are my favourite shoots during my Janda Baik camping as I've been dreaming of capturing these movie-scene-like shoots since I learnt photography.

.. because campfire, is my favourite moment during the camping, I mean, every camping I've been to.

.. but who wouldn't claim campfire is their favourite in a camping? My point is, if you like camping, then you'll LOVE campfire --raise your both hands and say 'HEY-HEY' if you agree!

Sitting around the campfire and sharing our stories, singing our songs, or maybe just sitting quietly, letting all be still, listening to the sounds of the night, the whispers of the forest, the hum of insects and the crackle of the fire -- it is such a peaceful and relaxing moment. No wonder they call the circle formed around a campfire a 'ring' -- there's a very sense-making explanation behind it--

A ring. A bond.

Of friendship, of brotherhood, and also a bond between human beings and mother nature.

... and personally, the campfire in Janda Baik reminded me of every blackout nights during my childhood. Huhu I think I'm getting sentimental here...

Gotta share with y'all a song. The lyric goes like this:

Rise up, O Flame
By thy lights glowing
Show to us beauty
vision and joy.

Well to be very frank I don't know how to sing this song, but it's a song sung during campfire obviously. I like the wordings as it describes perfectly how I feel about campfire: the beauty, the vision, and the joy.

Another celebration

If my last nature outing at Mt. Ophir or Gunung Ledang was to celebrate my 26th birthday, then a camping in the forest of Janda Baik, Pahang last weekend was another celebration for me.

..on what occasion?

Well, I would say it was in celebration of the end of my fiiiiinaaaaaaaaaaal exam paper after 1 year of struggling for the balance between "Study hard" and "Play harder" in this MSc. programme.

--- yeah, you bet, the wonderful perfect timing went in a way similar to "you huffed and puffed over n km of cross-country race and finally arrived the finishing line and there's a full body massage SPA awaits you RIGHT in front."

Lame metaphor, I know, but the idea is there, as what Fariz stated in his mail:

"It's good way to release all that steam from the study and exam."..

So there we were, 9 of us, deep into the forest of Janda Baik, set up our camp site just beside a private and secluded plus SPLENDID water fall..

---- see that? this is what I meant by 'CELEBRATION': private and secluded -- it was a complete ESCAPE experience: escape from the hectic metropolis, escape from the boring daily routine, escape from exams and notes, escape from the stiff materialism.

Celebrate escapism, celebrate the return to mother nature.

Isn't it cool if all the occasions -- from Valentine to Graduation, even Father's Day Mother's Day Teacher's Day -- are celebrated in nature? I know that sounds a lil lame for some of my friends, but for a monkey who spent his childhood at the river bank of Sungai Kelantan, back to nature is something really evocative, and rejuvenating.

Like a monkey would never like zoo, he is only alive and kicking in the forests, his own backyard.

---Another lame metaphor, I know.

So, like most TV hosts would say at the time like this, "Don't go away, STAY TUNE," as I haven't shown you how splendid the waterfall is, and more importantly, how fun is like when you took your shower beneath the waterfall of '9th scaled' water strength, plus my favourite movie-scene like snap-shots of campfire.