Cold Rain and Hailstones ... Jitlessly

There's an over-anxious part of me that constantly screens grisly "what-if" scenarios in my head when I'm organising anything.

I thank goodness I set off for Bangsar so early yesterday afternoon, just as the sky was beginning to grow dark. At just after 2p.m. the rain came tipping down. A quick shower, I thought and then it will be over with, and it will be nice and cool for the readings.

But who am I to dictate to rainclouds? I sat in my car outside Seksan's waiting for a break in the storm, which never came. And then I noticed a drenched Amir Hafizi, and a neatly rain-drop splattered Dina in a dress as grey as the sky, waiting for Buddhi to slide open the door, which despite several tingalings on the artistic temple bell, he hadn't yet.

Once in, we set up. Put out glasses, opened bottles, arranged stools and benches. Then sat, our attempts at talk drowned out completely. The vista of Lucky Garden disappeared behind a solid sheet of water. The thunder was a solid growl, and suddenly there was a new dimension to the percussion of the rain on the roof. Hail!

I kid you not. Hailstones. Perfect little rounded knobs of ice.

Buddhi splashed out onto the verandah to get me one. It looks a little melted in the photo below. (By the time Dina had snapped it. By the time I had rooted out my camera.) The first time I've ever seen hailstones here, though I remember some fell in parts of the Klang Valley during the haze last year. Sky ice in the tropics!

This is an Act of God? I looked to Dina and Amir for reassurance. I mean there's no way this could be interpreted as a balls-up on the part of the organiser? (Come back Bernice, the sky would listen to you!!)

But people began to arrive. One by one. Each with a tale of survival against the odds and in different degrees of soakedness. Joy Teh and her friend Helena. Patrick. See Ming and Sim. Natasya. Our Australian poet Patricia Sykes and her friends were only a short walk away and managed to make it across. At least by now we had three writers and some audience. The readings would happen.

Aneeta and Xeus both SOSed via SMS to say that they were stuck in traffic due to flashfloods. Jit was stuck in Kenny Hills and couldn't get a taxi despite offering generous bribes via the company's telephone operators. He apologizesd profusely for never having learned to drive. I told him to stay safe and we'll ask him back next time. (He had promised to read a monologue from his play Gold Rain and Hailstones - hence my brilliantly inspired title for this post!)

We waited until the storm died down enough for us to hear the readers, half an hour after the scheduled time. (We don't have a microphone. Need one.)

Here are my photos. Deliberately and artistically out of focus and camera-shakey:


Patricia Sykes read from both collections of poetry. Her first, Wiredancing, uses the circus as a metaphor for the world. (She used to be a tightrope walker and juggle with fire - how cool is that?) The poem she read ended with such a disturbing image - kittens lapping up spilled human blood. She told us that her second collection Modewarre: Home Ground was a collection about identity and belonging, and read a poem called A Face in the Water. She also gave us an extract from her opera libretto (she's working again with composer Lisa Lim and the first performance is scheduled for 2008 in Brisbane) about the weaving together of language: she had lines in Finnish, a click language of the Kalahari ... and when the call for prayers drifted over from Bangsar mosque, she had yet another layer of language and poetry!

I do hope there's a chance to hear Patricia again before she leaves. I'm so curious to hear more.

He isn't wearing his superman costume, but this is Mr. MalayMale himself: Amir Hafizi.

I'm glad he read a piece based on blog entries about his father and village as this is what I've enjoyed most on his blog. It's an affectionate piece, but at the same time there is a strong sense of the ridiculous which is very funny.

I don't want any of this to go straight to his already swollen head (and his friends were falling about laughing mentally writing his post-reading blog entry!), but I could read much much more of this!

Joy Teh is a lot less blurred in real-life than she is in this picture! She's one of Bernice's creative writing students from Sunway and at present working on a screenplay which she read us part of. Enjoyed watching the film in my head as she read, and hope it gets made in the end. She finished with a poem. A very confident reader.

After the break, Faridah Manaf stepped in to give us a taste of her new collection of poems: The Art of Naming: A Muslim Woman's Journey, which she says she wrote as a reaction to the fallout of 9/11, and the constant questions about being a Moslem woman she faced as she travelled overseas. Since she only had a short slot, I hope that she can come back again another day, because I want to hear much more.

Our other missing readers made it just before the break, and must have had a horrendous time getting to Seksen's. Xeus (Lynette Kwan) read from her story One if by Land from her Dark City collection, a story based on information gatheed from a prison warder at Kajang Gaol. I love the way that Lynette's pleasure in her writing spills over. She's found her voice, she's found her niche, and clearly she's having a blast with her writing. I'm overjoyed to hear that she has now found a British agent for her children's stories.

Last up was Aneeta Sundaraj, one third of the writerly equation which collaborated on Snapshots! (Jessie and Saradha read last month.) Aneeta read her story brought Brought Back to Life. She seemed a little nervous - understandable - under the circumstances and without her fellow-writers there.

So glad she was finally up there though, as she has supported and cheered on others, and been so committed to her own writing. We'll get you back another day, Aneeta!

So it all happened. Thanks very much to our audience in wet clothes. Thanks too to the ones who tried to make it but couldn't because of the inclement weather. Thanks to Seksen for the lovely space. Thanks to Buddhi for helping set up and clear up. Thanks to La Bodega for the wine. And most of all, thanks to the six very special people who shared their words with us.

Bernice sends her love. She had a family energency in Ipoh. I hope she's able to make the next one ... which will be the other side of Hari Raya, so tentatively November 24th.

Went for tea afterwords with Sharanya, KG, and Singaporean journalist and good blog-friend Zafar Anjum (of Dream Ink).

Wish all my Muslim friends a blessed and peaceful Ramadan.

Update:

Read Xeus' account of the afternoon here. Ted's here. Aneeta's here. Natasya's pics on Flickr. Vovin's here. Zafar's here. Amir Hafizi gives some excellent advice on how to prepare for a reading here.

I'll add other links as I discover 'em.

Snapshots of Snapshots Authors

Really nice to read the article in yesterday's Star about how Snapshots, the short story collection which is a joint venture between three local writers, Jessie Michael (top), Aneeta Sundaraj (above left) and Saradha Narayan (above right) came to be written. It's certainly a tale to inspire and I hope this nice little splash gets the sales rolling for them.

(And before you ask, Aneeta, have read about most of the stories and will post a review here soon. Promise!)

Self-Serving Great Grandmother's Dishes

MPH Writer's Circle today and it was nice to have Oon Yeoh back in the driver's seat.

The topic was self-publishing. Azizi Ali talked about his self-publishing venture first. This was pretty much a repetition of what he said in a session last year but I guess he was trying to drum up support for his seminar How to Write a Best-Seller in 88 Days. (Why 88? Why not 30 or 153? Think Chinese numerology lah!)

Best piece of info from Azizi - the most important page of your book is the back cover, since research has shown that readers spend an average of 3 seconds looking at the front cover and 8 seconds looking at the back.

I was much more interested in hearing about Shirley Zecha's part family-history, part cookbook My Great Grandma Never Left Our Kitchen. Shirley talked about how family recipes (a unique blend of Indonesian/Dutch/Chinese/Nyonya influences) had been passed down the generations from her great-grandmother to her grandmother, to her aunt and finally to her. Four women who lived in different eras were united in their passion for food.

But it took a fifth woman to bring the book to fruition: Shirley's daughter Claudine realised that the recipes and stories were not just a family treasure in danger of being lost forever since she isn't a cook herfelf, but of much wider cultural relevance.

She put the book together and became the publisher. ("I'm only the cook," said Shirley, modestly.) After consulting cookbook publishers who seemed to have very set ideas about what a cookbook should look like, she decided to self-publish to have more control over the finished product and the process of putting it together.

Claudine says she managed to find the right team of people to edit and design the book (her background in advertising clearly came in useful), and all the cooking was done at home over 10 days, working from early moring till late night. The photos of the dishes, taken in and around the house, are absolutely mouthwatering and I couldn't bear to look at them because it was too near lunch time!

Claudine was pretty shrewd about approaching newspaper and magazine editors so that articles about the book appeared in the press, particularly at times of the year when interst was likely to be greatest, for example, Mother's Day. Cookery demos at MPH created more interest. Hotels in Malaysia were persuaded to stock copies, and HSBC adopted it as a corporate gift, which boosted sales. The book has sold about 3,000 copies so far and can also be found in London at Books for Cooks.

I'd love the book for the slice of Malaysian and Indonesian history it serves along with the food.

(Incidentally, while we're on the subject of putting cookbooks together, I was fascinated to read Starlight's behind-the-scenes-account of her current project ...)


Below is a picture I snapped this afternoon of Aneeta Sundararaj signing a copy of Snapshots! for me. Looking forward to reading it.

Taking Snapshots

My friends Aneeta Sundararaj, Saradha Narayanan and A. Jessie Michael have just published a collection of short fiction together: Snapshots by is published by Oak, and available to buy here.

Biggest congrats for having the guts, gumption and gusto to get your project off the ground! I've not read it yet, but Lotus Reads gives a glowing account of it here.

It's gratifying to see that the creative writing workshop which was held at the KL Litfest a couple of years ago was the starting point for the collaboration. Craig Cormick and Satendra Nandan from the University of Canberra's Creative Writing programme ran afternoon sessions for keen writers and wannabe's at the Australian High Commission*. Craig encouraged the writers and edited the final selection.

Good luck now with getting the books sold!!

(*Okay, a touch of jealousy here ... I organised the workshops but couldn't attend because everything else was going on at the same time! Sob!)

Elsewhere Things

Some things to look at elsewhere.

If I could give an award for blogging above and far far beyond the call of duty, I'd have to give it to Lainie for her amazing coverage (with photos and even soundclips, for heaven's sake!) of the Panic Buttons - Culture and Crisis event at Actor's Studio. Now I feel I didn't miss a thing!

Aneeta picked up on my post on the struggles of Singaporean writer O Thiam Chin and inteviewed him for her How to Tell a Great Story website.

And local fantasy writer Glenda Larke has some great advice on writing a novel on her blog Tropic Temper. For the too-lazy-to-browse, here's Part 1 and Part 2.

I met up for coffee and a chat with Glenda before she left for Sabah. (Really sad that no-one from the Malay Mail was around to write a feature about spotting us in Bangsar Shopping Centre. I've always wanted to be featured in that column!).

We were talking about the way beginning writers see getting their first work published as the holy grail, and believe that all will be plain sailing once they get there. Glenda was telling me about her own experiences of the publishing world - a rollercoaster of triumphs and crushing disappointments which you can read about on her blog.

My thanks to all these bloggers for putting up great content.