For the Love of Books

A couple of days back I was interviewed by Shazmin Shamsuddin on BFM89.9 The Business Station - and how nice, the podcast has appeared online! :

If you want to write - just do it!



Editing Malaysian writers



Book blogging and how it takes over your life! :

Blog- eautiful!

Here's me in Her World this month in a feature about women bloggers. It was fun to do all the hair and makeup bit and have my pic taken ...

I was disappointed though that most of what I wrote as response to the questions I was sent got chopped, and maybe I'll post the whole thing another day.

Reading McCullers

"... vain, querulous and a genius"

"She needed a certain amount of alcohol in her system to function creatively"

"we know from your first book that you're a nigger-lover, and we know from this one that you're queer. We don't like queers and nigger-lovers in this town."

What others have said about American author Carson McCullers who is profiled in this excellent piece by Ali Smith in the Guardian.

I discovered McCullers in my teens when, miracle of miracles, I found that the English stockroom of my school was unlocked, and inside there were piles of novels! Better still, I found that some hardworking teacher had compiled and cyclostyled long-lists of "suggested reading" for other classes and I used them as my guide to the shelves. I hid in this little room from the prefects during lunch breaks (we were supposed to be outside getting "fresh air" in often sub-arctic conditions!), sneaking books out to read at home and replacing them as soon as I'd read them. Thanks my unseen mentor, this was the best introduction to "quality" fiction that I could have had. (I think this also explains my great enthusiasm for reading lists.)

I read first The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers novel about a deaf-mute who moves to a small southern mill town, and was totally blown away by it (so much that I can still pretty much remember it in detail x decades on!). Then in rapid succession I read The Member of the Wedding, and The Ballad of the the Sad Cafe. I have an urge now to reread them ... and I wonder how they will have changed half a lifetime on? (Because of course, books always change when we aren't looking.)

McCullers, of course, was an unredeemable bookaholic herself (as all authors must be) :

She was capable of reading so deeply that she wouldn't notice her own house go up in flames around her, as once happened when she was lost in Dostoevsky. Unable as a child to stop reading Katherine Mansfield's stories when she went to the store for groceries, she carried on as she asked for the goods at the counter, then under the street lamp outside. As a fledgling writer, she was sacked from her day job as a book-keeper for a New York company when the boss found her deep in Proust's Swann's Way under the big ledger.

By the way, I came across a post on a blog some time back in which a teenage writer was talking to her teacher about award winning books and was told that such titles were "too deep" for her. I really saw red when I read that! How does anyone have the right to tell you what you can and cannot cope with at what age?

Tunku and Me

Here I am (or a slightly younger version of) being presented to Tunku Abdul Rahman who was Malaysia's first Prime Minister and led the crowds in a rousing call of Merdeka! (freedom) on this day fifty years ago when Malaysia became a nation.

The photo was taken on a less grand occasion. It was Malay College Speech Day 1986. After all the speeches, the staff lined up in the corridor to meet him. I was so proud to have shaken the hand of such a great man.

Wish all Malaysians, here and overseas, a very happy Merdeka.

Sharon in Marie Claire

Wooohoo! Sharon given the celeb treatment in the September Issue of the Malaysian edition of Marie Claire, talking about how she got to be a mad keen reader and some of her favourite books.

I very much enjoyed doing the photo shoot. These guys gave me the complete make-over treatment, and elevating my usual scruffy self to something half decent. Sherry, please don't forget to send me copies!

Now Where Was I?

Just in case you were wondering ...

Student teachers and their lecturers (my intrepid co-travellers!) in one of the two schools I visited (as an external moderator for a British College).

Their pupils (mainly Malay but also Batek from Taman Negara). Some of the children come by boat from villages several hours up the Tahan River. Could have stolen one or two of the cutest ones!

School canteen breakfast somewhere in Kuala Tahan!

*Burrrrppp*

The job has its compensations. Another was a river trip yesterday afternoon very kindly organised by the headmaster of another school ...

Taken very shortly before we all got drenched to the skin after all the water fights and a stop at a waterfall.

Now we have plans to make an expedition right to the end of the river, visiting schools on the way.

Sharon @ Seksan's

I don't like photos of me ... usually. But I love this one that Sufian took at Seksan's on Saturday. So dramatic and arty lah! You can see the rest of his set here. As Madcap Machinist said about them - awesome!

Beloved Bald Boy Book

Noor took me down memory lane yesterday with her comment about a book in Bahasa Indonesia is called Sipitak she'd loved as a child in the sixties and then lost.

Strangely enough, it's a book I remember too, and I had also been wondering why I never see it in the bookshops anymore.

I was learning to read in Malay. Used to conquer an article or two in the Malay newspapers each day. But I wanted to move on to real books and where better to start than with good kids fiction which wouldn't be too difficult, but would entertain too? I'm not sure where I came across the book of stories about this little boy called Si Pitak, but it must have been in one of the shops in Kuala Kangsar.

I just loved the stories of this naughty bald-headed lad (the result of ring-worm, I seem to remember) who was always up to mischief in his village with his little gang of followers. As I wrote in the comments yesterday, I can still remember one of the stories about stealing shoes from outside the mosque on Friday. I seem to remember another about stealing fruit. The writing was both funny and charming, and the language simple enough to for me enjoy without resorting to the dictionary too often. (I never quite made the transition to reading adult novels in Malay!)

Noor says that she didn't know author or publisher so a little detective work was in order. I love a challenge, and the first place to start was abebooks.com, where there was just one copy of a book fitting the description. Once I had the author's name, I checked on Amazon. Apparently there were several books about Si Pitak written by Indonesian author Soekardi, and of these two were published by Fajar Bakti (the local publishing arm of Oxford University Press) and I think may have been translated into Bahasa Melayu*. All are now out of print.

A lot of really good books here just seem to disappear. Perhaps we could twist the arm of this publisher to bring back Si Pitak for the sake of today's kids?

And meanwhile, if anyone knows of a copy mouldering in a forgotten corner somewhere, maybe they could get in touch? (Noor - I think that this could be the Indonesian publisher, and maybe they would also be able to tell us something?)

The search is on for the bald boy and any information leading to his recovery is very much valued!

And as suggests:

Sharon, when you are out of topics to blog, perhaps you can write one about books we have loved. The comments wd be so interesting.

I kick this topic open to you. What books from your past have you loved and lost?

*The official languages of Indonesia and Malaysia are the same apart from vocabulary differences.

Certifiably Nuts!

Some time back I got memed by Jordan to write Six Weird things About Myself. Now seems as good a time as any to post it.

I can't tell my right hand from my left. Honestly. If you're giving me directions and you ask me to turn left, I have to think "Which hand do I write with? So that's the right hand. Which hand is left over? So that's the left ... and I ought to turn - Damn! missed it!"

Usually I ask passengers to say "Your side" or "My side" in the car.

I thought I was the only person in the world thus afflicted, but one day I was trying to find my way to Universiti Malaya with Raman and Lorna Tee in the car (we were going for a meeting re. the first litfest) ... and it turned out neither of them knows their left hand from their right either! (Yes, we did get there ... eventually!)

I've since learned it is a form of dyslexia: no wonder I can't spell either!

(And is maybe connected to the fact that I have Attention Deficit Disorder - at least mildly.)

I once won a sporting bronze medal and it was presented to me by a king.

It was actually, not the Olympics, or the Commonwealth Games but the teacher's bicycle race during sport's day at Malay College 1986. I'm very proud to have got bronze, even though there were only three of us in the event. The Sultan of Perak (later king of Malaysia) Azlan Shah presented the medals and we'd been practicing for days to get the bow just right.

I've eaten termites.

Haven't you?

My students in Nigeria showed me how. First, wait till it rains and hundreds of termites are flying round your porch light. Place a bucket of water below the light and hit them down into it with a broom. Wash the insects in water until the wings fall of. Then fry them very gently for 20 minutes. There is no need to add either salt or oil as their bodies contain plenty of both. Delicious.

I've heard ghosts.

Perhaps.

I was living in Meriden, near Coventry, in a brand new house which my father had built on a piece of land bought from the local council and adjacent to a large housing development. For several nights over the course of a week I was woken in the wee hours of the morning by the sound of dozens of children playing in the garden, laughing and screaming. (It sounded just like a school playground at recess time!) The sound gradually died away. When I got up to look the sound stopped and the garden and those of all the neighbours were completely deserted. I wasn't dreaming, I pinched myself very hard each time it happened. One night I could stand the suspense no longer and the moment I heard the voices I leapt to the window.

At that instant the sound cut off completely.

If it wasn't ghosts, I'm bonkers. (Possible.)

I have long conversations with imaginary people.

Usually authors, usually about the book I'm reading. Usually highly intellectual. (Of course.) Often out loud. Often extremely heated. I get angriest with Louis de Bernieres for making Captain Corelli disappear for such a long time. Ian McEwan is surprisingly good company. Annie Proulx intimidates me.

(Go on, certify me.)

I have an art gallery in my head

While I'm drifting off to sleep I often see the most incredibly beautiful, constantly shifting, patterns in vivid colours. It's just like having an excellent art gallery behind my eyes. I don't know if anyone else experiences this ... but it's an amazing gift.

So now that you think I am completely nuts, I pass this meme on to the following strange and interesting people:

Kenny Mah
Lydia Teh
Adam
Dina
Chet
Angry Medic
YTSL

RULES: People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Mrs. Malaprop and a Circumcised Car

I get a little mention at the end of Rehman Rashid's column in the New Straits Times today. Rehman reckons that portions of his previous piece in which he talked about bloggers:

... previously appeared, to deleterious effect, in a posting on Sharon Bakar’s estimable Bibliobibuli weblog

(Here's the piece.)

Ashamed to say that I wasn't sure what "deleterious" meant and had to look it up! (Was I being praised or having my knuckles slapped? Apparently the latter!). Which is actually the point of Rehman's article today in which he celebrates a love of words.

For I love and respect words. I love their precision and subtlety. And I love the sound of them; the way they form in the mind to trip off the fingertips or tongue; their rhythm, cadence and melody. I would be lost without them to flow across the contours of my feelings, giving them form and meaning, rendering them recognisable, palpable, and sometimes manageable.

I must confess that I like a writer bold enough to use the full palette of the English vocabulary with as much relish and abandon as Rehman.

Anthony Burgess and Will Self are other authors I admire for their linguistic appropriations.

The New Statesman even awarded an IgNoble Prize to Self:

... vocabulary builder, for the largest, most colourful and most dynamically obscure collection of words, phrases, neologisms and archaisms ever assembled, such as crulge, gubbertushed, and pastorauling.

Academic Suzanne Keen writes of Burgess' vocabulary:

... his love of odd words, old words, off-the-beaten-track words, his fascination with foreign tongues, etymologies, and dialects, has the effect of encrusting his fiction with a scumbled surface of language ...

I suspect Malaysians who read and love language are often so scared of being considered "bombastic" (a word I'd never even heard before I came to Malaysia! What does that tell you?) that they tend to limit themselves to the mundane and the cliched. There is a tendency here to stylistic safety and sameyness (does that word exist? Who cares!). Hurray for the writer who dares to purloin, snaffle, appropriate, coin, jiggle and juggle words.

Johnson (my crazy friend and noisy ex-colleague from teacher-training days) talks with relish about all the big words she'd managed to squeeze into her Reading University Masters thesis.

When her tutor tried to get her to simplify her vocabulary she pointed out that she'd carried these much loved words around with her for years, afraid to use them in the Malaysian context ... and now couldn't she ... just break out a little and slip them in?

Her tutor gave way.

The "vitruperation" about Rehman's "lexical choices" did indeed echo around the blogosphere ... and surprised me. I was pissed off by (and upset with) with Rehman's blanket condemnation of bloggers, but was amazed at how quickly - and with what vehemance - the comments targeted his writing style.

I was too lazy to write about it at the time, but being the pedantic English teacher that I am, I wanted to pick Jeff Ooi up on this post (clearly aimed at Rehman) and drum into him what a malapropism actually is!

A phrase like "monomaniacal nimrod with piscatorial propensities" (an example Jeff borrows from Zorro-unmasked) is yes, hilariously overblown, but it is not an example of a malapropism. (Luckily Jeff's more skilled at detecting other ... ahem ... textual abnormalities.)

And if the dictionaries are to be believed, there is no such verb in English as "malaprop". But then if we are encouraging inventive word play and the coining of new words in this post, we should let that one go! (Maybe award it a bouquet of jasmines!)

Another Johnson anecdote nicely illustrates what a malapropism is. (Indeed we called Johnson Mrs. Malaprop after Sheridan's famous character because she was always confusing words that sounded alike. It happened I think because her head was always half a mile ahead of her mouth.)

One day when we were driving out to school to watch a student in my (then) new Peugeot, I had to execute a rather sharp u-turn.

What Johnson meant to say was" "Does your car have a tight turning circle?"

What actually slipped out was .... "Has your car been circumcised?"

Enjoy your love of language, Rehman. And thanks for adding "deleterious" to my vocab this morning.

Zephaniah and Me

I have to tell you this story.

I had just a minute or two to chat to Benjamin Zephaniah before the Central Market gig and managed to ask him the question that had been burning inside me ever since I read that he came from Handsworth in Birmingham. Did he know the school I'd taught at?

Know it? Why he had been a student there. (Though a few years before I got there.)

And I had been a teacher in my first year of teaching, terrified out of my wits at being thrown into this inner-city multi-cultural environment.

I was, of course, white, middle-class and had scarcely any friends that didn't fit the same mould. I hadn't seen much of the world. Hadn't travelled overseas. I came into teaching with a B.Ed degree in my hand, a lot of idealism and very little practical knowledge of how to manage a classroom.

The kids at Broadway were difficult to say the least. One of the classes I was given was an underachieving class of 16 year olds who made my life hell. The whiteness of my skin made me the enemy as soon as I walked into the classroom. Most of the kids were of Jamaican descent, were Rastafarians (though dreadlocks were of course not allowed in school) and insisted on speaking patois among themselves. I had serious discipline problems, caused as much as anything by my total inexperience. (None of my teaching practices, which had all been in Worcestershire schools, had prepared me for inner-city Birmingham.)

The kids learned ... absolutely nothing with me. I was just trying to survive from lesson to lesson. On one occasion a chair was thrown at me. One student threatened to knife me after school. In the depth of Winter I got bombarded with dozens of snowballs walking to the classroom, some of which contained stones.

Another time I was late for a class because the school was on three campuses and we had to take a minibus between them and it was often late. I found that the kids had broken into the stockroom and set fire to the English books. Fortunately teachers saw the smoke on fire and rushed to put it out. On another occasion before I reached the classroom one kid stabbed the one and only white student in the stomach with a roll of newspapers, bruising her ribs, and the parents decided to take legal action against me. (The case was later dropped.)

The teachers were a mixed-bunch. Some very concerned about the kids and able to reach them. Others horribly racist: they would talk about the West Indian girls in the staffroom for example as "jungle-bunnies". Some ruled their classrooms by force, and at times this particular campus felt more like a borstal than a school.

My head-of-department decided one day to come and show me how to restore order, picked the main trouble maker up by the scruff of the collar and slammed him against the wall, issuing threats against him if he stepped out of line. The whole group were as quiet as lambs for the next forty minutes ... but not in subsequent lessons.

Truancy was through the roof. After school riots were common with gang fights between kids of neighbouring schools, and the police were always called in before the damage to property got too bad.

I wish I could tell you that I turned my class around. Like in a Hollywood movie.

I didn't.

I failed miserably and was miserable. I felt the kids didn't give me a chance. I felt the school didn't help me. I felt my B.Ed degree didn't prepare me.

I lay awake at night terrified about the next day. I got depressed. Called in sick too often. My boyfriend of nine years decided to leave me - partly because this daily fight left me with nothing left over for myself or for him, and his own star was rising in the rock-star firmament.

I wanted out of teaching completely.

But this story has several happy endings.

I know the kind of environment Zephaniah (a self-confessed bad boy, a gang member who carried a gun ... and didn't even learn to read and write until he was 21!) comes from. I can see how far he's travelled, what he's had to overcome ... and I'm incredibly proud of him, the way he's taken all that anger and directed it to says things that should be said.

I hope the kids I tried to teach and failed all those years ago made something good of their lives.

I'm grateful now for all that they taught me about myself (how narrow and parochial I was!) and about what teaching needs to be.

I left the school but spent some months doing "supply teaching" which meant spending time in many different city schools. I think that observing a wide range of schools and teachers gave me a solid framework on which to build my own teaching.

I went to Nigeria as a volunteer teacher, and had such great kids there that I realised that teaching was, after all, what I really wanted to do.

I spent a spell in another inner-city Birmingham school after Nigeria, and found teaching there a real pleasure. I had grown and changed in the time I'd been away. These kids respected me, and I could, at last, begin to teach.

My Malaysias

I was tagged by KG who was tagged by Sharanya as the next blogger to contribute to the 50 Posts to Independence Project started by Nizam Bashir. The idea is to write about anything that makes Malaysia special to that person. The project culminates on the nation's 50th birthday next year.

Here's a free-flow thing I've just knocked up, barely ahead of the deadline. More of a collection of notes than anything else (certainly not a poem ... or not yet). I enjoyed writing this and the memories it brought back and I'm nudged towards fleshing the whole thing out. (Great things about blogs is that they can be places to post stuff that's in-progressy!)

And in turn, I tag Eliza whose intelligent writing I enjoy ... both in my class and on her blog.

My Malaysias

My first Malaysia

Raub

goldmining town until the veins were flooded
when the Japanese came.
one street of Chinese shophouses,
one cinema, one supermarket
a school where I taught Form Three students
resisitant in their way to the invasion of English.

a memory of curfew,
imprinted itself on the town.
the last of the communists hung out
in the steaming forest.informers staked out the coffee shops
and army officers
drank whisky with discreet napkins around the glass
at the tenth hole of the golf club,
built by an Irish doctor
who never found his way home -
as i might not.

orang asli felled small game
with blowpipes along FELDA roads
distracting me from driving lessons.
the best Chinese restaurant was a zinc hut
behind the bus station
(the towkay's fortune gambled away),
kari ayam in Sempalit
the red tables cloths
of that place in Sungai Lui
that sold mee.

my second malaysia

Kuala Kangsar

"it was in Kuala Kangsar
if you will forgive the novelettish circumlocation
that i met the love of my life"

said Burgess (and hey, that works for me)

his writing drew my dislocated self
to his "estuary of ghosts"
with its sluggish river and footferry,
golden domed mosque, kampongs,
and scatter of palaces
(one a secret place with rotting floorboards
and birds nesting in the throne room).

i came to teach the elite
those white uniformed boys
who came wet to class rainy afternoons
(because umbrellas were not macho)
for Steinbeck.

in the Chinese restaurant
(how did i become an honorary man?)
we yang singed, and not with Chinese tea,
spun the chicken head on the empty platter
to see who would drink the next forfeit
or sing
and Bobby who slaughtered pigs by day
giving us Santa Lucia in the the richest
sweetest baritone.
and then him
back for a school reunion
asking "where can one get a beer in this place?"
his romantic chat-up line.the rest as they say is history
my history
and his.
my third malaysia is the malaysia of now
and here

a city of jams and flashfloods and too large malls
which leave me breathless with agrophobia
a skyline changing from one day to the next
but an excitement at being at the centre of things
and a feeling of the possibility of change.

corporate training
in golden triangle boardrooms
how to write the perfect business report.then a teachers training college
and mid-morning breakfast escapes for pan mee or utthapam
with the best colleagues of my life.
poetry classes under casuarinas -
teaching necessarily subversion
through poetry.

observing teaching practice on hot afternoons
in parts of the city i'd lost my way trying to find
proud of my students growth into teachers
and watching at the back of the classroom
the reactions of my hypothetical child
(the only one i'd ever have).

inheriting a family and customs
finding places to adapt and common ground.
carrying hantaran at weddings,
folding my too large self on the floor at kenduris
but never never neatly enough.
relatives scrambling through the bin for the
plastic wrapping of my Christmas turkey
to make sure it really was halal.the agak-agak versions of family recipes
scribbled on slips of paper
and consumed with fingers.

mat salleh I am ... but these are my stories to tell.
my credentials.
see how line by line,
Malaysia has written me.
so that these are the stamps in my passport
in lieu of the official one that says

i belong.

Happy Blogiversary, bibliobibuli!

Happy blogiversary to me. Happy blogiversary to me.
Happy blogiversay, dear Bibliobibuli.
Happy blogiversary to me.

It's two years today and almost 1,000 posts later since I first ventured out into the blogosphere with bibliobibuli, unsure of what direction it would go in, nervous about putting my writing out there and how it would be received.

I discovered another addiction (beside reading) that has been gradually taking over my life. And if there was a moment when I found my focus, I think it was when Literary Saloon, an important website on the world of books, linked me. I was a litblogger, officially, and I'd better start behaving like one!

Plenty of good things have happened as a result of the blog. It's led to (paid) writing work and given me the starting points for numerous articles which have appeared in local newspapers and magazines. It's made me read widely to turn up interesting material, and I've learned so much about authors and the publishing world along the way.

And recently I've been approached to write a book based on this blog, a "blook" in other words. I think it might happen, so stay tuned.

There have been one or two bad moments - getting flamed by nutcases has left me a little more guarded, particularly about writing the more personal stuff, about admitting those petty little weaknesses ... like suffering depression. (Writing this blog helped me through.)

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the readers of this blog, who make me want to write it. I can't believe how many new friendships I've found along the way, many of them have migrated into the so-called "real world".

Thanks for the time you spend reading, thanks for linking me (I'm honestly humbled), thanks most of all for your comments. I'm thrilled that there are bibliophiles out there, even more passionate than I am, much more well read. I've been grateful for book recommendations which have made me reconsider some of my own snobby prejudices and try new stuff. (I'm reading graphic fiction now!) I love too that you keep me entertained throughout the day when I'm bored working at home!

I like my blog so much I think I might officially change my name to bibliobibuli.

But if you want you can call me, bib.

Rainforest Ramblings

Back safely. The tigers didn't get us and neither leeches. And we had a great time in Taman Negara.

Because we were short of time we arranged a package and it turned out really well for us. We had an excellent guide, En. Rusli who was knowledgeable and marvellously patient.

We went for a nightwalk where the kids found several species of spider (including a hairy tarantula), stick insects, leaf insects, scorpions, luminous fungi, sambar deer and wild boar.

We scrambled up the horribly steep Bukit Terasek for a magnificent view out over the park (above).

We strolled through the crowns of magnificent rainforest trees on the world's longest canopy walkway. (Wobbling on narrow plank walkways, equivalent to 22 storeys above terra firma. Hairier than the tarantula!)

We walked to gua telinga (ear cave) where the two youngest kids went with their dad to scramble over and under and around slippery rocks in the dark and get covered in bat guano. (I sat this one out with my sister and my eldest niece Lauren!)

We visited the campsite of the indigenous batek people and learned how they make fire and use blowpipes.

We shot the rapids of Sungei Tahan and then went swimming in the clear, sun-warmed river water.

We also went out in the boat at night, enjoying sounds of the forest when the engine was switched off so that we could drift silently downstream in the moonlight. We saw nightjars, flying squirrels and owls by torchlight, spotting first the red gleam of eyes. And my joy was complete on seeing a buffy fish owl perched on a branch in the water.

I'm so happy that the kids got to experience this very special kind of Malaysian magic, a first taste and a safe taste of the incredible wilderness I hope they will want to explore further when they are older.

I do worry though (and here comes the customary bibliobiuli soundoff) that there are now too many tourists, many of them not particularly into nature, but visiting Taman Negara because it happens to be on the tour group itinerary. Many of them were so noisy along the trails that any wildlife (including the birds I would have expected to see and hear) was reluctant to show itself. A shanty town of floating restaurants and budget resorts has grown up on the opposite bank, and the rocks are strewn with rubbish. And whereas access to the park used to be only by river, now there is Dr. M's proud new road, bringing coach loads of civil servants on motivational courses and hoards of paintballers.

Cherating

Back from Cherating after a few days of beach and sun. It was just so nice for all of us to be able to relax together with no pressure on us to do anything or go anywhere. Time out of time.

We stayed at The Legend. Although I had very mixed feelings about the hotel, the location was wonderful - a broad sweep of beach with soft golden sand, lined with casuarina trees and gentle sea. The kids loved it, and when they weren't out there flying kites and catching little sand crabs, they were in the huge swimming pool (surely the best along this stretch of coast). We were also very happy to be near the turtle sanctuary so that the kids had the magical experience of releasing baby green turtles into the sea at night - an experience they will never forget.

But permit me a second for a sound-off (bloggers privilege!) : what gives Club Med the right to put on huge loud firework displays in an environmentally sensitive area? The turtles heading for shore to lay their eggs (fewer in number every year) could easily become frightened and disorientated and turn back to sea, the wildlife warden told us.

Thanks, Boo-licious, for the tip-off about Kemaman stuffed crabs! De-licious!

Had a good read, of course: finished Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer, Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, and have re-started Andrea Levy's Small Island which I was distracted from some time back - more about these later.

Will do some catch-up blogging before we all disappear again later in the week, this time to Taman Negara. But first, gotta take the troops for dim-sum!

My Writing Space

Starlight wrote the other day about writers and their writing desks and included my description of my writing space.

It fits into the bay window of the bedroom, and has a view out over Rubber Research Institute. (I need daylight!) Here's a photo:

Clutter includes:

• beach stones and shells and semi-precious stones (for the right energies)
• wooden hand which I bought from the Tate Gallery
• my lucky gypsy clothes peg bought from a traveller in London
• a mug of Chinese tea
• printouts of stuff I'm supposed to be working on for reading at Borders (oh ye gods, what shall I read?)
• my cheapo homemade notebooks for guiltless scribbles of nonsense
• a beautiful much too expensive notebook bound with pea-green cloth bought from Bookbinders on a day when I needed cheering up (it worked)
• gel pens of all different colours (a whole rainbow)

Notice the absence of a computer - this is the land of paper and pen.

My Bookshelves

So many books, so little time. My to-be-read shelf ...

Why are my novels in alphabetical order, when my handbag is a disaster zone?

When a Story Bites You on the Bum

So I'm having lunch with an editor friend one day and I tell him the story. The ins and outs of it. The complexities of it.

When I stop, he prompts "And then?"

"That's it."

"And then?"

"There is no 'and then'. That's all I know."

"And then?"

I begin to get angry. Isn't the guy listening?

"Look" I say "I've told you everything that happened. "

He sits back in his chair and considers me.

"Sure, he says, that's the end of the real life stuff but you're a fiction writer so you can keep going past this point."

"I could but I don't write in that genre. I'm into the serious stuff the lit fic. I'm not a thriller writer. why couldn't this story go away and bite Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown or John Le Carre on the leg. They could do it justice. not me."



Some times there's a story that won't go away.

you try to ignore it
but it keeps on yapping and yapping
so you push it away

then it comes and nips you on the ankle
and you say 'go away'
and throw it a stick
"i'll think about it" but you never do

but then it comes back
and bites you on the bum
so in the end you have to get nasty with it

i don't know how you end
i have no interest
i don't write in that genre
i'm into literary fiction
heavyweight stuff
go bite dan brown or john le carre
they'd get it right
go find an investigative journalistic
who claims moral high ground

bu no, the story wants my lap
my fingers on the computer

Stumped by Salina

Kak Teh wrote a very nice piece about our national laureate, Dato A. Saman Said, the other day: do go take a look.

I see him around town, quite often - riding the LRT or browsing in Kinokuniya. With his distinctive white beard you can't miss him, and he looks every inch the eccentric writer.

Years ago, when I was learning Malay I hoped to become a fluent enough reader to tackle some of the classics written in the language, and everyone told me that Salina was the one Malay novel I must read.

Up to that point I'd been doing fine with my Malay and felt that I was ready to graduate from kid's books and newspaper articles to the fiction I longed to read in the original language.

But I managed just half a page of Salina.

You see, I got to a sentence that read: Mentari terbit, and I just couldn't imagine what a government minister was doing rising in a field. Nothing that came after that seemed to make sense.

I asked my friends at school and they just laughed at me. A minister, of course is menteri. Mentari is a literary way of saying matahari, meaning sun.

It struck me then that the serviceable, everyday Malay I'd learned wasn't up to the task of coping with the literature.

I'll read Salina in an English translation, I said, put the two editions side by side and study the Malay that way.

But I never found one in the bookshops.

And more or less my Malay got stuck at that point. Frustration point. In a sense it was a good lesson for me, because I understood what many of my students were feeling about English.

But I feel still sad about my inability to read literature in Malay and I'd love to do something even now. Especially so that I could read all those old books of poetry in the backroom of Raman's shop.

And of course, Salina.

In the Footsteps of the Ripper

He came silently out of the midnight shadows of August 31, 1888. Watching. Stalking. Butchering raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led...nowhere. Yes, something wicked this way walked, for this is the Ripper's slashing grounds. We evoke that autumn of gaslight and fog, of menacing shadows and stealthy footsteps as we inspect the murder sites, sift through the evidence - in all its gory detail - and get to grips, so to speak, with the main suspects. Afterward we can steady our nerves in "The Ten Bells", the pub where the victims - perhaps under the steely gaze of the Ripper himself - tried to forget the waking nightmare. (From the Original London Walks brochure*.)

Shudder!

I plucked up courage to do the Ripper walk with my sister one icy Friday night. We started from Tower Bridge tube station. Our guide, Shaughan, led us to the sites of the murders and described them all in the grizzliest of details, conjuring up bodies and leaving them suitably disembowelled on the pavement. We were given the clues, the theories of whomightadunnit, of freemasonary, royal involvement and police complicity. I buttonholed our Shaughan at the end of the walk to ask him what he thought of Patricia Cornwall's view that Walter Sickert was the Ripper - our guide was far from convinced. (Will I bother to read the book now?)

As most of the old streets in the City (the original walled square mile) disappeared in the blitz, our corpses lay among the steel and glass towers of the commercial heart of London, but crossing a road into Spitalfields in the East End we made a timeslip, and the air was still thick with ghosts. In a narrow Victorian alleyway we listened to the account of the grusome slaying of the fifth and final victim Mary Jane Kelly: (horriblest detail: her breasts were cut off and neatly arranged on the side table by her bed!).

The walk ended at the Ten Bells pub, apparently the Ripper's local. We didn't go in for a drink. Both of us felt that it looked a bit creepy, and anyway something else had caught my eye.

There across the road was Christ Church, Spitalfields, the church I wrote about some time ago - the setting for the first part of Peter Ackroyd's terrifying Hawksmoor. I dragged my poor sister over there and told her to take a long look at it (Be afraid! Be very afraid!) because now she'd have to read the book - and yes, I found a copy for her the next day.

To further the literary connections of the evening we took a short stroll to Brick Lane (the setting of course for Monica Ali's novel) and had a curry. (Not very good. I felt nostalgic for the pre-Bangladeshi days when the Indian food was excellent. Did we just choose the wrong restaurant?)

Notes:

*Just to say that - even though I don't have a particularly strong herd instinct and hate to feel a tourist, I strongly recommend this company's walking tours. The last time I was back I did one of Christopher Wren's churches - some of them not usually open to the public, all of them deserving interpretation. I learned so much.

** The Casebook website, which I've already posted a couple of links to, is a brilliant resource if you want to know more about Jack the Ripper.