3 dimensional, 2 characters, 1 force – “Gravity”

Going to the movies is not really my weekend routine. I go to the movies only around once or twice per year. Most movies are catered for teenagers or couples in their 20s. When you are in your forties queuing for tickets at the cinemas is not really a happy experience. The thought of whether it was really the right place for me to be must have crossed my mind when I looked around and tried to find balding men of my age among the mingling crowd. Shouldn’t I be among the folks going to mosque? Am I really aware of what I am doing?

Despite all the negative thoughts, I reached the front of the line and got myself a ticket. They gave me a pair of special glasses and it was going to be shown in 3D. I didn’t get myself popcorns as I was not in the mood of being a kid. And I didn’t bring my kids along as I would have too many of them to fill the theatre. Besides, I was not sure if they would enjoy a movie without their favourite Upin & Ipin in it. The title of the movie itself could not be more scientific. As somebody who loves space and everything scientific, I thought the next 90 minutes would likely be worth the wait.

Of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity is the one we feel the most and can easily relate to. Whoever happens to come in the wrong path of a dropping object would know how damaging gravitational force can be. It was discovered by Isaac Newton in the 17th century England and its unit is named after him. It is the force that keeps the Moon, space stations and satellites in orbit around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun.

With this one universal force in mind, I was firmly fixed to my seat at the edge of the sixth row from the back of the newly built theatre. And there I was for the next 90 minutes watching the breathtaking view of the Earth from a few hundred kilometers above. The 3 dimensional view of the Earth from space alone was worth it. The storyline and its drama did not really matter to me. After all, the story was very simple. Two American astronauts sent to fix the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting above the Earth had to find their way to another space station in order to return to Earth after debris from a Russian satellite, broken in a chain reaction of satellite debris hitting other satellites, hit the Hubble.

This is a movie where for the entire 90 minutes there are only 2 characters – the female astronaut played by Sandra Bullock and the male astronaut played by George Clooney. Except for the last 5 minutes when the female character swims to safety after dropping into a lake upon re-entry to Earth, almost the entire movie has a backdrop of space with the blue planet gently rotating in the background. The stunning 3D images of the Earth from space are so realistic that it felt as if it happened right in front of my eyes. I felt entirely immersed in the scenes and at one point spontaneously jerked my body on the seat to duck a piece of debris hurtling out of the screen directly towards me.

The longest I have seen a 3D movie before was around 10 minutes for a short documentary on space that was shown when I visited the planetarium in Melaka. Here I was treated to 90 minutes of outer space adventure. This is probably the closest I will ever be to being a real astronaut. This 15 ringgit that I spent on the ticket must be among the most value-for-money and entertaining investment that I made. Had the movie come 6 years earlier, the Malaysian government would do better to spend 15 ringgit on the movie than paying 100 million ringgit to send our first and only Malaysian to space on board the Russian spacecraft Soyuz. This is the kind of movie that can inspire school kids to be an astronaut to study the mystery of outer space. Considering that the movie only featured 2 characters and a very simple storyline, its strength is probably in the cinematography. Its success in bringing 3D outer space images in front of our eyes and let us be immersed in it is to me what makes this movie so memorable. With that, unless another exceptionally good blockbuster comes along, I guess I have finished my movie quota for this year.

Thoughts on Hari Raya Korban

This is the season for sacrifice. The last time I witnessed a bloody scene of korban ritual was around 7 or 8 years ago. Then again about 2 years ago I had to stand next to the goat being slaughtered for my daughter’s akikah. I had no choice. I was expected to see it being slaughtered and perform the niat to validate the ritual. Gradually over the years, I have sort of developed a feeling of apprehension towards doing it again. Unless I have to watch it I’d rather stay away from the whole episode and only join in later to skin off the dead animal. I guess the apprehension is not so much on the idea of killing another creature to put it on your dinner table but more because of the bloody scene that I have seen. A scene that for most of us, especially those who live in towns and cities are mostly kept hidden from. I was a bit traumatized. I don’t like seeing blood; even less when it involves killing. The sight of the red stuff makes me feel sick. How I wish meat could be grown on trees and we didn’t have to spill blood to enjoy our meal.

Yet when I was a child living in the kampong, witnessing such a scene was normal. It even had an air of a little celebration. We used to kill animals and little creatures on almost a daily basis. I had no qualms about piercing worms from head to tail onto my fishing hooks for use as bait to catch the keli, puyu or haruan. No guilt about disemboweling the poor fish alive and cutting them up into pieces for my barbeque dinner. But this was in a different time and setting. I was living in the kampong in a time when we would do most things by ourselves. Each household would rear chicken, cows or buffaloes for themselves. If not at our own kampong house backyard, surely our next door neighbour would keep some poultry. Every household had its own supply of almost everything they need. We led a self-sufficient life. Occasionally throughout the year, and almost certainly during festive seasons, either you catch your free range kampong chicken and help your father to slaughter them, or you would see your neighbour do theirs. It was perhaps more than mere curiosity to watch these animals being slaughtered after which you would help to pluck the feathers. The females in the family would then cook it for the family special dinner that evening. There was no place to buy chicken meat grown on protein-enhanced chicken feed. The term ayam daging or ayam proses was not yet in use.

These days the job of slaughtering animals so that we can enjoy our hamburgers or crispy fried chicken is mainly done behind closed doors in specialized buildings using automated machines on an industrial scale. The killing is done by people specifically employed to do this job. Most of us would not want to see the process anyway. What we see delivered to our table in an air-conditioned fast food restaurant, entertained with the liveliest piped music from America’s latest hits has been sanitized so much that we completely forget that life has to be sacrificed before it gets to our plate. The lively music, the exquisite décor and the clean premises are so that we are not reminded of the dirty and bloody scene that the chicken has to go through before it gets from the farm to our dinner plate.

I believe this sanitization happens every day in the wider world too. In politics, in order to shape popular support to a certain direction, some media outlets would only mention in passing things like “fifteen including children and women die in drone attack in Northern Afghanistan” omitting any graphic images that can draw sympathy towards the unfortunate souls. Even in circumstances like the dramatic felling of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, horrible images are screened out and instead a more acceptable version would be flashed on the screen and repeated over and over.

In case you are still wondering the connection between the ritual of sacrifice on Hari Raya Korban, the keli barbeque and the bombing of the twin towers, never mind. I don’t see a clear link either. The point I am trying to make is that we become more objectionable to violence scenes being shown to us as we only watch the much sanitized version of killing and human tragedies. For our own sanity, the gruesome realities of life and destruction that human beings are capable of are filtered out. We ignore the fact that even in our everyday life, we outsource to specialists to do all these unpleasant things on our behalf. For the killing of animals for our food we let the slaughter house workers do it, while for the killing of enemies, the soldiers and unmanned drones finish up the job for us. We can sleep well at night because we don’t see disturbing images of bodies being blown up to pieces. And we can still go on with our life as if nothing unpleasant has ever happened.

Between Two Malaysias

I can't remember the first time I heard the word Malaysia. It had come into existence many years before I was even born. When I was forced to learn geography or Ilmu Alam as it was then called and memorise country names, the name of this country had already been in use for almost two decades. Although the spelling was universally accepted, saying the word is still not settled. Now, even after half a century, I still hear people pronounce it in various ways. The kampung folks would say Me-lei-sia, while the hard-tongued Mat Salleh can be excused for choosing Me-lei-zia. The more urban Malaysians meanwhile, go with Me-lei-sye, presumably stressing the “sy” makes them sound closer to the Mat Salleh’s tongue. Whatever three syllables that they utter, it is understood as Malaysia, that federation of states formed at the South Eastern corner of the Asian continent and the northern part of Borneo Island separated by a shallow body of water that is South China Sea. I was born and bred on the side attached to the bigger landmass but work has taken me to the island part of the Federation.

I must admit that people from the part of Malaysia where I was born are largely ignorant of their fellow countrymen from the part of Malaysia I am living now. Perhaps because they are attached to the biggest landmass on the planet, or may be because the sight of the tallest twin buildings in the world is blocking their view, the West Malaysians have wrongly assumed that they are mainstream and that those living in the small towns at the edge of the jungle along the many rivers on the Island side somehow matter less in the making of Malaysia. One of my East Malaysian colleagues once told me how East Malaysians are deeply offended when visitors from West Malaysia keep saying they are from Malaysia when asked where they come from by Sarawakian or Sabahan as if these two states were not part of Malaysia.

Being Malay and Muslim which represent more than half of Malaysians, we are also guilty of insisting that everything has to be done our way. We assume people with such names as Idris bin Jala is a Malay Muslim and are embarrassed to find out later that he's neither Malay nor Muslim. While it is safe in Peninsula Malaysia to say Assalamualaikum and invite somebody who looks like a Malay to pray at one’s local mosque, one should be more sensitive and neutral here lest the invitee may be offended. He might just politely decline and tell you that he usually meets his God on Sunday. And while he may also call Him Allah, he meets Him not in the mosque but in the church. I once worked with somebody who kept a goatee and looked indistinguishable from a Malay. He had a smile and soft demeanor of a deeply religious man about to ask you to go to the mosque. But when he took off his work coverall, I was shocked to discover that he had tattoos on his arms and legs. Only then did I know that he was an Iban. For the Iban tattooing is part of their culture and tradition. Later I found out that a colleague who had Muslim name and appearance was actually a Christian Melanau and somebody else who had a Christian name was, to my surprise, a Muslim. While the Iban use anak in their name, some non-Muslim who are native tribes here use bin or binti to mean son or daughter of. Those are instances of the culture shock that I experienced when I first got here a few years ago.

I thought I knew Malaysia, my country of birth and my home for more than four decades, but arriving here I discovered how wrong I was. What I thought I knew was only the mainstream Malaysia, the narrative that’s presented in the mainstream media and even textbooks. Many people here would argue that while we say that this country is multi-racial, multi religious and multi cultural, our actions are not reflective of it. The mainstream narratives are still one sided. Our political parties from both sides of the political divide, our unions, associations and clubs are still largely Peninsular-centric. Development projects are still largely associated with the Peninsula. While it is understandable to bring more development in West Malaysia because of the denser population and the resultant economies of scale there, many East Malaysians feel that they are being neglected. Although the two states of Sabah and Sarawak contribute much to the federal state coffer through incomes from their natural resources, the infrastructure here is still second class to what is being enjoyed by West Malaysians. Even after 50 years they are still waiting for the long promised Trans-Borneo Highway linking the towns along the coast of Sarawak and Sabah. May be they are too polite to tell us West Malaysians directly but I can’t help but feel their resentment at West Malaysia who seem to suck out the riches from their land and pipe them all to the West.

The status quo for the last 50 years has to change. The people from West Malaysia should understand more about the ways of East Malaysia. The mainstream media should be truly inclusive in educating and making us all aware about East Malaysia. Our leaders from West Malaysia should care and look more towards the East. We cannot truly celebrate 50 years of our coming together knowing there is growing resentment among our East Malaysian brothers and sisters towards the West. West Malaysians would not want to be labeled as neo-colonial masters. The early leaders of Sabah and Sarawak did not kick out the White Rajah and the British only to be replaced by colonial master of their own kind. Let’s celebrate this Malaysia day as equals.

Happy 50th Malaysia Day!

Independent No More

In the old days Colonists would go to a country looking for its natural resources. They scrambled for the minerals, native plants or pre-historic artifacts from far corners of the Earth. Some made peace with the local people and came in as advisors to the local chiefs while some used force and carted away anything they could get from the conquered land. Under the pretext of bringing the word of God and civilizing the barbarians, they justified their exploitations. Over centuries, they extracted the minerals and use them to industrialise their country, develop sophisticated weapons and gadgets and sell them back to us. This is easy to see and sadly it is still happening in some parts of the world.

While this kind of crude physical colonization is on the way out, a new form of control is on the rise. We are all willing participants of this new colonization and we don’t even know it. The threat now is less obvious although the impact on less developed world and the majority of the people is still the same. What is being promoted as democracy and free access to information can also be seen from the dark side.

A wise man once said that “knowledge is power”. It is more relevant now than ever. All the data that we create and upload about ourselves is information. This information can be converted into knowledge and knowledge thus brings power. So it’s not hard to imagine that all the data – text, photos, videos - we’re giving away for free to Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, WhatsApp or what not is like giving away our power to those who receive, collect, analyse and use it for their own good.

We are living in the age of Big Data where companies offer free services so that they could collect our data, analyse and use it to sell things to us. On a more ominous side, they collect our data so they could spy on us. They know our location every day, they know what we buy, what we say and they even know what we think. The unfortunate thing is these companies with terabytes of data collected from us are based in foreign countries. Their servers are physically located in their own country and they are subjected to their own law which empowers their intelligence agency to have access to these data and monitor anybody they wish. The current drama revealed by the Snowden leak case about the existence of government funded online spying program Prism shows that the countries with heaviest surveillance on their own people and foreigners are not the ex-Soviet so-called Iron Curtain countries but the self-proclaimed champions of democracy like the US and the UK.

We need to realize that the power of the future is not measured in barrels but in bits and bytes. And we’re giving our data to large corporations based in foreign countries without realizing that every byte of data they store is like drops of oil running their engine. These data may be used against us if they think that we’re not following their wishes. Remember, these corporations are based in the same countries which used to exploit our natural resources and our people to enrich and empower their own citizens in previous centuries. This is just colonization in a new cloak. It is an excuse to spy and control people under the pretext of freedom and democratization of information.

When Big Brother is watching it is not necessarily a good thing, especially when you know that the Brother has a stated objective of making everybody eat, sleep, talk, buy and think like them. So think about it when you press “Agree” button the next time you sign up for a free service online. It may look free now, but you are paying it with your own freedom. We are all sometimes too willing a participant in this wholly connected world. You may think you are free now, but with every byte of data about yourself that you give away you slowly inch forward into an online prison. This is the world we’re living now, a world where independence has no real meaning but surrendering yourself to watchful eyes from the opposite side of the world.



Selamat Hari Merdeka!