Autobiography of An Eurasian-Malayan Nurse

SYBIL KATHIGASU (1899-1948)

BACKGROUND

Born Sybil Medan Daly to an Irish-Eurasian planter, Joseph Daly and a French-Eurasian midwife, Beatrice Matilda Daly née Martin, on 3 September 1899 in Medan, Sumatera, Indonesia (which explains her middle name). The fifth child and the only girl, she was trained as a nurse and midwife and spoke Cantonese fluently.

She married Dr. Arumugam Kanapathi Pillay, a Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) Tamil from Taiping who was born on 17 June 1982 to Kanapathi Pillay and Thangam. Initially there had been religious objection from her parents as he was a Hindu and she was a Catholic. He married Sybil with his father's agreement on 7 January 1919 in St. John's Church, Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur after he agreed to convert to please Sybil's family and took a new name Abdon Clement Kathigasu. He operated a clinic at No 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh from 1926 until the Japanese invasion of Malaya.

Sybil's eldest child, Michael, named after her elder brother who was born in Taiping on 12 November 1982, was born on 26 August 1919; 15 days after Sybil's elder brother was killed in Gallipoli 23 years later as a member of the British army. However, due to major complications at birth, Michael died after only 19 hours which led to the devastated Sybil to adopt a young boy, William Pillay born on 25 October 1918. Then a daughter, Olga, was born to Sybil in Pekeliling, Kuala Lumpur on 26 February 1921 and she was a very special baby to Sybil because she had no birth problems. A second daughter and the last child, Dawn, was born on 21 September 1936 after Sybil returned to Ipoh on 7 April 1921.

The family fled to the nearby town of Papan days before Japanese forces occupied and bombed Ipoh. The local Chinese community fondly remembered Dr. AC Kathigasu and nicknamed him in Hakka, "You Loy-De". Residing at No. 74, Main Street in Papan, Kathigasu secretly kept shortwave radio sets and listened to BBC broadcasts. The family quietly supplied medicines, medical services and information to the locals and fighters of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) until they were arrested in 1943.          

Despite being interrogated and tortured by the Japanese military police, Sybil persisted in her efforts and was imprisoned in Batu Gajah jail. Her fingers were ripped off with pliers and her legs were scalded with iron rods. She was also forced to drink large quantities of water before the Japanese military police stepped on her bloated stomach ("Tokyo Wine Treatment"), and she suffered damage to the spine and skull due to beatings with a bamboo stick. Her then five-year-old daughter, Dawn, was dangled from a tree and her torturers threatened to roast her child alive with burning charcoal beneath her. After the liberation of Malaya in August 1945, Kathigasu was flown to Britain for medical treatment where she started jotting down her memoirs.

Sybil received the George Medal for Gallantry, a high civilian honour by King George IV several months before her death in June 1948; an old wound at the jaw sustained from the kick of a Japanese boot that brought on a fatal bout of septicaemia.

She passed away on 4 June 1948 at the age of 48 in Britain and her body was buried in Lanark, Scotland. Her body was later returned in 1949 to Ipoh and reburied at the Roman Catholic cemetery beside St. Michael's Church opposite the Main Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (now SMK Convent) on Brewster Road in Ipoh.

A road in Fair Park, Ipoh was named after Sybil Kathigasu (Jalan Sybil Kathigasu) after independence to commemorate her bravery. Today, the shop house at 74, Main Road, Papan, serves as a memorial to Sybil and her efforts.




NO DRAM OF MERCY (2006)

A memoir of Sybil's memoirs, the author gave an account of a woman (Sybil Kathigasu) of great courage, who should be regarded as a beacon and role model to all Malaysians. Sybil's life is perhaps the best example of unity: a Penangite of Eurasian descent who sacrificed her life for the MPAJA.

It is one woman's struggle and sacrifice driven by deep personal conviction for justice, in the face of inhumanity at a time when Malaya was upside down. The contribution of woman to the course of history, including Sybil's, had always been under-documented, under-recognized and often untold.

Luckily for us, she lived to tell her story and penned down her gripping experiences. In short, it is a rare historiography of a true national heroine. She, like many others in the war effort, gave the ultimate sacrifice to the nation in order that we may live peacefully.

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Research on this book.

The Two T's

TAN TWAN ENG

Born in Penang in 1972, Tan studied law at the University of London, and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's law firms before becoming a full-time author of fiction. He has a first-dan ranking in aikido...

In my late teens I became obsessed with aikido. For a period of eleven or twelve years, I trained for hours almost every day, read up and watched everything on it -- books, manuals, instructional videos. Aikido's practical and philosophical aspects fascinated me. I went to classes even when I was ill or injured, of only to sit outside and watch, because I had been told that you can learn just as much by observing.

and lives in Cape Town:

I was working as a lawyer in Kuala Lumpur and I wanted to see the world, so I thought doing a master's degree in law justified that. My South African friends suggested a university in Cape Town. It's a beautiful and fascinating city. I travel between Cape Town and Malaysia regularly. I'm normally only in Cape Town during winter, which, coming from a tropical country, I enjoy. I go back to Malaysia every year and stay for long periods of time. Malaysia is "home".

The Gift of Rain, set in Penang during the World War II, was published and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. It is about a certain Philip Hutton of Chinese-English heritage and his relationship with Endo-San, a Japanese diplomat who teaches him aikido. It tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangled webs of wartime loyalties and deceits.

Tan's second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, was published by the same publisher, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Myrmidon, in January 2012 and awarded the Man Asian Literary Prize (2012) and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The story is concerning a newly retired Supreme Court judge, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II and later served as an apprentice to a Japanese gardener; trying to make sense of her life and experiences. The novel took place in three different time periods; the late 1980s, the early 1950s, and World War II as backdrop for the story.

• An interview with Tan Twan Eng
• For more information on Tan Twan Eng, visit here.

TASH AW

Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1971 but raised up by Malaysian parents in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Aw studied law at Jesus College, Cambridge at the tender age of eighteen, and the University of Warwick before settling down in London to write. After graduating, he worked as a lawyer for four years while writing his debut novel which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Aw cited his literary influences as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner and Gustave Flaubert.

Tash Aw is a private person with not much details being revealed about his personal life and character, so to know more about him, one can contact him through michelle.kane@harpercollins.co.uk OR anna@davidgodwinassociates.co.uk, and also follow up with his updates through his Twitter.

The Harmony Silk Factory (HarperPerennial) is the textiles store owned by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It juxtaposes three accounts of the life of an enigmatic man at a pivotal and haunting moment in Malaysian history; revealing the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First novel (Asia Pacific region), all in 2005. It was also longlisted for the world's prestigious International Impac Dublin Award in 2007 and the Guardian First Book Prize.

Aw's second novel Map of the Invisible World (Spiegel & Grau) was released in May 2009 and narrated about two brothers, Adam and Johan, who were abandoned by their mother as children, and later separated when they were adopted by different families in Indonesia and Malaysia. A page-turning story, it follows the journey of two brothers and an American woman who are indelibly marked by the past—and swept up in the tides of history.

His latest novel entitled Five Star Billionaire, published by Fourth Estate in 2013, is actually a series of narratives covering the experiences of Malaysian migrants attempting to settle in China and begin a new life for themselves. It offers rare insight into the booming world of Shanghai, a city of elusive identities and ever-changing skylines, of grand ambitions and outsize dreams. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2013; Aw's first nomination.

Aw also wrote a few short stories:

• "To The City", Granta, 100 (Winter 2007)
• "Sail", A Public Space, Issue 13 (Summer 2011)
• "Tian Huaiyi", McSweeney's 42 (December 2012)

• A Conversation With: Novelist Tash Aw
• For more information on Tash Aw, visit here.

Wong Phui Nam

WONG PHUI NAM (1935)

Economist & Poet

Date of Birth: 20 September 1935

Place of Birth: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Education: Batu Road School & The Victoria Institution;

The University of Singapore (B. A. Economics)

Phui Nam's father, Wong Tak Wah, was of Peranakan stock - a fourth-generation descendent of a taikong (captain of a Chinese junk) who settled in Malaysia after his ship ran aground near Malacca and got damaged beyond repair. His mother was a first-generation Malaysian Chinese, the daughter of a boatman in Canton, who was merely a child when she came to Malaysia as a "package" along with Wong's maternal grandmother's sister who was destined to wed a tin miner. After his marriage to Phui Nam's mother, Wong decided to distance himself culturally from his roots. Wong, who was "more Cantonese than the Chinese" died in April 1944 during the Japanese Occupation, five years after his wife passed away of kidney failure. Phui Nam was four years old.

Till today, he still has nightmares "of coffins tipping over."

"There used to be what we called a death-house on Jalan Sultan. It was a hospice. The dying were upstairs. The dead were downstairs. I remember seeing all these dead bodies -- and then my mother. It was a shock."

His father's body was kept in the same death house.

"I was sleeping... At that time, we lived on Galloway Road. Relatives suddenly arrived. In the dark, my brother took me to the death house. All those bodies again..." 

He recalls an episode in his past when his family was in mortal danger:

"My father was an ARP, an Auxiliary Reserve Policeman. We were going to Singapore... we reached Johor Bahru, but then had to run into the jungle. Near Ulu Tiram, we had to make a whole circle back around to avoid them... It's true, they used to throw babies up and bayonet them. I remember dead bodies littered on the roadside."

At one time, one of his sisters was nearly taken by soldiers.

"She was dragged out, my stepmother bargaining with them, we were all there -- but then, the officer suddenly blew a whistle, and the soldiers left."

On the streets, Phui Nam recalls that someone -- anyone -- could be suddenly asked to stand on a piece of rubber wood, and hold their bicycle up in the sun for hours.

"Recently, I was in Mid Valley Megamall. I heard a group of Japanese men talking behind me, and I got the shivers." 

Eighth of 11 siblings, Wong Phui Nam had his early education at two Chinese school in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown. He later joined the Batu Road School and from there went on to the Victoria Institution in 1949. While he was there in the morning, he was attending private classes in classical Chinese in the afternoon, boning up on Tang Poetry and the Three Character Classic. He was also interested in music and took up violin during his schooling.  He was equally adept at sports on the V.I. field where he actually broke the school high jump record during the 1954 School Sports and was secretary to Loke Yew House which he represented in swimming and table tennis. By then, Phui Nam had dabbled in poetry but had not shown his works to anyone.

At the University of Malaya in Singapore, there was active discouragement towards writing poetry by his western lecturers due to him presuming to use the English language as a medium. Still, Phui Nam was inspired by the Singaporean poet Edwin Thumboo who has just published his first work Rib of Earth and so he began to read whatever he could lay his hands on. In addition, Phui Nam was the editor of the student journal The New Cauldron and was later responsible for two anthologies: Litmus One: Selected University Verse, 1949-1957 and Thirty Poems.

On graduation, Phui Nam became an Assistant Controller of the Industrial Development Division of the Ministry of Commerce in Kuala Lumpur. He had a stint in Bangkok as an economist later on and after completing that, he joined the MIDF where fellow Victorian Tun Ismail Mohamed Ali was chairman. He left after ten years for a private company, and eventually joined the Malaysian International Merchant Banking Ltd. After he retired in 1989 as a general manager, he wrote a poetry column for The New Straits Times and taught briefly at a private college. He is currently a training and marketing consultant in a private company.

As early as the 1950s, Phui Nam spoke of the poet's dilemma—whether, in his words, one "just wrote poetry, or a poetry identifiably Malayan." Wong believed that the language was at its best when the poet was attending to his or her response to the "sum total of conditions under which we as Malaysians live." In the preface to his first and landmark volume of poems, How The Hills are Distant, he attested that "these poems need to be written. They are of a time, of a place, of a people who find themselves having to live by institutions and folkways which are not of their heritage, having to absorb the manners of languages not their own."

Most of the poems Phui Nam wrote during the sixties first appeared in Bunga Emas, an anthology of Malaysian literature edited by fellow Victorian T. Wignesan. Phui Nam's poems have also appeared in Seven Poets, The Second Tongue, The Flowering Tree, Young Commonwealth Poets '65, Poems from India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaya. He was also published by literary journals like Tenggara, Tumasek, South East Asian Review of English.

His mature poems are regarded as among the best Malaysian poems in English, unsurpassed in their eloquence and linguistic richness. Most of them are contemplative and draw their images from the local landscape. Phui Nam's poetry explores the experience of living in multi-cultural Malaysia. According to him:

Before the British set up the country, Malaysia was a totally agrarian society. Suddenly we get this commercialism and development of plantations to supply a metropolitan power. Even for a writer in Malay, whether he is a Malay or a non-Malay, he has to reinvent the language. All the more so for Indians and Chinese. For a Chinese, when we write in Chinese, we cannot pretend that nothing has happened and try to write Tang poetry. So for us to write in English, we are exiled three times, culturally and spiritually from China, culturally from the indigenous Malay culture and then writing in English. We cannot claim that it is a tradition. I would say we have appropriated the language. So, in a way, it is a much more interesting medium to work with the language against the tradition.

Phui Nam's poetry contain traces of abandonment, loss, death, and a greater quest as main themes which Associate Professor Mohammad A Quayum noted originated from "anxiety in the young boy which eventually filtered into his early poems". Such rude awakening in childhood might well have found new oxygen in some of his bitter allusions to the birth of a country that held out hope to be "all things to all people" -- and then didn't, and rots instead. Many of the poems of Ways of Exile seem sick with disappointment. 

However, in 1971, in a paper on "sectional and national literatures" presented originally in Bahasa Melayu at the Kongres Kebudayaan Kebangsaan, Llyod Fernando (novelist, playwright, and former Head of English Literature at Universiti Malaya) wrote that all of Phui Nam's poetry deals with "preparations for a kind of self-renewal. They take place in a luminous world just behind the scenes and are more related to a cryptic mood, rather than to the common processes of thoughts." Of Remembering Grandma and Other Rumours (1989), Fernando reckoned it "one of the first efforts" to get to grips with -- rather than moan about -- the "detribalisation" anxiety that has dogged the Malaysian writer for years."

"...the thematics of estrangement and exile found in Wong's earlier work -- familiar topoi of the diasporan culture of Malaysian Chinese -- are clarified in recurrent, one might say obsessive symbols of pathology."    ~Chin Woon Ping, on Remembering Grandma, 2001

"...bleak preoccupations with physical and spiritual decay, death and possible resurrection."     ~Robert Yeo, Singaporean playwright

"Dark and wonderful, especially his new work."                         ~Eddin Khoo, critic, poet and arts-activist

Bibliography

1. (1968). How The Hills are Distant. Tenggara, Department of English, University of Malaya. (Prose poetry)
2. (1989). Remembering Grandma and Other Rumours. Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.
3. (1993). Ways of Exile. Skoob Books Pub. Ltd.
4. (2000). Against the Wilderness. Blackwater Books.
5. (2006). An Acre of Day's Glass: Collected Poems. Maya Press.
6. (2006). Anike. Maya Press Sdn. Bhd. (Play directed by Jo Kukathas & Zalfian Zufi)

Literary Works by Malaysians

Malaysian literature in English may be a relatively new literary phenomenon that originated in the late 1940s to unite the multiethnic population but how many Malaysians truly know the geniuses behind the literature produced (besides the major, well-known writers, dramatists, poets, and others, such as K.S. Maniam, Shirley Lim, A. Samad Said, and so on)?

                               A BIBILIOGRAPHY OF UNRENOWNED MLIE

NOVELS


Khoo  Kheng-Hor (1956)

Born on the 2nd March of 1956 in Penang, Khoo is a Malaysian author and speaker on contemporary application of the 500 B.C. Chinese military treatise, The Art of War, by renowned military strategist Sun Tzu. He received his formal education at St. Xavier's institution before continuing his pre-university education at St. Joseph's Institution when he left for Singapore in 1974. After completing his studies in 1978, he worked as a journalist with The Star until 1980 when he joined Malaysia's largest sugar refinery, Malayan Sugar Manufacturing Company Berhad, as a personnel manager.

To date, Khoo has published over 26 business and management books, most of which are based on Sun Tzu's Art of War as it was his mission in life to "suntzunize" as many people as possible. In 1997, he was appointed as honorary Assistant Superintendent of Police by the Singapore Police Force in recognition for his contribution as consultant-trainer to the Singaporean police force although he was a Malaysian citizen.

After pursuing his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Stirling in Scotland and graduating with Distinction in 1991, Khoo was offered the job as Director of Operations for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in Singapore. In early 1994, Khoo was retrenched from KFC as a result of an ownership change, despite contributing to increased sales and profitability. He said:

Months before leaving my office, I had already looked around for another job, but unfortunately, top jobs are hard to come by. I felt like a ronin then. It occured to me then that if no daimyo wanted to employ me, then I would be my own little warlord and employ myself.

At the age of 43 in the year 1999, Khoo went into retirement (hang up his sword'; in his own words) to live a quiet and laid-back life in Cameron Highlands with his wife and their "four-legged son", Bandit, a Yorkshire Terrier. When asked on his decision to live in the mountains, Khoo said:

Life is more than work, work, work or just making money. I don't want to be like the preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes (in the Bible) who lamented that he looked on all labors that he had labored to do, and he beheld only vanity and a striving after wind. We may not be very wealthy but we have made enough to live by since we do not subscribe to a lavish lifestyle. So why not have time to do the things we like to do for a change? [Khoo, Kheng Hor (2001). Are You A Maverick?. Malaysia: Pelanduk Publications. pp. 61-73, 79, 85-86, 117-120] 

His first novel, Taikor, was nominated by the National Library of Malaysia for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His second novel, Mamasan, was released in April 2007 and his third novel, Nanyang, hit the book stores in October 2007.

• For more information, visit here.

Rani Manicka

• (2002). The Rice Mother. Sceptre. Republished in 27 July 2004. Penguin Books.
• (2004). Touching Earth. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
• (2009). The Japanese Lover. Hodder & Stoughton.
• (2013). Black Jack. Rani Manicka.
• For more information, visit here or contact her here. 

    

Preeta Samarasan

Born in Batu Gajah, Preeta's father was a schoolteacher in Ipoh where she attended Sekolah Menengah Convent School. She won a United World College scholarship in 1992 and went to the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West in New Mexico, U.S.A. After graduating in 1994, she went to Hamilton College and then joined the Ph.D. program in musicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. She started work on her novel in 1999 and eventually gave up on her dissertation to write. After graduating from the MFA program in creative writing from the University of Michigan, she worked on polishing her novel.

• (2008). Evening is the Whole Day. HarperCollins Publishers.

-The story illuminates the dark secrets and layers of lies of an affluent Indian immigrant family living in Ipoh while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia.

• For more information or contact, visit here.             

SHORT STORIES

Preeta Samarasan

• (2007). 'Our House Stands in a City of Flowers'.

Shih-Li Kow (1968) 

• (2007). News From Home. Silverfish Books. 
• (2008). Ripples and Other Stories. Silverfish Books.
• (Coming Soon). The Millers Go Fishing (novel)
• For more information, visit here.  

Margaret Lim Hui Lian (1947)

Born in 1974 in Kuching, Sarawak, Lim obtained a B.A. in English from the University of British Columbia and a B.Ed. from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. She taught 10th and 11th graders English Literature in Sarawak before she moved with her husband to Germany. She has no pets, but enjoys feeding the birds in her garden.

She established Fairy Bird Children's Books in May 2005 in Kuching with the sole intent of producing exciting books which would nurture children and at the same time, educate them on the rich culture of Sarawak. Her children's books are based on recollections of her personal childhood spent with the native people deep in the interior of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

Lim was included in the Sarawak Women's Museum, Kuching, Sarawak, on August 6, 2007. She was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards (ALMA) 2008. Her childhood dream was to be a Librarian or Museum Curator. Her advice is:

"What ever you do, dream on!"

• (2005). 'Payah'. Fairy Bird Children's Books.

-A fearless little Kayan girl called Payah who has a very soft heart for small helpless creatures in the rainforest of Sarawak and manages to rescue a hornbill and a mousedeer, and takes care of a baby Orang-utan. 

• (2006). 'Four Eyes'. Fairy Bird Children's Books.

-Sequel to 'Payah' in which after Payah's beloved playmates, Sammy the baby orang-utan and Kenyi the hornbill left for the Semenggoh Rehabilitation Centre, a mysterious thief steals her great aunt, Uku Nyalo's, fruits.

• (2007) 'Precious Jade and Turnip Head'. Fairy Bird Children's Books.

-Payah and her best friend, Usun, celebrates Chinese New Year with Precious Jade and Precious Jade's little brother, Turnip Head. Four Eyes, a little orphaned Penan boy becomes Turnip Head's best friend. However when one of Uku Nyalo's hens disappears, Payah learns that Four Eyes and Turnip Head are behind it and tries to hinder her great aunt's investigations.

• (2009) 'Nonah, or The Ghost of Gunung Mulu'. Fairy Bird Children's Books.   

-Nonah feels homesick for her tiny fishing village of Santubong on the west coast of Sarawak after joining her parents who were teaching in a school in the deep rainforest. She loses her shyness once she befriended Payah and her friends, Precious Jade and Usun. Together, they wrote a story winning them a trip to Sarawak's loveliest National Park, Gunung Mulu; just to uncover a plot to steal very rare orchids.

Uthaya Sankar SB

• (1977). "You, the Village and A Story". Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (1995). "New Year Wish" in Kisah Dari Siru Kambam. Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (1999). "Letters from Madras" in Tidak Selamanya Indah. Translated by Emmy Hermina Nathasia.
• (2005). "Listen, My Love..." in Kathakali. Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2006). "The Tale of Paurnami" in Rudra Avatara. Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2007). "Nothing but Nating". Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2009). "Notes of a Young Sepoy" in Kathakali. Translated by Chris Arjun.
• (2009). "Nayagi, Mistress of Destiny". Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2009). "Strange Things". Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.

POETRY


Uthaya Sankar SB

• (2001). "Bahasa Malaysia, My Grandfather" in Ratib Seribu Syair. Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2003). "Sitayana". Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB.
• (2005). "Fear Not to Live in Our Own Hut" in Ratib Seribu Syair and Suara Kita: Antologi Seribu Sajak Merdeka (2013). Translated by Uthaya Sankar SB. Edited by Amir Muhammad.
• For more information, contact here.

Poesy Liang (1975)

Born in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 1975 to father Leong Khai Kwan, a Malaysian Chinese of Cantonese descent and mother Chuang Mei Yin, a Taiwanese of Hakka descent, Poesy started to appear in advertisements and television programs since being discovered at the age of 14 in a Levi's Strauss television commercial as the 501 girl for Malaysia and Singapore but retired from the Chinese media ten years later.

Poesy's mother is an acupunturist and traditional herbalist, and was also trained in modern midwifery. Educated between 1982 to 1992 in Bukit Bintang Girls' School, Poesy first suffered from paraplegia at 17 during her first semester in architectural school due to acute thoracic intradural meningioma. She has had three spinal surgeries since then and recovered from paralysis with the help of her mother, Dr. Chuang who also traveled extensively to offer welfare aid to underprivileged patients in Peninsula Malaysia.

Through her growing years, Poesy faced social difficulties and financial discomfort whereby she isolated herself through reinvention of her various academic and creative pursuits as the media world tormented her and watched her parents struggled to make sacrifices for her failing health. When the opportunities arose, Poesy worked in the media industry to lighten the family's burdens. She has established herself as an artist cum author cum music composer cum interior and multidisciplinary designer cum jeweller cum entrepreneur cum philanthropist and motivational speaker. She also founded Helping Angels as a global Facebook group, a movement of compassion based on random acts of kindness created by volunteers who motivate career professionals to use their wisdom, influence, skills, and time resources to help others.

Poesy spends her free time pursuing new artistic skills and travels, while still dedicating a calling towards philanthropy and humanitarian works. She also swims long distance to train her legs, as other sports are not possible due to the injury of her spine.

• (2001). Reflection of Today.

"Probability of 1 today = 1000 tomorrows.
Half a mistake a hundred sorrows.
Time consistently brims up choices.
To be made among clanging noises.
No sure win situation?
1% inspiration 99% perspiration.
Every angle lends a separate hue of day.
A colorless debt it cannot repay.
Visions improve with quiet reflections.
Complaints regrets define incomprehension.
Churn the secular knowledge one borrows.
Todays are infinite spectrum of tomorrows." 

• For more information, click here.

FILMOGRAPHY

Amir Muhammad (1972)

Born in Kuala Lumpur on December 5, 1972 and educated in the University of East Anglia, Amir is a writer and independent filmmaker who has been writing for Malaysian print media (New Straits Times) since the age of 14.

He started publishing non-fiction books since 2007 such as Yasmin Ahmad's Films (2009) and 120 Malay Movies (2010) under his company Matahari Books and is taking a break from film-making.

• (2000). Lips to Lips. 
• (2002). 6horts (#1-#6)
• (2003). The Big Durian.
• (2005). The Year of Living Vicariously.
• (2005). Tokyo Magic Hour.
• (2006). The Last Communist.
• (2009). Malaysian Gods.
  

Strangers

Our life is always going to involve strangers; people unknown to us populate the world.

The worried voice of my mother, always at the back of my head with a well-intentioned advice,

“Never trust strangers.”

She believed that if I needed anything, 'blood will suffice more than water', and that the door of our home is always open.

But since I left home, I always strayed. I unintentionally mingled with those I do not know.

I partied with strangers,

talked to strangers, 

                                                          ate with strangers,

                                                                       fell in love with strangers,

and even fought with strangers.

Strangers were always there for me, and I was always there for them.

Talitha cumi

When I was a child, I don’t remember feeling too sad or depressed. I don’t remember drinking coffee and having migraines; suffering from stress and poring over heavy duties or responsibilities. I don’t think I visited the hospital or went for counselling therapies as much as I did now. I cannot recall dealing with people who would lie to you, cheat on you, stab your back in an instant, abuse you, torment you, and change on you for no good reason. I’m a zombie by day and I lay awake at night. I’m still trying to find that breaking point; to find within myself that child I once was.

Rule of Attraction #1

My fellow brethren and sisthren,

We have chanced upon the topic of love. It is stated in the Bible that "faith, love, and hope abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." (I Corinthians 13:13) "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19) "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4:8)

Most youngsters are getting muddled about the simple idea of love. They either misinterpret it or justify it or misuse it. Many underestimate the power and importance of this single four-letter word.

The opinion I am about to share may not be popular but I obtained it from an old grandmother so it might be worth paying attention to. Most guys think that in order to get into a relationship or get a girl to like them, they would have to shower these girls with attention, lavish gifts, and almost all of their effort and time. However, Elizabeth Erelafeya, a wise elderly said, "Don't chase after any girl that you like. Don't give her anything. Don't tell her anything. Don't even hint or give clues. Don't try too hard to make her notice you. Just be yourself. Invite her over. Talk to her like normal, as a friend. Treat her as normal."

Why?

How will that spark the love you need? How will that show her she is the one?

Girls are programmed to think that true love is when a guy is after them and showing them how much he loves them. A man, however, is capable of showing love just to get what he wants. A woman may only show love only if she is ready to trust and accept a man into her life. When the breakdown happens, a man may feel cheated for expending all his time and effort on a woman who do not really love him and a woman may get into the relationship just for the sake of having someone wait on her hand and foot without feeling real love in her heart.

So, change the way you approach love. "When you really love a woman, keep it a secret from her but never let her forget you. Get close to her and be yourself around her. You do not have to adapt to or compromise for her happiness but let her happiness revolve around you. And when she finally shows you that she truly loves you, then only do you let her know that you love her too."

Think about it. :)

A Short Story

How much can you say without saying very much? 

Perhaps I can relate to you the entire genealogy of my family’s history tree. 

Or I should begin by telling you each broken and whole fragments of myself. 

Why, if that turned out to be a bore, I am ready to impress you 

with my intellectual debates and discussions about the political and economic state of affairs. 

There is also nothing wrong in narrating a fictional adventure; 

a joke or two to lift the atmosphere. 

Disclosing, imparting and divulging in the universal tales 

that come from the furthermost hidden recesses of the soul.

Greetings!

To my dearest readers from every and any part of the world,

I'm honored to be joining in as part of a growing community that thrives on a personal virtual webpage to express oneself and educate others. I'm glad to be given this opportunity to share each other's insights and to encourage and build up one another besides giving criticism, correction and construction. I believe that without blogs, the Internet would not be an active and convenient source of the trading of knowledge and gathering of useful information.

In case you did not know, I am currently studying my first degree in English Literature at Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang. This is not my first and only blog. I am an observant, broad-minded, highly-opinionated, stubborn girl who is mostly lonely and loves to go on adventures. When I am indoors, I like to write, read, draw and surf the Internet. Besides that, I eat and sleep a lot.

What I am about to share with all of you will be bits and pieces of my external and internal world. I hope that no matter how static, uninteresting or unpleasant it may be, these are the moments I live in and live for. I cannot turn back the hands of the clock and I cannot erase the things I have done. You may ignore what I have to say or you can read it for we are all learning from each other in this life.

Feel free to contact me anytime about anything. :)

                                                                     

JULIET LAVANIA KAUR

21st June 1991

Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia

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Humdrum

I've been too accustomed to think by myself. That familiar masterpiece of art I was staring at. I couldn't put a finger on it but it looked too commonplace in this museum. I think we’re generally more attracted to the daily generic. I’m looking at what cannot be classified normal, natural or ordinary. I believe the public regularly sits anyone down if they try to stand out; those who don’t follow the customary, conventional routines of the society are systemically thrown out matter-of-factly. Yet, I struggle between this typical, uneventful way of life and my inclusive need to break free.

Sugar

Sometimes, we do not have to share all the sweetness of life with everyone. Just like sugar that is able to dissolve in plain water; the more we add water to our memories and experiences, the less of the sweet sugar we can taste. The little grains of pure sugar slowly dissipating until they completely disappear, and the two become one. When I noticed this prevalent interaction between sugar and water, I became more determined to keep our story a secret. Let it stay ever sweet in my heart, so that it will not waste away, like sugar in water.

Love is You

I told them a story about you, and they did not believe it. I started with your smile, because that is what I love the most, how it curves like a rainbow against a beautiful blue sky. I told them next about your eyes, dark windows with glowing lamps in the centre. Your hair between my fingers is what cotton candy is supposed to feel like; delighting in tracing your skin, kissed by the sun. But what was most difficult to explain was what I saw in you, because it was not them; because it was love, just you.

Promises

Promise you will never leave.

Promise you will never forget.

Promise you will never turn away.

Promise you will always stay faithful.

I cracked a smile when I perceive the promises

You sought of me

to keep and to cherish,

to explore, to learn, to meditate upon;

before leaving faster than the sun could set,

without a trace of shadow,

but just my footprints on your heart.

I only ask a single promise from you

Like my cherry on top of our cake,

To justify all of the promises implored of me;

‘Promise me you will always trust in me.’