Langkawi Mischief #1

I don't remember them all in order. They just randomly come to mind and I will put them here when I fill like it. I wish to have them all here but this is the first time that I actually do it. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I hope this will continue as I hoped.

So for the first mischief. I remember that I used to go to the rooftop of my hostel, just to lie down and look at the sky. We don't have Netflix back then, so it's just chilling and stargazing.

It wasn't that hard to get to the rooftop. Each floor has their own laundry hanging area, and the third/top floor had an square opening with a metal ladder. There was no hatch. You can just jump a bit and grab the ladder and climb up to the rooftop. It was as easy as that.

There were not much stars to see due to light pollution from the lampposts below. It didn't help either when the moon is full, but at least the moon was beautiful and it was way easier to navigate the rooftop with the moonlight.

Of course this was not allowed for safety reasons and that was the main reason for stargazing: we had to lie down to avoid being seen. And, yes, this mischief #1 was the least of them all.

The trivial hypothesis

I had a hypothesis about our perception of heat in my study years.

During winter, I tried taking a shower in fully hot water and fully cold water. It was so hot or so cold that it became painful. I closed my eyes and imagine that the hot water was actually very cold, and in worked; and vice versa.

So my hypothesis was: in extremes of temperature, our body would no longer feel hot or cold but pain, possibly due to overwhelming stimulus. And it actually serves as a protection, i.e. from scalding and frostbite. It seemed trivial and I kept it from myself.

Just now, I immersed my foot in hot water and it was quite hot to keep my foot immersed. My son was curious and wanted to try, so I warned him about the temperature. He hesitated at first but curiousity got the best of him. To my surprise, he did not flinch after immersing his foot, and after a few seconds gave a remark that sparked my memory. He said: "Ini bukan panas, ini sejuk" (this is not hot, this is cold).

It's nice to know that someone has the same observation as mine.

P/s: I did not try to look for journals with the same theory or hypothesis because I still feel it's trivial. So it remains a hypothesis for me.

A Bad Dream

Here I recall my series of bad dreams this morning.

From the point that I remember, it started with events that lead up to an argument with my wife. We were arguing at a square table, sitting with two of our friends. While arguing, my wife held a scalpel blade – without the blade holder – and threatened to kill herself. Then the argument lead to my wife slitting her throat with the scalpel blade. We were still arguing and I asked her, "What are you doing?" And she said, "I'm going to kill myself!" However, she showed no signs if getting weaker despite the fact that blood was gushing out of her throat and surprisingly she could still speak very clearly. I noticed that she only cut her left carotid artery and throat, her right carotid artery was intact. So I took my scalpel blade and stabbed her right carotid artery. She managed to grab a hold of my arm before I could begin slitting her throat from the right side. I pulled my arm away, leaving the blade stuck at her right carotid artery. — I don't know why I did that, but probably I couldn't stand watching her die for a long time that I wanted to end it quickly. — My action somehow infuriated her and she reacted by lunging into me and trying to slit my throat. I quickly grabbed both her arms and resisted for a few seconds. She went back to her seat, blood gushing out her throat, and the scene sort of went into a black fade out. I don't have to tell how our two friends beside us reacted. I believe you know how you would react if you were in their place.

Then there were blurred events and I end up following a guy into his room. I don't know who he was and I don't remember what we talked about. He then went to the toilet and at that moment a woman came to me. I didn't realize there was a woman in the room. We both sit on the bed and talked. The conversation was probably about my wife because I felt sad and empty because a large part of me was gone and there was nothing I could do to retrieve it back. I needed something to fill the hole in my heart. It made my realize how much she meant to me and how much I love her. It's so devastating to know that there was no way I could say that to her now that she's dead. That was when my conversation partner lay on the bed and pulled me to lie beside her. Then we hugged and I felt very sad because it made me remember my wife. I rolled to lie on top of her, still hugging her tightly. I cried. That was when the guy went out of the toilet. It didn't bother me because I was so deeply immersed in my sadness. The guy went straight to the door and went outside. Before the door went shut again, I lifted my head to get a glimpse, and I saw three of my wife's friends. Their faces were filled with shock and terror went down my spine. I stormed out the room to explain the situation to them but before I could say anything, they fired me with words

"So, there were 14 times before this?"

"The rumors about 14 times were true!"

I don't know what they were talking about but judging from the situation I think they were saying that I had a history of 14 occasions of extramarital affairs, which is to say – wow – a lot! I quickly rebutted and denied the rumors saying I never had any extramarital affairs and what they just saw was just me lying on top a woman. We didn't even have sex. It was a bad defense, I know. But I was honest, and that was the only thing I could say. My wife is dead. I needed someone to fill the hole. They looked surprised and said my wife is not dead. She recovered from her wounds. Unbelievable. I shouted her name, calling for her, and indeed she came. I was shocked as soon as I saw her. At the same time I felt my heart collapse because I thought my hope was gone. Now I have the chance to tell my wife how much I love her. I was overwhelmed with emotion that I only managed to squeak her name. I hugged her and told her how much I love her. Then the scene faded out to blackness, with a feeling that I managed to save my marriage after I almost accidentally destroyed it.

I had a brief moment of happiness.

My dream suddenly went to a scene where my wife slipped and fell down a spiral staircase. As she fell to the point where the stair had made a 90-degree rotation, the railing broke and she fell out the staircase and straight down to the floor. I saw it from a balcony opposite the staircase and I was devastated. Then my friend beside me told me that she was seizing. I took a hard look and noticed that her body was shaking. It started from her upper body. Her arms were frantically flexing and extending and she was muttering something – suggesting she had not lost her consciousness – about the pain she was experiencing. As she was seizing, her body slides forward till her feet touched a woman who was sitting at a table. Then her legs began seizing. She kicked the woman's back many times. It seemed as though she was jogging on the woman's back and then started running. And then the fit stopped, and my wife lay there, consciously silent. I went down to take her to the hospital. She could walk with my support, so we walked to the hospital since it was within walking distance. All the while I was constantly thinking of how my wife would live her life after this. She had a seizure after the fall, surely that means a significant brain damage. I ponder if I have the capacity to care for my disabled wife. How we would not be able to enjoy our lives as a couple anymore. The thoughts filled my head. As we entered the emergency department – it was a blue zone; not that it was labeled, but the walls were painted blue – I saw a doctor chasing out students and saying "Students please don't come inside here." It seemed the doctors were busy with something in the green zone. The doctor went back through the windowed door and turned right into the green zone. There was nothing to see beyond the door except for the light green-colored corridor wall. Just as the door closed, I saw through the door window the doctor fell on his back as if his feet were pulled forward. Soon after there were screams and exclamations, and that was when a big yellow wormlike thing bust through that door and sucked the upper half of one of the students. I could only imagine the student's fear of imminent death by the way his legs moved violently in a hopeless effort to break free. After the yellow thing swallowed the unfortunate student, it turned to face the side I was standing and opened its mouth. From its mouth, three to four smaller yellow things – presumably the offsprings – protruded out in place of a tongue. All of them opened their mouths and taunted us. I took my wife through the door behind us and went across the room and stopped before another door. It was actually one big room split into two by a glass separator. I could see through the glass separator and through the door window, the yellow monster was fighting with a few people. A person hit all the smaller yellow "tongues" with a long metal rod but it was to no avail. I was shuffling left and right at the door because I was unsure which room the monster would enter and I didn't want to end up in the same room as the monster. Luckily, the monster didn't enter either room and just stayed there to fight whoever it was fighting with. Then I took my wife out of the hospital, and the scene faded out.

Oddly enough, our encounter with the yellow wormlike monster somehow cured every single injuries my wife sustained from the fall. Suddenly I was taking my wife home on her scooter and I asked her if she would go home with her scooter so that I could ride my scooter, which was parked nearby, and go home. I didn't want to leave my scooter parked at a roadside. She said no. So I took a different path which was unfamiliar. My wife felt uncomfortable and asked me where was I taking her. I told her we were going home, but she refused to take this path. To avoid further anxiety, I stopped in front of a small grocery store and made a U-turn. Then I gazed upon the golden cloudy sky to speculate on the reason for my wife's anxiety. At that very moment, the clouds opened a small circular opening and then a brown wooden thing slowly descended from the clouds with one oar on each side. It seemed the wooden thing was kind of repelling the clouds. It descended only halfway through the clouds and went up again and the clouds closed behind it. I stopped the scooter and said to my wife, "Look! Did you see that?" My wife didn't reply. We just stared at the sky in silence, and then there it was again. This time it was a smaller opening a bit farther from the previous opening, and the same wooden thing descended halfway through the clouds. Then it went up and the clouds closed. If you couldn't imagine what I saw, it was like seeing a wooden boat from underwater, and the boat wasn't moving forward in a straight motion. Instead it was bouncing smoothly to move forward. It was beautiful to see a boat flying in the sky, but yes it was very weird. And that weird feeling gave rise to another feeling inside me. It was fear. I felt fear. And it was fear that consumed me and gave me a jolt that woke me up.

Soon after I woke up, I told my wife I love her very much and I wear my wedding ring for most of today. The end.

Wednesday, Nov 12th 2014

The Ampersand

I suddenly came across this piece of childhood memory, and I think I want to share it with everyone.

One day in primary school, my Bahasa Melayu teacher asked her pupils to write a short essay (a very short essay; it's primary school, isn't it?).
That night I managed to write one page of the A5-sized exercise book, but one word was not right. There were smudges on the word "dan" which was at the edge of the paper so the word was not really legible. So I erased the word with the intention to write it again, but it seemed that there wasn't enough space and I had to write it in condensed typography. It made the word stand out in the essay, which was not beautiful to me because it wasn't uniformly written.
Then I had an idea. What if I substitute the word with a symbol? I had seen many of the symbol "&" in posters and television so I thought I would use it. The problem was I didn't know how to write the symbol. Luckily, we had a PC. So I searched the keyboard for the symbol and eventually found it.
At first, I looked and stared at the symbol to figure out what path my pencil would have to take to write it. It looked like number eight but it was not number eight. I tried rotating my book around and writing the number eight upside down, but it turned out to be a horizontally flipped version of the symbol "&". I erased and wrote the symbol again and again just to get right in that tiny space of the page. It felt like learning to draw.
When I finally got it right, I smiled. I smiled happily. I managed to solve the problem, and now it looked beautiful. I was so proud of myself, I felt like the day has finally ended and I needed to sleep. I kept thinking how my teacher would praise me, seeing how smart and creative I was to have used the symbol instead of the word because of the tight space. That night I slept soundly.
The next day at school, still imbued with pride, I turned in my essay. Soon after, it was absolute shock. My teacher called me and scolded me. I couldn't remember what she said because she kept blabbering, but the gist of it was that the use of symbols in an essay was totally unacceptable. It was a taboo. That experience was absolutely different from my expectation the night before.
Though I did change back the symbol to the word, it was only on paper. I believed I had done nothing wrong. The use of the symbol was totally right and smart as well as creative. And I went through many errors trying to write it, for crying out loud!
So whenever I see the opportunity to use the symbol "&", I will use it instead of many other variants of the symbol invented by others, which were much easier to write as an act of rebellion to my teacher. Actually, it was more to rebellion against my teacher's reaction. The symbol "&" has a stigma on me, and bits of this memory surfaces every time I write the symbol.

Recently, I realized that had my teacher reacted differently, praised me despite saying that it was inappropriate to use symbols in an essay, I would not have this stigma. I would probably be interested to learn more about formats and do's and don'ts in writing essays. Probably I would respect her more and probably my relationship with her would be better and closer.
Nevertheless, I know this happened for some reason. Somehow it was a blessing in disguise.

Still, I believe that teachers should never discourage her students for anything they do, especially primary school students. React neutrally and ask them why they did that. If it is a bad thing, tell them why it is bad. Tell them truthfully and let them see and evaluate the pros and cons of their actions, and I believe that if they can see that an action does more harm than good, they will leave it for good.
Children like to rebel and if scolded they are likely to rebel more, mentally if not physically. However, if they are not discouraged, they feel that it is alright to do such things and it makes them feel satisfied. With parental guidance, they can then evaluate their actions and identify which is good and which is bad; and trust me, children want to become good people. They want to become superheroes and save civilians. Aren't they good people? Nobody wants to grow up to be a murderer! Well, except murdering villains — like in the movies!

The important thing to remember is to be careful with how you treat the children because your advice and actions will be the foundation of the lives they are going to build.

That's it for a bit of my memory and my opinion.

p/s: just recently I realized my way of writing the ampersand was different than the conventional method..no wonder it was hard for me to write it beautifully..