Back Home

We left for the hospital as soon as the kids left. We met my mum's sister. She's only a year older looking very weak. She mentioned how healthy-looking my mother was.

"Who asked you to move to Malaysia?" Teased my mother. Her husband looked on - smiling.

"Apa nak buat kalau jodoh kita orang Malaysia," she said weakly with a smile. Her husband added that disease knows no boundaries. If one's fated to fall sick, one will no matter where one is. They spoke and I could see that my sick aunt was glad that my mum dropped by - even if it was just for an hour or so. I guess it's little things like this that makes the difference.

As we're about to leave, we met her eldest son and youngest daughter. Again, it's funny though how warm they are with my mother. Afterall, it has been many years since the last time they visited us in Singapore.

I couldn't even recognize Aimi. I vaguely remember the little girl that came to our place a couple of times nearly a decade ago. And I only found out that she's 4 years younger than me. I found out coz somehow, I managed to speak to her. The me a decade ago would never. I asked her about school, talked about her course and stuffs. I asked her why we never spoke those many years ago when she came to stay over at our place with her mum and elder sister.

"Awak sombong," she said with a smile.

I simply smiled. I guess my introvert nature can easily be misread as arrogance and anti-social. I'm not surprised. I had always been the shy guy and still am I guess. But I'm talking more now though - I need to. Opportunities to talk such as this one comes once in perhaps 10 years so one has got to make every minute count.

We reached Singapore at around half past nine. As soon as we reached my place, we received an SMS from across the Causeway. Kak Bibah asked if we've reached home safely and said that she wanted to let us know that her dad's been warded into the hospital due to heart attack. My mum felt sad. I guess we'll never know what's going to happen next. I prayed for the both of them to recover soon.

Earlier, I received an sms that informed me that my faculty's floorball team didn't make it through to the quarters. I logged on to the Internet to check my examination results. I saw an F in a module that I found doable. But I smiled when I saw an A in Magical Realism. My GPA maintained. Alhamdulillah.

After a day of mixed emotions, I realized that the setbacks that I've experienced are nothing really. I took a deep breath, replanned my timetable and wrote about my trip. There's so many lovely things in life and I find it foolish to feel down because of a minor stumble. I just gotta pick myself up and move on. I've got dreams to make me study hard coz right now, I'm far from good. And not only that, I must study smart too! Insyaallah I will.

Will you be the one?

I'll be the one who brings you coffee when you can't get up
I'll be the one who turns the light out when you go to sleep
I'll be the one who turns your stomach into something else and you say
Shut up, shut up, every time I say
I'll be the one who takes your coat off, one to take the blame ...

Yes yes. I'll be the one. But will you be the one too?

Writer's note: Someone's just tired and simply wonders if he is still sweetly distracted by the sweet distraction. I guess he still is. haha. Someone's talking to himself, again...

Writing isnt an easy task. I still cannot write a decent conclusion. I seem to think that I have the ideas but I can't seem to write it the way other intellectual academics write their papers. Introduction to Magical Realism has indeed stretched myself to what I think is my maximum and I'm glad I had challenged myself to take this elective this semester. Introduction to Children's Literature with me some time in the near future anyone? (:

The Magic of Hybridity

If my head were to explode write now, words and thoughts and ideas will fill the space surrounded by the four well known blue walls. The space known as my bedroom. Oh man, this talk about SPACE has just reminded me that spaces also play a significant role in most of the text - but I shall not digress. I shall not digress solely because the very thought that is sitting right on top of the piles of words, thoughts and ideas right now. And if you realize, I'm beginning to "talk" instead of write.

I left out the concept of "Transgression of Boundaries" in Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons from my previous entry because of my ability to think of any as I write. However, as I set out to write on my next plan, I realized the following:


HYBRIDITY can actually be interpreted as a transgression of stable boundaries. One of the most disputed terms in postcolonial studies, hybridity commonly refers to “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonisation” (Ashcroft,Griffiths and Tiffin, 2003). Syncretism on the other hand, is the reshaping, union or attempted fusion of different systems, beliefs, thoughts and practices through cultural accommodation so that "they consciously or unconsciously blend with those of the dominant culture"(Rheenan, 2003). In both these concepts, the blurring of boundaries between different worlds and categories contributes to magical aspect in Of Love and Other Demons.

Hybridization takes many forms in the book. Hybridization is taken literally as illustrated in several instances. A slave named Judas was referred to as "a minotaur" - part man, part bull. In addition, when the Marquis mentioned his fear of horses, Abrenuncio suggested that "if we broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur" - a creature that is part man, part horse. We later learn that "Sierva María's hair coiled with a life of its own, like the serpents of Medusa" - who part woman, part snake. References to hybrid mythological creatures were probably made to blur the distinction between the hybridity that took place in myths and the ones that are taking place in reality. It is also interesting to note that the creatures were those from Greek myths thus, making the book a hybrid in itself - a hybrid of European literary realism and the magic of Latin American reality.

Racial and religious hybridity is one that occurs in the real world setting of the text. For example, Marquez's protagonist Sierva Maria is the daughter of a mestizo woman and a Spanish marquis. Father Aquino was a priest of African decent who could converse in Yoruban, Congolese and Mandingo. In addition, "(the Church) had constructed sumptuous cathedrals to hide the pagan pyramids, not realizing that the natives came to Mass because their sanctuaries still lived beneath the silver altars" - this illustrated the religious hybridization of Christianity and paganism. We also read of the "chaotic mixing of blood that had gone on since the conquest: Spanish blood with Indian blood, and both of these with blacks of every sort, even Mandingo Muslims"- this went further to show how the initial hybrid of racial bloodlines can eventually lead to the hybrid of religion.

In the text, hybridization was seen as polluting when the bishop "asked himself whether such miscegenation had a place in the Kingdom of God". In this case, Marquez uses hybridity to allow readers to imagine and feel the plight of the indigenous. The Church's main objective was to establish the dominance of Christianity by assimilating the indigineous into Spanish culture and colonial order. Hybridization was seen as a (threatening) ‘contamination’ of Spanish blood. Hybridity and multiculturalism was interpreted as a gradual dilution of the exclusiveness of the Spanish colony. It was viewed as a threat when boundaries between races, ideologies and beliefs began to blur. And for this reason, the exorcism on Sierva Maria and the Inquisition can be seen as a repressive means to silence the colonized.

Through the concept of hybridity, Gabriel Garcia Marquez gave readers a feel of what life was like during and post-colonialism for the colonizer and well as the colonized. It also brings to light the negativity that is seems to be associated with the term hybridity and forces us to ask the question whether hybridity is a form of contamination or a form of creative transgression.


Writer's note: As I decide to end this looping piece of writing prematurely, I smile and am thankful that I'm in the engineering field. Writing essays after essays will definitely drain my love for writing and I definitely do not want that to happen. My heartfelt sympathy to those majoring in Literature.

Writer's latest note: I'm writing this a day after my paper. I wrote something during the exam that I found interesting. Week's ago, I wondered why the African priest Father Aquino died a mysterious death. While writing my paper, I found a possible answer: Father Aquino embodies the hybrid of race and religion. Perhaps, Marquez wanted to put across the idea that even this was unacceptable in the eyes of the Church.

I wrote that the Inquisition and the exorcism was the Church's way to silence the colonized - as represented by the 'hybrid' Sierva Maria. It was their way of showing the authority they had over the colonized and to some extent, their hatred for the indigenous. Perhaps then, one could imply that Father Aquino didnt die a mysterious death after all. Interesting. This thought of mine (as crazy as it may sound) was the perfect way to end my paper. Hope I get a decent grade for it.

The Transgression of Boundaries

In magical realism the writer confronts reality and tries to untangle it, to discover what is mysterious in things, in life, in human acts. The principle thing is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds but the discovery of the mysterious relationship between man and his circumstances. In magical realism key events have no logical or psychological explanation.

.....Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature. Magical Realism. Ed. Zamora and Faris, p. 119-123.

Roh’s conception of magical realism was intrinsically interartistic. In his 1925 essay he asserted that “magical realist” painters created a new kind of imagery whose “special way of intuiting the world …can apply to all the arts, including music”.

(In Magical Realism)....all “seeing” is symbolic, and requires mental operations that literary critics take for granted when we speak about verbal “images.” The relation of consciousness to the visible world is more likely to be the purview of philosophers, and more recently, of psychologists and neurologists, than of literary critics. To apply Roh’s argument to literature, then, we must acknowledge the physical and cultural operations by which the apprehension of material objects (what the eye sees) become literary “images” (what the “mind’s eye” sees).

....Lois Parkinson Zamora, The Visualizing Capacity of Magical Realism: Objects and Expression in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges

May I be able to "see" as they see.

I've been tossing the ideas around for a week now. Scribbles after scribbles, Google searches after Google searches and I'm still unable to write a decent coherent plan. Here goes yet another "plan as I write" piece....

BOUNDARIES, in both the physical and non-physical sense of the word, play a very significant role in The Metamorphosis, Of Love and Other Demons and Amelie. Boundaries that we so often take for granted serve to provoke the reader "to actively interact with the text in order to ascribe meaning to the place where it collapses"(Pentony) and forces us to reexamine the existence of boundaries in our present lives. Here, I shall attempt to discuss the significance of boundaries in Kafka's book The Metamorphosis and Jeunet's film Amelie.

In The Metamorphosis, the first boundary we see are "the four well-known walls"(Kafka 4). Besides giving us a glimpse of how much time he had spent in his room, this physical boundary is significant in the introduction of more abstract boundaries in the text. These walls literally and physically prevents him from coming out and the house is a slightly bigger boundary that keeps the family in. This boundary comes into play as we learn that "standing out clearly on the other side of the street .... was a hospital"(Kafka 24). For some unexplained reason, no one sought medical help for Gregor. Was it because everyone felt that Gregor was no longer human?

We see Kafka's protagonist Gregor caught between two worlds: the animal and the human world. Due to his transformation, Gregor had to "hurl himself ... with all his force" just to liberate himself from the bed (Kafka 9). He had "an animal's voice"(Kafka 20) and his sense of taste gradually changed - he prefer leftovers and spoilt cheese over sweetened milk and white bread. However, he still retains characteristics that are recognizably human. "He felt a great pride that he had been able to provide such a life"(Kafka 34) and when his family had an argument, Gregor hissed in anger that "no one thought about shutting the door and sparing him the sight of this commotion" (Kafka 73). While physically, Gregor was a vermin, he retains the emotions and thoughts that separates us human from animals. The transgression of boundary between the human world and the animal world provokes the question of what makes a human ... human.

As I read on, I began to lose my ability to distinguish the humans from the animals. The fact that his family never sought medical help for Gregor disgusts me far beyond Gregor's transformation. Gregor's family, horrified that Gregor has become an enormous insect, keep him in his bedroom and refuse to interact with him. When Gregor broke out one day and ventured into the living room, his father threw apples to chase him back in. One managed to hit him in the back. Eventually the apple becomes rotten and infected. Gregor's health deteriorated. Despite being treated like an animal, Gregor "remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection"(Kafka 89) moments before his last breath. He "remembered his family with deep feeling and love"(Kafka 89). Just because one appears human, does it "naturally" make one better than animals?

Traditional boundaries that typically exist in every household appears to be blurred in The Metamorphosis. We learn that Gregor financially supports his parents and younger sister despite them being able of fully supporting themselves. The boundary between a younger sister and her older brother is usually one that is bound with unconditional respect. However we see this boundary transgressed as "the sister now kicked some food very quickly into his room in the morning and at noon"(Kafka 71) and how she "had grown tired of caring for Gregor"(Kafka 73). The transgression of traditional boundaries begs the question of the existence of such boundaries in the first place. Is it the jobs of fathers to go out and work? Is it acceptable not to work despite being able to do so? Should a younger sister respect her elder brother unconditionally?

Through the transgression of boundaries, Kafka might have wanted to alter our perspective on things that we might find not normal. For instance, the way we treat the physically and mentally disabled, the stereotypes we attach to people that are different from us - Muslims, Christians and Jews etc. Perhaps through the use of boundaries, he wanted to put across the point that boundaries are lines drawn by Man and it is something that can be redrawn by Man.

Besides provoking thoughts among readers, boundaries can help create a common ground between the audience and the literature that they read or watch.

In the film Amelie, Jeunet's explores a personal boundary that exist within us - the boundary that makes us either an introvert or an extrovert. His protagonist Amelie is an introvert who enjoys the simple pleasures of life. However, she transgressed the boundary that separates an introvert and an extrovert when she made the first move and eventually getting the guy of her dreams. The boundary between the possible and the impossible is also transgressed when we see Amelie's imaginary friends and her suicidal pet goldfish. The fact that Amelie ended up with the guy of her dreams despite her roundabout way of getting him evokes the question of it's possibility. Having created a common ground through boundaries that already exist in our lives, Jeunet's transgression of those boundaries moves us into doing something that we felt was never possible. By destroying the boundary that separates introverts from the extroverts, Jeunet introduces a new class that one can fall into - one that sets one's own boundaries instead of being bound by boundaries that had been created by others before them. The use of boundaries in Amelie inspires positive change.

Boundaries can either keep us in or keep us out. And there can also exist a world that knows no boundaries. The use of boundaries as seen in The Metamorphosis and Amelie serves only as a guide for us to decide the boundaries that should be created, those that should stay, as well as the ones that needs to go.

The Magic of Dreams

As the exams draw nearer, we begin to understand rather than simply knowing. I wonder why we can only develop this ability now and not weeks earlier. 14 weeks in a semester seems a little too short. But I guess it's the same in other universities, isnt it?

My first and most favourite paper is in 3 days - Introduction to Magical Realism. Posts labelled "Magical Realism" are the ones I wrote to help me recall each texts. They arent the typical conventional post about myself - though it's not surprising if you find me in every piece of writing. In the coming three days, I will be writing posts on "Magical Realism" as part of my preparation for my paper. One might say it's unwise to share one's thoughts for the exam online but what are the odds of all 200 students in class finding me? And if some do end up here, please do share some of your thoughts too in the comments below. Anws, I believe in sharing what I know as only through sharing will you learn. Unwise? Maybe, but that's just me.

I've also been trying to figure out how the comparative essay question will be like. This is a newly added component to the exam so sample questions from past year papers are unavailable. However, one can always make educated guesses, can't they?

Comparative Essays Definition

"Great minds think alike" – this expression underpins the rationale of a comparative essay. In a comparative essay, you are expected to discuss the similarities between or among two or more works. For example, in literature, writers typically address universal themes of the human condition; in the social sciences, academics often find common ground for analysis; ..... In a comparative essay, your professor expects that you will grasp the key concepts in your field of study by examining the works of more than one writer or scholar in an academic discipline.

[http://www.comparative-essay.com/]

So here, I shall identify several common ground among the three texts that I'm focussing on: Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis(TM), Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate(LWFC) and a small dose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons (OLAOD). Firstly, the concept of hybridity - the most obvious of the lot. Secondly, the battle between strong female vs the weak male characters: Grete vs Gregor and his father (TM), Sierva Maria and Martina Laborde vs Ygnacio, Abrenuncio, Father Cayetano Delaura, Father Aquino and the Bishop(OLAOD) and Mama Elena, Tita and Gertrudis vs Pedro and Dr Brown (LWFC). And lastly, the subtle and abstract use of abjects and space in the texts. I prefer to leave the concept of the grotesque unique to TM and the concept of feminism unique to LWFC.

I've briefly written on the grotesque and abjects in "The Magic of Abjects". Hence insyaallah, during the course of the next few days, I plan to write on the following:

1. Is LWFC genuinely 'revolutionary' and feminist or does it support traditional values and gender roles
2. The significance of hybridity and syncretism
3. The significance of abjects and space
4. The significance of food and cooking in LWFC
5. Reasons why female characters are being portrayed in a much stronger light than males

It's a relatively huge task Ive set myself out to do despite being in a battle with monsters with names like Probability and Statistics and Soil Mechanics. But you see, I'm a dreamer - so anything and everything is possible. This is what I meant by "The Magic of Dreams" for it's dreams such as these that give you something to hold on to and work towards. I'm just glad that my dream has helped me to finally turn the mess in my head into something tangible and coherent - and I hope it has helped some of you with the mess in your head too!

The Magic Of Abjects

"ACCORDING TO JULIA KRISTEVA in the Powers of Horror, the abject refers to the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk." [Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject."]

"Barbara Creed writes: The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self." [Samantha Pentony, "How Kristeva's theory of abjection works in relation to the fairy tale and post colonial novel: Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and Keri Hulme's The Bone People."]

The word "ABJECT" has been mentioned one too many times in class that it deserves my attention. In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, physical abject seem to stand in for, or symbolises the social abject. I read of the physical abjects - the "sticky substance" and "brown liquid" that came out of Gregor, who is both a physical and social abject himself. Firstly, he is neither a cockroach nor human. His fall to abjection is supported by the fact that no one sought medical help for Gregor despite the hospital being situated just across the street. He falls deeper into abjection among the dirt and rubbish is his room when his sister no longer cleaned his room as thoroughly as she used to. Secondly, ever since his partial transformation, he has been kept away within the confines of his room - away from society. He was no longer able to perform his duty as the provider of the family. Everytime Gregor attempts to leave his room, he was chased back in.

On one occasion, I see Gregor being chased into his room by his own father by "throwing apple after apple" in his direction."A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor's back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into Gregor's back really hard." Later we learn that "no one ventured to remove the apple, it remained in his flesh as a visible reminder." Kafka wrote that the wound "seemed by itself to have reminded the father that in spite of his present unhappy and hateful appearance, Gregor was a member of the family, something one should not treat as an enemy, and that it was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one's aversion and to endure - nothing else, but endure."

I immediately scribbled along the margin the word "GROTESQUE". The way Gregor's father treated him disgusts me. No father should simply endure the presence of his son irregardless of the condition his son is in. And having left an apple in his son's back, Gregor's father could have shown a little bit more care and concern for his son instead of "endure - nothing else, but endure". I find Gregor's father more disturbing and grotesque than the physically disturbing and partially transformed Gregor. It's also useful to note that other sources of the grotesque in The Metamorphosis include Gregor's own thoughts and perspective after the transformation as well as the way his sister and mother reacted to his transformation.

I've been figuring out the reasons for the use of abjects in literary works like The Metamorphosis and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons throughout the course. Perhaps, the following best decribes one of it's many uses: "The use of abjection ... provides a forum for the exploration of the subconscious. It is provocative because it forces the reader to contemplate that which is uncomfortable to face. This both disorients the reader and encourages us to actively interact with the text in order to ascribe meaning to the place where it collapses." (Pentony)

Hence in The Metamorphosis, I find that abjects highlight and amplify the grotesque to make readers truly feel for the suffering protagonist, make us hate the way his family treated him and hopefully, make us treat our own family and loved ones that little bit better.

The use of abjects is also present in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons. However, they play a slightly different role as compared to those in Kafka's The Metamorphosis. "Then Delaura witnessed the fearful spectacle of one truly possessed. Sierva María's hair coiled with a life of its own, like the serpents of Medusa, and green spittle and a string of obscenities in idolatrous languages poured from her mouth." Here, the green spittle that came out from Maria's mouth amplifies her rage and anger towards Father Delaura.

The concept of abject was applied when describing the state of Bernarda Cabrera, Sierva Maria's mother, a mestiza. "Her Gypsy eyes were extinguished and her wits dulled, she shat blood and vomited bile, her siren's body became as bloated and coppery as a three-day-old corpse, and she broke wind in pestilential explosions that startled the mastiffs." Here, the abject is used to degrade the indigenous people to the lowest possible status - to reflect the degradation they were subjected to as the colonized.

Other People's Shoes

"Try to put yourself in his shoes once in a while so that you can have a feel of how he feels." This and others that carry a similar meaning can be detrimental to one's health. Initially he wears the shoes of others to be a more considerate person for one should not do unto others what he does not want others to do unto him. But as time passes, he began to wear their shoes to try and be that person - he tries to anticipate their possible reactions to his possible actions. When he feels that things are very likely to go his way, he'll execute his plans. But when he has the slightest of doubt, things usually remain unmoved. Should he then stop wearing other people's shoes?

Why bother trying when I know what's going to happen? He asks himself after wearing a pair of shoes that isnt his, without realizing that life isnt as predictable as the films he'd seen or the few books he'd read. He wonders if it's time to dream less and think less. He wonders if it's time to stop finding too much pleasure in the simplest of pleasures. But he wonders if this is a positive thing or a dangerous form of escapism - a way of avoiding unpleasant realities and abandoning "big political ideals".

In my previous entry, I shared how a simple pleasure has kept me going day to day. She helps me to avoid falling into the trap where I start to whine and complain about anything and everything. Clearly, this a positive thing. However, after the lengthy conversation tonight, it could also be a dangerous form of escapism. I've become too comfortable in my own little world that I'm starting to fear certain things in the real world. Someone pointed out that this fear of mine could make me remain single all my life. Worse still, a stalker. Now, that's dangerous. Was Amélie a stalker?

Escapism is bad. It becomes a habit. It may be a way of avoiding unpleasant realities but in reality, the unpleasant are usually unavoidable. Perhaps what I need is someone to make my life unpleasant. Get me a Liverpool jersey.

.... [Inserts a new paragraph the next morning]..... While preparing to go to school, a thought flashed pass his mind. He scribbled somewhere the following: "Escapism for ordinary people is bad. But for introverts like Amelie and me, escapism is a good thing. We are escaping from our own introversion by exploring and enjoying life through simple pleasures. It's only a matter of time before I explore and enjoy life beyond its simple pleasures. Look at Amelie - towards the end, after playing her little games, she ended up with the person she wanted to be."

Rewriting a story

.....The director ponders what his character should do when time rewinds itself once more for the 14th time.

He almost wanted to quit writing his character's story. He didnt know how to continue. He wanted to end it. When things do not seem to go his way, he felt as though films and movies like Amelie, The Lakehouse, You've Got Mail and Turn Left, Turn Right had cheated him of the truth.

While he admits that those crossing of paths and all the sweet lovelies that came along seemed to good to be true, a small part of him believes that there's a small chance that it could happen in real life. And tonight, he asks himself, "Which is better - avoiding disappointment by not doing anything about it or to look back with regret having not known at all what the answer might be?"

The director took his pen and made some changes to the storyline. He wrote, "My character shall never again look back in regret."

Run Lola Run

So what if one cant rewind and control time like Lola? What if time rewinds by itself? Week after week, he goes through roughly the same things - he meets the same people, goes to the same classes, sits at roughly the same places. The things taught, the places they cross paths or the clothes he wears may change, but the emotional setting remains.

Will he do something about it? Or will he wait till time stops rewinding itself so that he can then wish for time to rewind? He wants to talk to her.

The director ponders what his character should do when time rewinds itself once more for the 14th time.

Unreal realism

He just realized that reality checks suck the fun out of life. They do not stimulate his creativity. They make an already boring life much more boring. He now needs to decide whether to live a creative but unreal life, or a boring but real life. His mind screams for an unreal life but somehow it doesnt feel right. He's stuck at the crossroad....

... thinking. But there's no real hurry though - he shall take his time.

The First

I'm on the verge of doing something about it. And if I really do something about it, I need to thank Jeanne Pierre Jeunet and Amélie and a handful of others.

I remember writing in "Jeunet: To love or to hate?" (Oct 09) the following:

"I've been thinking about one of the things that I wrote:

Perhaps Jeunet hopes for the introvert among us to realize the need to ‘go and get him, for Pete’s sake’ and not wait for things to happen. Through Dufayel, Jeunet screams to the cowards among us: ‘You can take life’s knock. If you let this chance go by, eventually your heart will become …dry and brittle’.

Will the introvert among us ever make things happen? Or will they let chances after chances go by? I ask myself this questions because despite having written and read what I wrote countless times, I let yet another chance go by a couple of hours before class. I saw her as I walked down the stairs toward the computer terminals."

I remember writing in "The Girl"(Jun 09) the following:

"Some do leave you with a pretty sweet impression. Many did. Many could still do.

But should one ever decide if the impression left is the sweetest? Or should one simply wait for the next sweet impression.... and then the one after that... and ..."

While walking back home yesterday evening, I was thinking. And I realized that no matter how much my feelings may be for her, the feeling may most probably not be mutual. While the idealistic-and-romantic-fairy-tale-ending-loving me would like to believe the 1% chance that it might be mutual, the logical-analytical-probability-and-statistics-hating me have accepted the 99% probability of it NOT being mutual.

But while the old me would have not bothered doing anything about it based on the probability, the me that i knew was in me somewhere will.

I guess the answers to my questions were in me all along.

The Tempest

The lecture on The Tempest by William Shakespeare was certainly the most boring. I was tempted to give it a miss - like the other half of the class - but decided to sit through anyways. If there's a time to know more about Shakespeare, this was it. Interesting how The Tempest was believed to be the final play written by Shakespeare and that Prospero could be seen Shakespeare himself. Never would I have seen Caliban as a representation of a victim of colonialism.

If there's one thing that I'll remember, it'll be how Shakespeare retired from writing at the age of 47. Writing didnt seem like a regular job where one can simply submit a letter of resignation or retire. Ive always thought that one writes because of one's passion.

Female Writers: To love or to hate?

After spending 4 hours on the remaining 200 pages this afternoon, my first reaction was anger and frustration. Firstly, I didnt understand why Tita cheated on the nice Dr Brown. Secondly, I was led to believe that Tita married Dr Brown in the end but as it turns out, despite the nice Dr Brown being such an understanding character, Tita chose her first love Pedro. Serves her right that he died in the end which led to Tita taking her own life in a very dramatic manner.

From a conservative point of view, perhaps Tita should not have gone against tradition - as the youngest daughter, she should have remained unmarried and looked after her mother.

However, considering the point mentioned about how romance novels are forms of discourse often written by women and for a female public, perhaps I can try to see from Laura Esquivel's point of view. Perhaps being a female, she wasnt sure whether to choose Dr Brown or her first love Pedro and ended up deciding using her heart and not her brain - despite knowing that it's the wrong choice (Esquivel kills off Pedro and Tita in the end).

Perhaps too, Esquivel simply wanted to frustrate male readers like me by deliberately choosing Pedro over Dr Brown to emphasize the point that females have the right to choose and do as they please. I must admit that it's a valid point: Tita never let inhuman tradition and her tyranical mother prevent her from being with her first love. She was brave. She did what she wanted to and not what was deemed the right choice based on societal conservative expectations and norms. I can only envy her courage.

In Like Water for Chocolate, I can only find parallels in Dr Brown - the nice guy who ended up with nothing. Perhaps that's why I didnt quite like this book.

However, things weren't all that bad. At the end of class, a question was asked:

Are gender roles determined by nature or by culture?

I knew my answer was nature. I scribbled in my pink notebook that physically and emotionally, guys are more suited to work. Hence naturally, the next best thing for women would be cooking, cleaning and looking after children.

I didnt raise my hands to speak my mind - not after someone told me that I'd be booed if I said what I wanted to say. However, someone else did and I noted in my pink notebook how funny, but nice, it was for a lady herself to raise her hand and choose nature over culture. I missed what she said and i wished i didnt. Nevertheless, it was a nice new detail to my fairy tale.

I'll also add that while nature could have played a significant role in determining gender roles in the beginning of time, culture takes most of the blame later on. Perhaps back then, us guys were made stronger than women. However, I'm of the view that if a lady thinks she's capable of moving mountains, why not? Why should one foolishly follow silly traditions and practices? Why restrict her to the kitchen?

I should have raised my hand.

The man of few words

Mama Elena sent Tita to the kitchen to get something for the guests. Pedro 'happened' to be walking by at that moment and he offered his help. Tita rushed off to the kitchen without a word. His presence made her extremely uncomfortable. He followed her in, and she quickly sent him off with one of the trays of delicious snacks that had been waiting on the kitchen table.

She would never forget the moment their hands accidentally touched as they both slowly bent down to pick up the same tray.

That was when Pedro confessed his love.

'Señorita Tita, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to be alone with you to tell you that I am deeply in love with you. I know this declaration is presumptuous, and that it's quite sudden, but it's so hard to get near you that I decided to tell you tonight. All I ask is that you tell me whether I can hope to win your love.'

'I don't know what to say .... give me time to think.'

'No, no, I can't! I need an answer now; you don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't. I am a man of few words, but my word is my pledge. I swear that my love for you will last for ever. What about you? Do you feel the same way about me?'

'Yes!'

Yes, a thousand times.

.....Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Esquivel's first 19 pages was torture. Unlike the clarity and flow in Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons, Esquivel's style loses out by a far mile. I was tempted to give up after around 10 pages. I'm glad I didnt.

Perhaps what I felt was lacking in terms of structure, organisation and clarity, she makes up for it with emotions and more emotions. I've learnt not to generalize but sometimes, just sometimes, I cant help but feel that women tend to let their emotions do the talking. But then again, I'm pretty sure that for every fault I find in a woman, women will find 5 more in a man. And perhaps, it's safe to say that it's a battle that us men should try to avoid at all cost.

However, Esquivel "spoke" to me through the quote above. I loved it the first time I read it. I think I'm starting to learn to set aside the "flaws" and overflowing emotions of female writers, and appreciate the true meaning behind the veil of words.

Just a thought though: Would the quote above work? What do you think?

Jeunet: To love or to hate?

I guess it's not over until the paper is finally on the teacher's desk.

A couple of hours before class, I decided to read my essay a few more times at the library and ended up writing the following:

Despite its appeals, the film is not devoid of critics. ‘[One critic] left the film enraged, declaring his disgust with this … retro postcard version of France, undeniably cleansed of all cultural diversity’(Bonnaud). At the train station, we see Amelie walking away hurriedly from three inner-city youths. At first sight, we might associate them with criminal intent but when we see them walking away moments later in a different direction, we realize that we are wrong. I believe Jeunet deliberately wants to evoke our stereotypical mindsets and subsequently makes us reflect upon ourselves the reason for thinking such a negative thought. Perhaps then, he hopes that such a reflection will eventually lead to the eradication of such stereotypical mindsets.

Paper's submitted. It's finally over. Thank god.

I've been thinking about one of the things that I wrote:

Perhaps Jeunet hopes for the introvert among us to realize the need to ‘go and get him, for Pete’s sake’ and not wait for things to happen. Through Dufayel, Jeunet screams to the cowards among us: ‘You can take life’s knock. If you let this chance go by, eventually your heart will become …dry and brittle’.

Will the introvert among us ever make things happen? Or will they let chances after chances go by? I ask myself this questions because despite having written and read what I wrote countless times, I let yet another chance go by a couple of hours before class. I saw her as I walked down the stairs toward the computer terminals.

I pictured myself walking towards where she was and if we made eye contact, I'd smile and if she smiled back, I'd ask if she's the girl that's taking the same elective as me. The one whose path Ive been crossing time and time again. The one whom Ive been meaning to talk to but never could find the strength to. Ok, maybe just the first one will do - even though I know it's her. And if she's friendly, I'd use the computer beside her and we'd talk about the essay and stuffs. But if she's not, then I think I'd kill myself for smiling at her in the first place.

As I neared her, I realized that I'm not willing to risk "losing" her and kill myself for it. I sat a row of computers before her. She was so close yet so far. As I placed my bag on the chair beside me, I realize I'll never change. I was resigned to the fact that she'll just be a sweet impression that I'll write about under the label "sweet distractions"...

Jeunet's an idiot for challenging us introverts and making us feel like idiots.

Obsession

If there's one thing I'm obsessed about, it's writing. And I do not even know why.

I went to the library once school ended to print my essay for submission later today. A harmless browse through the 4 pages brought out a pencil and throughout my train ride back home, I was scribbling and cancelling and desperately trying to insert new points and ideas that I felt was fresh and original. I even tweaked the title from "Love at First Sight" to "An Introvert's Love at First Sight". A nice personal touch to the endless hours spent into it.

If you stumbled upon this entry searching for nostalgia in Amelie, do remember to include me in MLA format under "Work Cited".

Retroinspection: Thoughts and Reflections. Marzuki, 7 Oct. 2009. Web. 7 Oct. 2009. .

Wednesday, 330am.

It's finally over.

An Introvert’s Love at First Sight

In Amélie (2001), Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses nostalgia as the foundation for his “feel good” film. The film evokes both a physical and spiritual longing for something from the past through recollections of distant fading memories. This paper will provide a critical analysis of Jeunet’s film by exploring the ways in which he expresses the sense of nostalgia and the significance of these portrayals. The paper will also discuss Jeunet’s particular vision of the world, possible reasons for such a portrayal and some of the broader implications of the film’s “retro” tendencies.

The film is nostalgic on many levels. Firstly, Amelie’s childhood reflects our own. Through young Amelie, we remember finding pleasures from the ordinary – playing with papers, making funny faces on glass panels, arranging dominos just to watch them fall, watching a coin spin on its edge and peeling off dried glue from our little fingers. Also, the death of Amelie’s mother evokes bitter nostalgia from our experience of dealing with the loss of our loved ones. The sight of Amelie’s beloved teddy bear in the garden soon after her mother’s death shows us Amelie’s strength despite her young age – she had realized the need to let go of her beloved mother. This vision of Amelie’s childhood shows us that children are maybe much stronger than we give them credit to be.

Amelie’s experience with nostalgia within the film makes us feel part of the film – with nostalgia acting as a common ground. When she met a blind man playing a black vinyl record, she was reminded of the time she made her own vinyl record using black paint. Nino Quincampoix’s troubled past as a bullied child was disturbing nostalgia, yet significant as it reminds us that who we are today is a product of both good and bad experiences. This helps to reemphasize the realism aspect of the film.

The film also evokes memories of our retro school days. When Collignon told Amelie to look for his ‘elephant mom’, we asked ourselves whether an elephant has a good memory. When we were told how Bretodeau ‘loves picking the hot carcass with his fingers starting with the oysters’, we quietly thought about the link between chicken and oysters. When Felix Lerbier ‘learns there were more links in his brains than the atoms in the universe’, we wondered if this was the case.

Love is perhaps the most crucial touch of nostalgia in the film. Amelie seems to represent the person we were, are or hope to be when it comes to getting our love at first sight. Through her love story, perhaps Jeunet hopes for the introvert among us to realize the need to ‘go and get him, for Pete’s sake’ and not wait for things to happen. Through Dufayel, Jeunet screams to the cowards among us: ‘You can take life’s knock. If you let this chance go by, eventually your heart will become …dry and brittle’. Jeunet’s use of nostalgia manages to strike a chord deep within us and therefore, making us more receptive to his messages in the film. By evoking bitter sweet yet memorable memories of our past, the film leaves us with a feeling, and hence a film, that we never want to forget. Nostalgia has played a highly significant role in the film.

‘In such a dead world, Amelie prefers to dream she’ll earn enough to leave home.’ Jeunet presented the current world as dead and immediately after, introduced us to “Amelie’s world”. Amelie manages to live her dream left home to work in Montmartre at the Two Windmills. We were then introduced to a host of characters: Suzanne the café owner, Hipolito the failed writer, Georgette the tobacconist, and Philomene the air hostess. We were given a brief background of these characters including their likes and dislikes – despite the fact that their superficial stories seems to have no direct consequence on the film.

However, I suggest that they do. Perhaps, Jeunet presented us this particular vision as he wanted us to start caring about the people around us. Having made us “follow” Amelie in her journey through life right from the journey of ‘the sperm …belonging to Raphael Poulain’, Jeunet did not want us to make the mistake of focusing solely on Amelie. It could be his way of reminding us that those around us have stories of their own that are just as interesting as the ones around Amelie. Jeunet might have noticed that we tend to get too caught up with our busy lives that we forget about things like helping people in need– like the blind man whom Amelie helped crossed the road. At the same time, Jeunet portrayal of the world through the eyes of an introvert illustrates to us that the world is dead only if we want it to be. Through Amelie, Jeunet has shown how ‘a dead world’ can be simple, beautiful and meaningful at the same time. All we need to do is to change our view on life and the world will immediately come to life.

The film retro tendencies – successfully achieved primarily through nostalgia with the support of the sepia effects, the soft yellow light, the classical background music, the black and white motion pictures – exude a dreamy and nostalgic feeling that gave us the illusion that Amelie’s world is different from our world and led us into thinking that whatever we see during the film belongs to the past. However, the fact that the film managed to touch our hearts showed that its beauty, simplicity and selfless traits remain valid even in today’s context.

The strength of Jeunet’s Amélie lies in its ability to alter our perception and to entice us to go deep within ourselves with the techniques used and emotions which it evoked. Through nostalgia, the power of imagination and the universal language of love, the film managed to demolish the wall that separates the past and present, the possible and the impossible and, the real and the fantastic. Finally, the film’s retro tendencies brought together Jeunet’s messages in the film as he demonstrated how beautiful life can be if we simply stop for a moment and let our minds roam free.

Works cited

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Perf. Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz. DVD. Miramax, 2001.

Worth the time?

Monday, 1255pm.

A beautiful intro. An equally beautiful conclusion. Nicely developed ideas.

Or at least that's how I feel about it. Do you think it's worth the time to put in so much effort into something that others may, or may not, like? Is the thrill and satisfaction from the pain and stress of writing really worth it?

I took this module to challenge myself to write something other than blog entries. And challenge myself was what I did. I'm of the view that knowing that I've given my all my thoughts into this essay, the final grade at the end of this semester do not matter. I will not look back regretting the way I approached this elective module of mine.

A great way to start the second phase of the first semester of school. An estimated 7 more weeks to my first paper - beginning with this elective: Introduction to Magical Realism.

The thrill of writing

Sunday, 335 am.

I finally finished writing my 1000 words essay on Amelie. The introduction and conclusion were not satisfactory. The organisation of my main argument was weak.

Monday, 430 am.

A clear mind. Enlightenment. Finally. The thrill of having a breakthrough in ideas made me spend another 5 hours rewriting my initial 1000 words. I don't think I have a conclusion.

Mon nom est Jean-Pierre Jeunet

When I was a kid, I used to escape from my family with my imagination. And I kept this spirit into my adult life.(Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Mon nom est Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

I am the director of the movie Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, or simply known stateside as Amélie. "I was born in 1953 and I have retained a nostalgia for the France of my childhood, or rather for its images, its fashion, its objects."

The word "NOSTALGIA" represents both a physical and spiritual longing for something in the past. For example, distant fading memories from years ago when one was a young child or the chain of events that occurred one after another that made one retreat into one's own imagination. Amélie retreats into her imagination to find someone whom she can talk to since her dad won't - the suicidal goldfish, statues that come to live, TV that can talk.

Perhaps I, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, could also have retreated into my own little world of dreams and imagination for the exact same reason Amélie had. My dad wasnt really talking to me much when I was a child. Up to the day He took him away from us, we never really talked. I remember being forced by my mum to sit by his side in the hospital ward the day before Father's day 3 years ago - to talk to him. But i really do not know what's there to say. All I did was look at his eyes, hold his weak hand and just wish that I could say something. After a while, he said something to me that I could barely understand - oh how I wish I did. All I can do was to imagine what it was. And imagine was all I seem to do since then.

Could he have told me to be a good son and look after my mum and 3 younger siblings? Could he have told me to just say something for goodness sake cause Ive been a man of little words since I was a boy? I really don't know.

Also perhaps I, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, had experienced a moment in my life that made me decided that enough was enough! That I really need to do something about my spontaneity (the lack of it) and shyness. To step out of my comfort zone - my little idealistic world - and just do something about things instead of just thinking about them.

Therefore, like Amélie who devised a scheme to introduce herself to Nino Quincampoix (a young man with an upbringing as troubled as hers), perhaps I too had decided that it's time for me to do something about the girl of my recent dreams. I had realised that the only way for her to know of my existence would be to say hi or to smile when we cross path - as pointed out by friends. However, like Amélie, Im introverted and introverts just do not say hi. We leave clues and hints to show our existence. We believe is the slimmest of chances that fate will simply pull through for us - and that's exactly the case with Amélie.

However, like all introverts, I know that such simplistic idealistic love story can only happen on the big screen. We know that things will not happen if one does not do anything about it. This might explain why Amélie got about doing something to get the guy that she liked midway through the movie.

If someone were to ask me why I had offered the world this particular vision of the world, I would say that perhaps, I simply want all of us to forget the hectic pace of the world that we're living in and just take a slow walk down memory lane. To relive the carefree and innocent life that we once had and then, do something about the life we presently live. Let's not be a slave of school and time and work and everything else in between. Perhaps, I wanted to tell the world that if we try real hard to look at things in a slightly positive and optimistic light, we'll see the good in everything that is not going all so good.

Perhaps too, I wanted to give the world a glimpse into the world of an introvert and our idea of simple pleasures. And if my name was really Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Amélie is actually just a secret coded message to all introverts all over the world to get their imaginary butts up and do something about getting the girl or guy that they want, through whatever way that they want.

Are there broader implications of the film's "retro" tendencies?

'[One critic] left the film enraged, declaring his disgust with this ... retro, postcard version of France, undeniably cleansed of all cultural diversity and, by extension, all immigrants.' (Frédéric Bonnaud)

If my name was really Jean-Pierre Jeunet, I'll call the critic a hard-boiled realist who has a really hard hard time with my excessive magic, fantasy and imagination. He's just like Cinderella's stepsisters who just can't stomach the fact that Cinderella got her Prince Charming despite all the odds.

I wish that Amélie will continue to stick and jump around in my heart, egging me to do all those silly and charming little things I wish I dared to do.