words, letters, languages and old piles

from a little dot to the many letters on the keyboard.

that's from the first page of my English exercise book back in standard 2 Siantan at SK Seksyen 6 (1), ten years ago. I was not eight at the time I wrote that, what a lie, haha. I was seven and ten years later right now I'm seventeen! (going 18). I still remember my teacher's name that time, Puan Laila, and she was very kind (though her voice when reaching high-pitch is very horrendous). I always loved all my English teachers - don't you think that they're all fun and jubilant? haha.

I mean, so far, every teacher's a sport - Puan (later Cik) Mahanum, Puan Hafizah, and my, Cikgu Syed. my first ever English teacher (not really, excluding my tadika teacher) Puan Norliza gave me a pencil box for scoring full marks on my end-year English paper. that was, standard 1. The most undesirable one should be Puan Maiza, during standard 4 at SK S9, she never smiles, you know. and she always asked us to make photocopies out of the textbook pages. she's the one who thought me that the 'magic word' is 'please' (to be used when asking parents to photostat stuffs).

I like languages, I can't deny it. I just envy those with hyper lingual talents with multilingual brains. I love learning languages but right now I can only write, speak and understand Malay and English, and are just able to write and read Arabic with deteriorating memory of vocabulary, and the inability to communicate in it. I'd really like to learn more about Arabic, and being fluent in it - surely it'll make things easier (in many fields, you know what). next is Chinese, particularly Mandarin. because it's just ignorant to not knowing the third (maybe second) most-used language in this country. and other than that, there's nothing specific - maybe French, or Italian. or Tamil, for curiosity's sake.

sometimes I like to watch people's mouths when they talk. or think about how they talk. some can't pronounce some letters very well, some say some words the funny way, some juggle with sentences..I say that's unique. but we can still understand each other. when watching foreign films, my curiosity grow higher plus I love to pick up some words and then imagine myself speaking the language. well, that's about some stuffs I do when it comes to these things. hehe.

I'm just grateful that I have the exposure - that I could learn and take the knowledge if I want to, which so I did. Atuk contributed a lot by teaching me to read the Qur'an by firstly teaching the Arabic letters - mainly the hija'iyyah ones, by the Muqaddam. of how he tought me how to write the letter 'hamzah' properly (that's the hardest letter to be written, man!), of how he thought me how to pronounce the letters, from alif to ya, and of how to write them and combine them in sentences, how many titik they have in their perut, of how many ekor they have or how melengkung they should be. I thank him for that. because I'm not babbling about mediocre stuff - most of the Malays today cannot read and write in Jawi. sad :(

then it's to my parents who taught me ABC, haha. no, I mean it. they're seriously rajin, buying me loads of loads of those mari mengenal huruf books, it's now piling and piling, only some of it are dumped. it's weird. but mama seems to love keeping stuffs, which explains why the book in the picture above still exists, among other books including old files, old exam sheets, old pictures, old magazines, etc. people came and asked 'asal simpan lagi benda-benda ni?!' , and sometimes I was wondering the same thing. but then when I was feeling shitty, when I look back at the old junks, I can bear a smile, because they can remind you that you actually did something in the past - that's sometimes can be wonderful and great, you wouldn't even notice them in the first place.

I think art and language came side by side. it's in the package. art speaks language, and most of the time language can define art. I like these two, so I don't mind mingling with them in the future, because I'd like to explore more of them.

after ten years, there are still many empty white pages to be filled in, scrabbled with ideas and painted with colours. for me, that's the situation. because a good friend told me that every ending is a beginning, and I thank her for telling me that.

Syukrishairi 2007, Shah Alam/Kuala Lumpur