And here we go.
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Story telling part 1 : bla bla bla on comics
My mother told me a story of the day she knew I was different from other kids.
It was when I was 4 years old.
Back then, my mom was just starting her career at Kwong Yik Bank, and my father was a clerk at University Malaya.
Their life was quite a struggle but they got it fine.
Mom just gave birth to my brother, and so they moved out from their rented house at Kampung Kerinci, to a rented Bandaraya flat 'house' at Bangsar.
Room 313 13th Floor Blok A Flat Seri Pahang. The rent fee was RM80.00.
(I wrote this address as I read there was a proposal from DBKL for project to somehow "renew the flat" sometime in 2015).
Blok A Flat Seri Pahang
scanned thru the pages, then proceeded to change the TV channel to watch cartoon.
In front of them.
Then they realised I could actually read.
Actually I think I got whacked then for changing the TV channel without asking permission.
They did suspected before that I could read earlier, because I would spent my time looking at the comic section at the newspaper,
(yeah the comic section was below the TV schedule, ie. same page) but they didnt exactly knew what to do and they don't want to ask much from me the little kid because they were afraid I would threw tantrum if I was disturbed.
(they had enough trouble and tired-ness tending to my new-born brother).
Back then they bought Berita Harian newspaper on daily basis, and bought Utusan Melayu only on Sundays as there is a dedicated section for malaysian artist gossip pages on Utusan Melayu. And they realised I always flip around the pages of the newspapers.
I think they did wonder if I was actually enjoying the sexy artist photos. But I was 4 then. I could just threw tantrum if they even asked.
They were proud, but as tired parents, they didn't know what to do or what to expect.
Those time, there was one incident in the 80's (or 70's, I did'nt remember) when
Ungku Aziz (the 1st Vice-Chancellor of University Malaya) took a genius kid to be
under his tutoring and care but somehow things didn't work out. The boy didn't become a great contributor to society as expected.
His name is Shukri Hadafi. Go and google it up. I'm too lazy.
So what my father did after he realised I could read?
He bought Gila Gila comics every month to encourage my reading habits.
This was helped by the fact that around the late 80's or early 90's, I did'nt remember the exact year, when Gila Gila publisher rented an office nearby my flat.
The exact location was behind the Maybank big office at Bangsar.
And so, my father would supply me Gila Gila comics, and as a happy dumb talkative kid,
I would read loudly the jokes inside the car while we went to Jalan Imbi to fetch my mom back from work.
Sometimes I was too tiring for them, and I got scolded as I lack the ability to tone my voice down.
Kids are cute but the excessive high amplitudes can drive tired parents to nuts.
Amplitude
They did figured out that I was quiet when I read comics alone by myself though, so they guessed correctly that these comics were a kind of
pacifier to make this high amplitude noise kid calm and stable. (they have two boys somemore, and you know how struggling it was to have two high amplitude noisy boys).
My mom shared this enlightened knowledge with her sister, and her sister bought Gelihati comics to her two daughters.
She must have been tempted with the pacifying impact of comics to children (and it can teach your kids to read too), but I heard my aunty stopped buying Gelihati sometime after that.
I guess my uncle, who had served in the military, didn't like his daughter reading the funny pages.
Could be the high amplitudes created.
(Talk about the funny pages, yeah, there was a scene in the movie Godfather, Al Pacino told Marlon Brando that his kid too are able to read the funny pages on the newspaper.)
Some years afterwards our family went out from Bangsar and off we go to Kajang as my mom had bought a house there from her salary which was quite good. (her career was picking up)
I think they donated the comics when they moved out, to save space. Sometime afterwards they bought videogames then, the Micro-genius game pad connected to the TV but then decided to "close-down" that because we were just too noisy.
Not to mention that the game-pad was broken after 4 days of usage. (you know how boys are. naughty boys aren't elegant with their toys)
the awesome Microgenius
Some time afterwards I started to cut photos of jet fighters, tanks, SCUD rockets from the newspapers (it was Gulf War between US and Iraq back then), my parents noticed it, and they started purchasing the Perajurit magazine on monthly basis order.
My mom would splashed us with whatever we desire. She loved us and she felt guilty about not spending time with us due to her career.
Hence, the comic buying never stopped. It just got better. Now I have more reading material to keep me quiet.
Used to cost only RM5
You know scrap books? My teacher once asked the class to make our own scrap books. Some drew. Some kids glued dried leaves.
Hell, I was the only kid in the class who had a scrap book full of photos of jet fighters, tanks, rockets, military info from the newspaper and Perajurit
magazine.
I was proud, damn well I was.
Actually I wanted to cut and glue the newspaper comics but newspaper always disappear with the surprising appearance of a Chinese guy in the lorry screaming "Old Newspaper!!".
Explanation : there were serial comics appearing 3-4 comic box strip daily in sequence. You have to follow it day by day to catch up with the story sequence.
And so if some of the newspaper edition is missing you will not get continuity in the comic story. Cutting it and pasting it to a scrap book will drive you nuts
because you keep figuring why the hell it happened and how the hell it ended.
So I went for military stuff. I was helped by the fact that the world never bores itself from war with its full of maddening people killing each other on
everyday wars and conflicts that it enabled me to have "continuity" in my scrap book.
My brother didn't share much of my reading interest (except for the DragonBall,Mutiara Naga, Shinchan, etc.)
and luck must have it, by this he saved a lot of parents money by not demanding reading materials. Why should he? He could read mine.
And Doraemon of course, how the hell I forget?
Somemore he had picked up a good socialising skill, which that he knew when to talk and when to shut up when my father had a bad mood.
I didn't. Maybe because I was too self-centred, which I guess I am.
And so, I got screwed more often than my brother.
My brother must've learned the skill while observing me getting screwed.
And yet, my lovely parents would not hesitate to buy comics or magazines or whatever expensive books whenever I asked.
This is supported by me getting good grades at school, scoring full A's at UPSR, PMR (now PMR is called PT3).
My relatives did screw my father on why he whacked me like hell, but he just don't care.
He didn't want to spoil me, didn't want me to become like that genius kid that Ungku Aziz took for care.
And I now realised it's actually because I'm stupid enough not to shut the hell up when the need arises.
When I got good grades for UPSR and received a letter for MRSM boarding school, he didn't let me go there.
He thought that even though I will be surrounded with smart kids, those kids will just be Malay people only.
He wanted me to mix with Chinese and Indians, because it's essential for me to pick up a good command in English.
He was from the Islamic-religion-curriculum-based boarding school, and when he went to KL for work after school,
he didn't get good jobs because he could not speak English well. He ended up being clerk despite having a wife working as
assistant manager in the bank.
He wanted me to become like my mom who learned in English curriculum-based schooling. English = better future.
And the beautiful coincidence in this MRSM story is, I didn't get separated from the funny pages.
If I went, the comics would've been lost by some mysterious intervention.
I would've miss reading Dragonball, Mutiara Naga, ShinChan, etc. and my brother would've been the one to beg for the comics.
When I was form 1, my father started buying the Star newspaper on Sunday, weekly basis.
To me it was good because the Star newspaper Sunday comic section have more pages than both Utusan and Berita Harian combined.
I would spent time reading Thelma's section (the section where people asked Thelma's opinion on their personal problems)
and the zodiac section to my parents, on Sunday.
Sometime near afternoon while waiting for the rice to be nicely cooked, I will be asked for the reading.
But I would enjoy devouring the comics section first. Then I would read Star2, especially reviews on new music album releases.
By the way, now I realised why Thelma is good. It is because she's a women. I think only women can write a full page describing and advising
marital and family problems. If he was a guy, he would not written that much words. Married men tend to ignore
other people marital and family problem. Some married guys I knew even tend to forget that they are married. <=sexist joke.
You might wonder why the story ends here. It is because Form 1 afterwards, I had new passion. Metal Music!
Ok end of part 1.
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story telling part 2 : the reason why the hell story telling part 1 was written
And so I received this from PosLaju on Friday 23'rd December 2016.
(photos of unwrapping)
I just unwrapped it on the night of 26th December 2016.
In front of my wife.
She was quite sarcastic because she didn't understand why a 34 year old fella would spend money on comics.
Being a smart husband, I just shut up. (thank you father for the experience)
Furthermore, I had the guts to borrow her smartphone to capture pictures of me unwrapping it and whatsapping it to my phone.
Hell, I need to tell Prince Of Noob the delivery had arrived, and what better way to do it than sending jpegs of unwrapping
his delivery and said "bro, thanks, delivery arrived, nice wrapping, wife likes the wrapping bubbles, she's pinching it now".
Notice the wrapping bubbles there?
The camera on my smartphone had become a disappointing piece of equipment due to neverending abuse by its self centred owner.
(So now you know why I had to unwrapped it few days after I received it as she went for end year vacation and just arrived home
on the night of 26th December 2016. A very Einstein-like husband right?)
By the way, she then realised I knew her phone's password so she quietly made a new one when I was asleep (or so she thought hehe)
Comics, even though silly to some people, it actually provide you the greatest view that the artist wanted to draw.
The word count is less, yet the drawings are expressive in its elegance.
They express it in sketches and drawings. They expressed it in "views".
And my childhood are filled with these views and made me to become a good reader, with passion for books.
I've searched in Google Image of the word "view afar" .This is what I got.
I have tons of respect with the people who worked on the BuasirOtak comic (I knew some of these guys online) since they are better than me.
They are able to express what they had in mind better, funnier, with depth.
Better than me who write bla bla words in this blog just to express myself.
Since I know some of the guys involved in the BuasirOtak comics, let me tell you something.
This is a DIY (Do It Yourself) project. These people did it on their own free will and spent their time making it.
Or what can be written simply as "passion".
I knew DIY publications from the underground punk scene in Malaysia.
If you ever heard of Food Not Bombs,
they made DIY magazine (a very cheap production with just A4 paper being folded and stapled,) and sell it,
and the small profit there is used to cook food for the poor people on the streets.
I knew one of the guys in Food Not Bombs Penang.
Usually the DIY publications from the punk guys, are about articles on music, the latest underground album and bands, and so on.
It was common with the cassette tape-trading culture in the underground scene.
There were numerous DIY punk magazines in KL, Johor and Penang (so far as I know and bought), not just Food Not Bombs;
these people did it not for profit, but just for their simple undying passion for music, uncorrupted by the needs of money and so on.
Food Not Bombs International
Food Not Bomb Penang "branch"
Back to BOTK, this 4th release of BOTK is a major improvement from the last series of BOTK comics.
It's not just a good job. It's a great execution. It's more humane, with depth. The jokes are still there. But the focus now is more on the message.
Actually, if they want to get their message across, they could've done it in a "4 or 5 box comic strip on 1 page".
But hell, they expressed it in a storyline.
And it come out elegantly beautiful.
Go and get it. Go to BuasirOtak blog and contact Prince Of Noob for an order.
To the team involved in the 4th BOTK, thanks, and really, you guys did a magnificent job.
The thank-you note here is because you guys subtlely taught me something.
People nowadays, are like me. Talkative, too much words, noisy.
Look at facebook and see there how people criticizing people, expressing views with neverending words.
Did you see their world getting better?
The world will be better if the people had great "views".
And you guys did just that. You didn't drowned me with words.
This 4th BOTK release just gave me, in its own passionate and elegant way, what you guys thought, with the greatest view you could made.
"Greatest View"
You're the analyst
The fungus in my milk
When you want no one
And you got someone
Through the wind
You crawl
And laugh at burning dunes
When no one else will
Ever see
Now that you know why you feel like you do
They're turning their head whilst they wait
For no one
And finally I know why you feel like letting go
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
Mistakes don't mean a thing
If you don't regret them
So pack your tactic toes for the winter
Chain a waterfall to burned and withered skin
No-one else will ever see
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
Now that you know why you feel like you do
They're turning their head whilst they wait
For no one
And finally I know why I feel like you're letting go
You're the analyst
The fungus in my milk
When you want no one
And you got someone
Through the wind
You crawl
And laugh at burning dunes
When no one else will
Ever see
Now that you know why you feel like you do
They're turning their head whilst they wait
For no one
And finally I know why you feel like letting go
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
Mistakes don't mean a thing
If you don't regret them
So pack your tactic toes for the winter
Chain a waterfall to burned and withered skin
No-one else will ever see
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
I'm watching you watch
Over me and I've got
The greatest view from here
Now that you know why you feel like you do
They're turning their head whilst they wait
For no one
And finally I know why I feel like you're letting go
Silverchair - The greatest view - acoustic @ Nova Radio 2002
Small notes:-
(notes at 3.30am 27 Dec)
My wife just woke up.
Being a smart husband, I have to go now and pretend that I woke up to go to toilet.
Hence, I couldn't much do editing on the grammars.
Good bye!
I wish my wife could've made sketches instead of nagging words to punish me.
That'll make me a better husband hehe.
(end of writing 3:32am)
(10.30 am 7th Dec :To be uploaded to the Net the next morning due to crappy Internet back at home, and still the writer did'nt edit the grammar.
Didn't he told you he was self-centred?)
(11:23am Had to post this 3 times. Screwed up big time)