Christmas Day 2023

This weekend is still manageable by my standards.

Apart from some work i.e requests from customers, I'm not grossly stuck inside work too much.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm on holiday and will only get back to work on Tuesday 26th.

And make no mistake, I'm not having illusions for  when I get back to work tomorrow. I know that a mountain of work is waiting for me, and that it will last until the new year. I'm just putting it off for at least one more day before I get all stressed out.

So today (Monday 26th i.e Christmas day), I woke up at noon, and then went to buy lunch at my favourite place that has a very beautiful cashier that I've been eyeing on since 2021. I also went there on Saturday, when I got to talk with the chef, who I believe is also the owner of this family enterprise and the father of the cashier and the waitstaff. We spoke about that day's menu and where we lived. Today when I went there, the guy at the drinks counter already knew my order before I even said it. It's quite embarrassing that people can remember my usual order, but it's more embarrassing that it could be a sign directed at me for hanging around too often while not so subtly having an eye on the sister. 

In the evening, I went to Bookxces, out of boredom and the need to relieve the stress at thinking about what this week holds for me. Plus, I need a fiction book to accompany the book that I'm currently reading (The Republic - Plato). Parallel reading is really a life-changing way to read a book. Since discovering the method, I've been reading continuously and finishing books significantly faster. Best if the books are a pairing of a non-fiction-fiction, preferably any one in English and another in BM. The parking at Tamarind Square was fairly easy. Go straight up to level 3 where Village Grocer is and from there it's just a few metres walk and an escalator ride to get to Bookxcess which is just right above Village Grocer.

Last I had been at Bookxcess was in 2020 I think, when I bought the book Joy on Demand - Chade-Meng Tan. I never finished the book. It's such a boring read despite the easy style of writing.

I've never really liked Bookxcess and today I still feel the same. Granted, the books are really cheap and original (beware of shopee books) but they have such a limited selection. I could hardly find anything of interest here. The fiction books are mostly young adult, and the non-fiction are mostly history of weird things and dinky self-help books. It's quite frustrating because it's not like they don't have a lot of books, there are a lot of them on the shelves corner to corner and floor to ceiling, but barely anything is interesting. Plus, the bookstore is beautifully designed.

By the way, it's really a shame that books are not more affordable for the masses. I consider myself an M40 (Selangor standards), but even to me, buying a book is an economic decision. And not just the rare books. Even the paperbacks are quite expensive these days. I placed an order on 2nd Dec for paperback Orientalism - Edward W. Said at Kino online, and the price was RM69.50, added RM8.00 for shipping. I had to order from Kino because other local suppliers had no stock, and Kino's also out of stock but they could order from supplier with lead time 10-15 days. It was actually my first purchase from Kino online. Happily, they managed to source it from supplier and has been delivered to me on 20th Dec. Totally fair and I can't wait to start reading, of course after I finish the Myth of The Lazy Native - S. Hussein Alatas. Yesterday, I was browsing Kino again to buy the Art of Rhetoric - Aristotle. At RM18.54, it's cheap and in stock, so I right away clicked and paid RM26.54. I want to read Aristotle because I'm currently reading The Republic. And then I noticed that Orientalism's price had gone up to RM75.71.

I guess inflation hits everything, including books.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Peace be upon our Prophet, Jesus and to his Immaculate Mother, Mary.

Tis used to be the season

Normally, I'd be in a great mood when xmas time comes around.

Not that I celebrate, but it marks the start of the year-end break and the coming of the new year.

I'd be in my hometown with my family and friends making up for all the time of the year we've been away from each other.

Plus, it's wet season and especially in the Pantai Timur, the heavens would open up, giving us the perfect weather for us to cool down in the final days of the year. Some years, it opens up maybe too much and some poor families would be forced to temporarily leave their inundated homes for flood shelters.

These past few years, it's been different. This period has become the most dreadful of the year for me. Contrary to normal jobs at normal companies, ours get even busier come year end. People travel a hell lot more during this season and we're forced to make sure they get to their destinations without delay. And that means I no longer have the luxury to enjoy this period with loved ones. Worse, most of my colleagues would still be on holidays, including my boss who celebrates xmas. And that means I'm left with the burden to attend crisis management meetings and all the bs stuff that wouldn't have been necessary on a normal weekday.

I hate my job. I regret following along when my Head of Department asked me to take on the role. I hate to think that despite my best attempts, I'm still stuck here doing stuff I don't like with people I don't really like. I hate to think that my life is being robbed from me and every passing day, I lose precious time to the job rather than to the things and with the people I love the most.

I know what people are thinking, I'm such a Grinch.

How I learnt to stop worrying and read a book

This year, I've finally brought my reading habit up to speed. If I can even call it a 'habit'.

I'm not an avid reader. My attention span is too short to finish an entire book.

But even then, I'm getting better at it. So far, I've read 9 books, between 200 and 500 pages each.

The first book I've ever read was actually a novel - The Firm by John Grisham. That book was very sentimental to me. It was 2008, I was a schoolboy at KL about to start the mid year school break at kampung but I had missed the Airasia flight to KT. I called my father to inform him of the situation and he asked the help of his cousin to pick me up at the airport and give me a place to stay for the night. In that confusion and while waiting for my rescue (I totally lacked resources.. I could have taken a shuttle bus to KL and find a cheap hotel to spend the night), I was drawn towards a WH Smith shop at LCCT. Specifically, I was drawn towards the pile of books on display. I felt that if I was gonna wait for long, I should kill the time with something - maybe read a book.

I can't recall the price of the paperback but I think it was around RM30. Which compared to today's paperback prices, was very cheap. And this was the airport price!

Anyway from the first page, I was drawn into it. It was love at first sight. The language and style that Grisham used was very easy to read, and even to a Malaysian schoolboy who didn't speak or write or read English outside of a classroom, no dictionary was necessary. That was the first time I knew I could read an English book LOL The story itself was a page turner and I finished the novel within a week, since I still had no reading routine and only read when I had time.

Back to 2023, the best book I've read this year is The End of The Nineteen-nineties by Hafiz Noor Shams. An excellent book IMO that deserves a prominent place in the Malaysiana genre. It not details the journey of the author (an economist) through the 1990s Malaysia from his upbringing in Keramat KL to his 5-year sojourn at Kuala Kangsar Perak to his uni life in Michigan USA and then back again to Malaysia in the early 2000s, albeit to a country that he in some way had not recognised. It discusses about the history of Malaysia as well, especially the origins of the concepts of Malayness and Malaysianness. The ideas of Milnerian Malay, Andersonian Malay and the Platonic Malay are heavily discussed in the book, citing the discussions by earlier scholars and from the author's point of view himself. This is a book that I will definitely re-read sometime in the future.

I'll talk about other books later. I already have a dozen that will inevitably be read only in 2024.