The First Step Away From the Land of Birth. Rev. 1

Just a revision of a previous post with the same title. The reason for the revision is because I needed a writing sample for my application of a job I'm after. So here it is, a less vulgar, more tour-guide like version of it. It's also longer, because there was something significant that I forgot to mention.

My first experience outside of Malaysia happens to be Bali, one of the southern islands of Indonesia and its greatest tourist destination. It was a holiday that my friends and I have planned for over a year, which was reason for me to rejoice and despair at the same time; because it was an island of a neighbouring country which meant a similar culture. Part of me wanted to go somewhere further to experience cultures completely different from ours, while another was glad that the similar culture, and language, incidentally, meant easier communication. Despite the similarities, there are some differences worth noting though.

First of the differences is the traffic culture. In Malaysia, people use their honks in a sort of ‘get out of the way’ or ‘what are you doing?’ kind of way. I’m confident many drivers will agree with me, more often than not, that the honks will start blowing when someone is slow to respond to a green light. The same can be said in almost any situation where emergency braking in involved, be it when someone tries to make a turn off the main road only to realize he will not make it without being hit by oncoming traffic, or when someone cuts a long queue when a traffic light notorious for being red for extended periods of time finally turns green for a mere couple of seconds. In other words, Malaysians use their honks very aggressively, and rarely for any other reason.

In Bali, however, things are a bit different. Actually, things are very different if I’ll be honest. There, people use the honks in a ‘hey, notice me’ or ‘look out, I’m coming through’ kind of way. The way it was meant to be used, if I may say so. I’m not saying that they don’t use aggressive honking over in Bali. It’s just that, it is so much rarer. As a result of all this though, you hear the honks almost every minute there, but each time you hear it doesn’t make you feel guilty of committing some sort of offence or like the guy who just sounded his honk needed to spend seven centuries in burning hellfire like you probably would here.

Let me give you an example.  Imagine a narrow road with only one lane going in each direction and there is a fast car coming behind a slow lorry. In Malaysia, the driver of the car will drive up next to the lorry when the opposite side is clear and honk while giving the 'I’ll kill you’ look, sometimes even showing the finger, before speeding up and actually finishing the overtaking manoeuvre. In Bali, when the driver of the car sees that the coast is clear on the opposite side, he sounds the honk, which catches the attention of the lorry driver, who notices that someone wants to overtake, who then proceeds to slow down and drive a little closer to the edge of the road so that the car can overtake a little easier.

Now, there are a few things that I’m unsure of, first of which is if this kind of driving style is an Indonesian or strictly Balinese style. I am also unsure if this driving style is the result of the narrow, single-lane roads that I described above which make up most of Bali’s traffic network. What I’m sure of is that people should drive like how the Balinese drivers do. I don’t know if drivers in other countries drive like they do, but those in Malaysia really should learn to do so.

Then there’s the language. As our history classes in school have taught us, the first Malays came from Indonesia, who made a stop at Singapore for a few generations before going to Malacca. So it would make sense that the language we use today is still very similar. But what I want to point out is that, sometime in between the first Srivijayan price and the establishment of the Malay language as a language on its own, the two branched out into two different paths of evolution, the same way animals would evolve differently if part of the population of a local specie migrated to or was transported somewhere else. 

To put this description into actual experience, they use words which we don’t normally do but are aware of the existence of such words, we are sometimes confused by their choice of words when they speak and we understand them when they speak but not every single word in a sentence. This goes both ways I guess, because they would probably experience the same. 

That aside, many other things remain similar to Malaysia; the flora, the fauna, the food, the architecture, the lack of a nightlife, and probably most important to some, the cutthroat prices that helps one sharpen their bargaining skills. 

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

In Strength is Weakness.

I’ve recently come across this Singaporean writer (whose identity I shall not disclose now because I intend to flame) who writes great stuff. Mind you, I am envious of his works; I wish I could write like that. I’m thinking he probably has a few online bestsellers to his name.

That is, until I came upon his post on depression.

Not that he got anything wrong. In fact, I agree with most of what was written, especially the part about people who say ‘just get over it’ don’t actually understand depression. On that note, I would like to add that people who say ‘just let go’ should also shut their trap. Personally, I feel these people who have lost nothing should only be given the right to speak regarding this matter once they themselves succeed in letting something go; like a limb or a young loved one.

But I digress. What I am trying to say is that he got it easy. Being able to only meet 5 friends in the span of 9 months, among other things, you lucky bastard.

But what I also realize reading his account, his episode, his version, was that, by reliving it, by recounting, by retelling the entire process, or rather the recording of it which is involved, one gets the chance to reflect on what exactly happened, to check every detail, in detail (oh kill me), to discover what went wrong, where and how to fix it. The power of retrospection, I guess. So I shall do the same. Which means another read for you. Or reread, if you already know of this tale before. Enjoy, if you’re into that kind of thing. Otherwise, well, we’ll see what ends up being the outcome, won’t we

Right, where to begin…

May 2009. The first week of the first semester of my second year as an undergrad student.  Without going into detail, it should suffice to say that the big circle of friends that I was once a part of splintered. And I, foolishly bearing responsibility for being part of the squabble that started the whole mess, returned to my old self, the solo hero, the lone wolf.

From the first week when it all began, I dreaded the end of every day. The last class of the day meant going home, plummeting into a dazing stupor, awaiting dinnertime when I would have dinner with friends which, deep in the back of my mind, I feared I would lose due to circumstances beyond my control again. By the time I returned to being a loner, I stopped having dinner with anyone but my own shadow altogether. And after dinner, it was going home, again degenerating into a lifeless puppet until it was time for bed, which I also dreaded because it meant waking up without a sense of purpose, going to class with a heavy masquerade, acting as if nothing ever happened until classes ended, which the cycle then starts all over again.

Now, I’ll admit ahead of time that I have never been an optimist. There is a fine line between optimism and self-deception; a line so fine that by all practical means and purposes it doesn’t exist. All that said, I do not view myself as a pessimist either. I never presumptuously felt that my life had meaning, that I had a purpose to achieve while I still breathe, nor have I felt that my life was a joyful one where even the most impossible dreams come true. But despite all that, I looked forward to the day that followed every morning; to be just in time for class before the lecturer started, to have the lecturer scream at a noisy class like a schoolteacher would children and secretly laughing at those who felt cold water being poured on burnt areas, to plan our group presentation at the end of the semester in a way that will blow away everyone else’s, to kick the sandbag out of shape on training days, to steal as many kills as possible in the DotA streaks at the nearest cyber cafés during the weekends. The list just goes on.

Well, until shit hit the fan, from which point I wake up, thinking to myself “not this shit again” as I head for class only to fall into a daze throughout most of the lectures, having nothing to look forward to until bed time when I think to myself “not this shit all over again tomorrow…”

By this point I knew I needed help. The benefit of majoring in Psychology and minoring in Counselling, I suppose. But being in Kampar, a tiny little town with barely anything, realization was the easy part. This is some 200 kilometres away from KL where I am from and familiar with, where everything is just a short distance away, even via public transport. So I talked with one of my lecturers who was a registered counsellor, and had a few sessions with him. This proved to be useless because he seems to think that the situation which I am in is not as severe as I make it sound, though this might have something to do with us not having a proper counsellor-client relationship. He is still a person I respect, but due to such circumstances I decided that he can be of no help to me. So I decided to get formal help in between semesters. Which also proved to be a waste of time when your semester break is only 3 weeks long tops.

I was unwilling to suspend my studies to fix myself for a couple of reasons. 1) Who knows how long this would take? 2) Should it not turn out well (again), all that time waiting would be for nothing.

So I soldiered on for the 2 remaining years of my degree course, despite being aware that the longer my mind stays fragmented, the harder it is to fix later, even if still possible. As time went on, the despair that I felt waking up every morning started to wane. Until today, I am unsure if I no longer feel despair, or it’s just that I am so used to it that it doesn’t feel like it’s there. One thing that I know for sure is that the anticipation of the events of the day did not return; the feeling of looking forward to pleasurable experiences did not return with the diminishing of the hopelessness.

From that point on, I was in the company of people solely because I had to; we either had assignments to complete, presentations to plan, or some other business to attend to. Never just because. I never had the luxury to go full hermit mode. I had to see faces which I sort of fear will never see again in the same positive light, faces that I just don’t care for, but slightly wish they weren’t there because they were polluting the scenery, and also faces that caused my predicament; faces that sort of put me in a relapse, faces I wished I could punch, pummel and completely trample on and get away with it. Seeing all these faces did nothing but reinforce my already sturdy misanthropy.

As a result, I have trained myself to be as completely indifferent to as many stimuli as possible. This meant that I do not have a flying rat’s shit to give about anything, which also meant I did not need to pretend. I did not need to put on a masque, which was tiring as hell, because I have gotten used to genuinely not care.

By the end of my course though, some of the people that remained rather close began to have me tag along whenever they have something going on, be it a weekend off to Ipoh or even something as simple as dinner, which I grew to accept as often as I could. Ultimately, all that held little meaning. They were, regrettably, merely friends of the phase, who revert to being mere acquaintances as time passes.

I have 10 close friends, who have remained so from the very day they gained that status. They are like the brothers and sisters which I didn’t have. But even among them, all but one know not the details of the hell I went through. To them, I have not changed much, if any at all because in the 2 years we have almost never met, I went through the full journey from depression to indifference.

Even as I returned to the heart of the country and finally sought proper, professional help, only the psychiatrist that initially took my case thought I had clinical depression, as he had to do the full assessment. The other psychiatrists who did the follow-ups, however, thought I was very much fine because of the way I showed no despair and no signs of low mood, to which I spiked the argument that it was possible that I was so used to being depressed that it was no longer evident. The 10 sessions of psychoanalysis to which I was referred to ended up not being a complete waste of time, but did not really achieve any obvious change either.

As the days go by, the mundane life remained. Nothing made more sense than it did before; nothing was more meaningful than it was before. My mum got me a number of self-help books regarding depression and with every book I go through, grows my feelings of envy for those who have ‘found the way out’ or ‘have seen the light at the end of the tunnel’. All which makes me wonder if I was missing something, or if I was doing something wrong. Every single case talks of a phoenix rising from the ashes of a mangled and horrible past while I pondered as to why I remain ash stored in a burial urn ready to be scattered across the winds and the seven seas.

And hence, I have no one to thank as no one actually did anything meaningful. Not even the 10 brothers and sisters of mine because everyone is also going through life as a university student, which I now suspect to be the hardest phase of them all in life. And as I do not enjoy or benefit from sharing, I do not do so unless asked. Which of course I don’t get asked because everyone has their own shit to deal with. No sense getting more shit than one can handle.

So that’s it. Anyone who has any idea of what I’m doing wrong, please let me know. Except the not sharing unless asked thing, because I did once and realized it did not make me feel better nor did it feel like a heavy load off my shoulders. Tried and tested, doesn’t work. Oh and on a side note, there's this one particular book which said that one gets depression 'not because one is weak, but because one has been too strong for too long'. Sounds like nonsense to me. Thoughts, anyone?

And of course, although completely coincidental, I have to thank a friend of mine for unwittingly introducing me to the existence of this writer. Who in turn taught me a method to achieve some cheap publicity, something which I despised.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: This is a confession. I always feel very guilty when I am with said friend who unwittingly introduced me to said writer. This is because I feel that we get along exceptionally well, which isn’t a problem, except said friend is the significant other of one of my brothers. So, to said brother, if I have ever made you feel insecure, I apologise from the bottom of my heart.