Books : Fight Club

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“Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

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I watched the movie much later than I should have.
I think it was last year, just because I was too bored and decided to check out David Fincher's movie. I was hooked. Then I promised myself to read any of Chuck Palahniuk's books,  just to see whether the book is any better than the movie. I got the book 2 weeks ago and I started reading it. 

Let's just say that I appreciate the idea of the story. I really do, it turned into some twisted mind-blowing ending mixing with spiritual self-discovery themed story. I loved the movie, but I didn't like the writing. It did hit people with awesome advises about life and mental note of how fucked-up the whole system is. 

As a writer, Chuck Palahniuk's messages are awesome and I like it. 

But his writing in Fight Club wasn't up to my standard. It felt like he wrote it out of anger.

I have Invisible Monster that I borrowed from my boss, see if this book is any good.

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PS : And I found this : Granta, with writings from Haruki Murakami : Thailand, A Walk to Kobe, The Seventh Man, and Lederhosen. If you don't know yet, well, Murakami loves to write short stories, they are like little stories that came out randomly from his weird universe.

Little Things 191 : Yellowmushmellow's DM

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I have this little crush on this awesome Singaporean illustrator, Yellowmushmellow since 2010.  So one day she sent me this little DM on my Instagram to congratulate me for my marriage. And like any fangirl, I was super-excited and promised to post it on my blog so that I can remember that even if no one came to my wedding *lol*, one of my sifu sent a customized nice little illustration as a gift. 

And I mentioned to her that I'll be blogging this in not-so-cool way because I am that honest. I really love her strokes and colours. It looked so effortless, yet sooo invitingly fun and cute. How can she be awesome in such a young age? Well, that's what real talent and skills combined. 

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Here's one of her short comic :

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Little Stories 90 : Paypal's Spammer

This morning, I received a rather convincing email from Paypal regarding sending a payment to a stranger. I was shocked because I didn't send any payment to anyone for the past few weeks. *I used my mobile phone and I often use Paypal for Etsy payment so I come to recognize the email - it is almost really convincing. The different thing is there is a huge note down below stated " If you believe that Transaction not processed by you please Click Here for refund. " in different font. I am a graphic designer, so I am very particular about that. I just thought that it would be unprofessional for Paypal to make such mistake of choosing those font-type in huge size.

Here it is :

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Before clicking on the link to report that I didn't send any payment to anyone, I waited to arrive at the office and I wanted to continue reporting the transaction to Paypal on my iMac. But, instead of clicking on the link from the email, I opened my account and that's when I realized that there was no transaction at all. I didn't make any transaction and I don't have to make any complain!

I realized by then that it was a spammer's email, a rather convincing one using everything from Paypal's email template. I almost click on the link, but I knew better. 

I reported the incident to Paypal's customer service right-away, I just think they should know that the spammers are doing a better job in creating convincing looking templates these days. They emailed me with things that I should do to help them investigate the email further.  

This is a note from Paypal :

Any time you receive an email about changes to your PayPal account, the safest way to confirm the email's validity is to log in to your PayPal account where any of the activity reported in the email will be available to view. DO NOT USE THE LINKS IN THE EMAIL RECEIVED TO VISIT THE PAYPAL WEBSITE. Instead, enter www.paypal.com into your browser to log in to your account.

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PS :  I know some people will be convinced with such email if they use Paypal regularly because it came out as normal as other Paypal email that I usually receive. If you are on Paypal, I just think you guys should know.  

Excerpt 14 : Hypothesis

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will. - Carl Sagan

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I love hypothesis. I love how raw and random it be. I love how it doesn't end with a strict summary and opens a lot more possibilities. I love how it tickles my mind and raise my curiosity. I love how I don't have to say one final answer and put a full-stop. I love how it might be wrong and it might be right, but it doesn't matter, because after all, it is just a hypothesis. 

It is like Einstein telling me; "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

Hypothesis seems like an idea to go to places where you'll have reasons to find any answers possible and you have the ticket to be wrong or right. If you never did wrong, then how would you know that you are right? If you close your mind to just accepting the summary decided by other people, then how would you enjoy the whole process of having an experiment?

After-all, life should not be like reading a text book written by someone else.
You should craft your own text book.

Little Things 190 : Toxic People 2

I'm going through Zen Habits's archives when I saw : 

7 Strategies for Dealing with Toxic People. 

Remember this post I did few months back? 

I grew up in a pretty intense environment, clearly not a happy cheery teenage life. IF only I knew better, I would probably grew up in much simpler decent life. But I didn't, and the shell that I created to divide between me and the society grew as thick as a printed old dictionary in hard cover version. All because of several toxic peoples in my life.

I'm not saying that I regret having them at all, I'm only saying that : 

IF only I knew how to deal with toxic people, I would probably grew up much differently. 

So here's to you, with all your toxic people around that have been sucking up your lights and happy thoughts, 

don't let the Dementors get you. 

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Little Things 189 : Wander

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I'm still processing. What changed the most during this 3 weeks? Is it my freedom or my responsibility? Is it my choices or my decisions? Is it my constant thoughts to let myself adapt with the idea of having a new title tatooed on my ring finger?

I'm still the one that constantly feels the urge to take a long train ride to the unknown, the one that still steals the smell of cold morning dew, the one that loves to capture warm sunset in purple and orange. I still take my long walk in bookstores and eat things that I let myself eat. I still read books and play Farm Story 2 religiously. 

I feel like me, but different.

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I don't write much often though, it seems to me like my thoughts are now synching in with my new status. I no longer think in one voice without thinking much of the consequences, I think in two voices. Sounding desperately to be the person that I used to be. So I'm lost in search of my voice in writing again.

Sometimes I write snippets of little things that come out of no where, I bring my little book and a bunch of pens everyday to keep myself ready. Sometimes I hide in toilet at the office to write about random thoughts so that I'll have my own silence to whisper me stuffs that I need to put down in written words. Toilets, of all the places. 

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So what changed the most?  

Is it everything, or nothing, all at once?

PS : On lighter note, it is a positive feeling ❤

Books : Love

I came to the office with several old books on my table.
My boss put all the books during my off day : William Golding, Chuck Palahniuk, and Paulo Coelho.
+ Plus my brother bought me Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk) last weekend.

See, when you want something, just ask.
Maybe the universe will conspire to help you get it :D

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Wedding Story : The Kebaya

The kebaya was a last minute plan, around 1 month before the wedding when ma found out that I was planning to wear the same dress for akad nikad & sanding. She gave me one of her hand-made exclusive batik kebaya and we sent it to a tailor near our house to do some re-fitting to alter the kebaya according to my measurement.

It fitted nicely!

I personally love the detailing and I love how all the red flowers scattered on a white clothes. I secretly want Ma's hand-drawn white kebaya for ages! I never thought she will offer one as a gift T^T

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She also made a nice veil that matched the kebaya. She drew, coloured, put it in the fixer, washed, sew, added beads and crystals all by herself. T^T I knew Ma was determined to make it all perfect and beautiful, but I never thought she will put up to all the hassles and time just for a veil. For that, I am really grateful - I can't never pay her by money knowing her hand-made batik is just too expensive for someone like me.

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PS : For the tudung, I just bought normal RM15 cream-coloured shiny tudung bawal from pasar malam :p

If you want to spend few thousand Ringgit on an exclusive designated custom made batik, you can contact her here. But if you want to rent the veil that I used on my wedding - I think we can work it out and you can email me : azreen_31@hotmail.com !

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That's my beautiful Ma :

❤ :D

Little Things 188 : Listen

Most of people I've been with only listen to words that come out from their mouth. I learned that not many people have that authenticity to listen. The things that we say and things that we don't say.

Some people have a good listening skill.
Some people don't.

Some people prefer to talk.
Some people prefer to listen.

Some people can hear things that you are not saying.
Some people can't hear things that you are saying.

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Personally I think a good listening skill consist of abilities to listen to both what people are saying and what people are not saying. This might be connected with having a high EQ - I'm not sure whether some people are just born with high EQ or it is possible to train ourselves to learn this - maybe both (?).

The good thing about this is we can hear stuffs - when people are lying, when people are sad over telephone call, when people talk in sarcasm or metaphors, when people are trying to convey certain thing over attitude and limited explanation, when we talk with children or old people, etc. 

The bad thing is also that we can hear stuffs - sometimes things that we rather not know, or hard to process, or things that we don't know how to react to, or too much noises going on because we keep on hearing things.

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I choose to let this post without the ending point to summarize it.
Because for this, even though I can hear stuffs, most of the time I choose to not process everything. I rather keep all the noises in their places. Maybe I only use my listening skill when the time is right, little by little. By practice, someday, maaaybe I can finally listen to everything and put things in good use for a better life.
So who am I to summarize such a vague statement?

As for you, maybe you can try to consider exploring your listening skills too.
You will learn a lot by listening to things around you,
rather than forever listening to only your own voice yapping to yourself.

Wedding Story : People

There were 3 of my friends who came on my wedding day : 

Tasy, Min and Mimi 

+ Nerdless Shazni, the doodler.

Other than ma's family members who live in Pekan and all their neighbours, I can conclude that no one else came to our wedding. There weren't any ex-schoolmates, ex-kmns, ex-uniten, previous colleagues from Secret.families, current colleagues or anyone else for that matter. Plus - hardly anyone from my dad's family came too.  

There are 2 possible reasons :

1. I am no one that people considered important enough that people would spend so much time and effort to travel all the way to Pekan just for an event.

2. I hardly go to anyone's wedding, so no one felt obliged to go too.

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The thing about having a reception is so that people would know that I've got married and we were 'trying' to celebrate it with the world other people. But I just never thought that we had to spend so much in one day just to do so and learned that no one wants to come anyway.

If only my mom agreed on just having little 'kenduri' and invite only : Tasy, Min and Mimi. 

Kan senang?

PS : Only 1 of AF's friend came with his wife and little Iman.

Knowing both of us are just 2 introverted people with less friends make me feel glad that we both have each other.

Books : New Wishlist

I've come to the point that I've read all Murakami's works and feeling like I don't have anything else to read - even though there are more than hundred million books published all over the world.

Do you have any second-hand books to let go?

I'm searching for these :

• Diary by Chuck Palahniuk 
• The Stranger by Albert Camus 
• Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov 
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk  *Azmi bought one for me
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding 
• Any of Orhan Pamuk's except Museum of Innocence 
• Any of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Excerpt 13 : Your Voice

“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers — becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. 

And I sometimes have a hard time understanding how people who don’t have that in their lives make it through the day.” 

- David Foster Wallace

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