Aku: Mak you tak marah?

Dia: Malam tadi I kuar pukul 10, pukul 4 baru balik.

Aku: Dengan A-an? (Ye I tau nama bopren dia memang tak glamer, so shut it and read)

Dia: Ye arr. (Ye I tau spelling dia sungguh annoying, but shut up and read anyway)

Aku: Mak you tak marah?

Dia: Taklah. Mak I pesan I kena dengar cakap dia. Belajar taat kat dia. Practise, nanti lepas kawen senang nak dengar cakap.


* * *


Bullshit gila.

Some of the biggest bullshits I've ever encountered

'Ada aq kisah English aq cam sampah? Aku orang Melayu la doe. Tak perlunye pandai bahasa penjajah tue~~'

I won't say much about this because it's Ramadhan – or I wouldn't have stopped myself. Tapi please-lah, I grow up living the life of a Malay who believes that Melayu perkasa boleh maju jika mahu berusaha dan berhenti berbudaya 'Tak Apa' (Contoh: Tak apa tak pandai English, kita kan Melayu. Pandai bahasa sendiri sudey~). I can't believe there are still modern Malays who think that it's OK to be left behind, to not be competitive, to not improve their competency in the second language. Worst, these people are younger than I am but they're living in the way past where Bahasa Melayu is still the lingua franca. What on earth are we teaching in schools these days?

And there's the 'Aq multi-linguals, aq interest in Korean and Japan, oso bley ckap Korean and Japan,' bullshit that just pisses me off at any given encounter. Tahu sepatah dua saranghae sukidesu saja, lajunya lebih daripada pelesit nak mengaku multilingual. Siap letak 's' lepas perkataan lingual, I pun taktau apa these people are trying to prove. Dahlah berjemaah pulak Melayu-melayu belaka yang buat pengakuan perasan jujur serupa itu. I can't even describe the image these teenagers are projecting of their brains with such irresponsible statements. Like seriously!

Also there's the K-Pop male idols obsessed, counterpart wannabes like SyidaHae, AmiRAIN (and some other combos I dare not list for I might puke and bastardize the poor keyboard) who text-squeal over the tiniest of news and rage with spits and curses and incomprehensible English all over anti-sites on an hourly basis – and they happen to be school kids whose baju sekolah and setokin are still being scrubbed by their mums. 'Omo2 kowrunk, Chong Tae Guk oppah msok spital sbb xcderrnt weyhh!! Komawo, omo2!' or 'Ko pehal anti-anti GLITTERee? Mcm arr bagos!! Cib**!' I mean seriously, come on, I thought drooling over romance novels in which heroin kampung tak pass sekolah pandai masak asam pedas kawin anak Datuk kaki botol last sekali jadi baik is already too much – but this? This is new.


*urut-urut dahi sikit*


Back then when I was 13 to 17, I never really had time to menyamar bini or girlfriend or tunang or janda of whichever idol from whichever country – I was too busy with manga and anime. But I was never so obsessed that I would spend hours to just rage and text-squeal, even with the speedy internet. Probably because I had books and also TV, and there's always the newspaper which keeps everything in balance, LOL.

Now I wonder if them self-professed kekasih gelap SUJU are aware that UPSR and PMR might be abolished? Or should I just wonder if these kids are aware that there is such a thing called PMR?

Mungkin jauh di sudut hati...

Nani baca kebanyakan update tentang keadaan arwah saudara Faiz Taufik, semasa dia masih melawan cancer di hospital. Setiap satu update memang sakit sangat untuk dibaca. Tapi Nani nak ambik tahu. Nani ada simpan satu harapan dalam hati, walaupun sinarnya Nani tak ingat seterang mana, Nani memang nak sangat Faiz sembuh. Kesian? Empati? Sayang? Atau simply kemanusiaan? Nani tak pasti sangat yang mana satu.

Bila ada seorang kawan kata Faiz akan dikomakan, Nani memang tak larat nak tahan air mata lagi dah. Tumpah jugak. Ya Allah, memang betul orang-orang baik budi, baik hati, baik iman ini semua Engkau sayang, Engkau uji, kan? Nani tenang sikit sebab Faiz balik jumpa Allah SWT pada bulan Ramadhan. Macam itu punya Allah sayang dia, jemput dia balik bebas dari seksaan kubur, Nani memang respect sangat.

'Kita pun nak pergi situ jugak, Nani,' kata Kak Linda. 'Cuma dia Allah panggil dulu. Nak buat macam mana, temujanji depa awal daripada kita. Sabar na?'

Ada sedikit terkilan sebab Nani tak sempat pun pergi tengok dan bagi semangat masa dia sakit dulu. Nani cuma sempat doa dari jauh saja. Semoga roh Faiz tenang sampai Hari Perhitungan nanti. Itu saja yang Nani mampu buat. Doa.

Minggu lepas, Kak Chik Jamilah, cikgu Sejarah MRSM Beseri meninggal dunia kerana Meningitis. Kami sebaya. Macam Nani dengan arwah Faiz. Berturut-turut 2 minggu kawan-kawan Nani Allah ajak balik di bulan puasa. Dalam hati cemburu juga, mereka buat apa selama hidup 25 tahun ini sampai Allah sayang macam itu sekali? Ya. Cemburu jadinya Nani.

Tapi dalam kabur-kabur mata Nani dengan air mata, Nani nampak juga yang baik-baik. Hikmah terbesar yang Nani perasan di sebalik kepulangan insan-insan mulia itu, Nani terus nampak segala apa jahat-jahat Nani selama ini. Nani nak ubah semua yang tak elok dalam diri Nani. Nani takmau lagi berfikir nak jahat pada orang. Nani takmau lagi lambat-lambat solat. Nani takmau sengaja buat apa-apa yang akan buat Allah marah pada Nani. Nani nak balik bersih, macam Kak Chik, macam Faiz, macam Rasulullah SAW insyaAllah.

Doa Nani banyak-banyak untuk mereka dan semua umat Islam yang Allah sudah bawa pulang. Semoga sejahtera mereka semua di sana.

Lepas tulis setakat ini, Nani diam berfikir. Lama Nani diam. Lama Nani fikir. Tentang Kak Chik, tentang Faiz, tentang mati, tentang kasih Allah SWT.

Mungkin jauh di sudut hati, sebenarnya, Nani sendiri pun berharap dapat balik awal.

This was my story.

I was the happiest girl in the world. My mother was the most beautiful woman whose heart was pure platinum and my dad was the most powerful man in the industry. None of my dreams went by without being made to come true by their love and money. Some even came true before I could dream them.

Then it came in tongues of flames and fury, claiming everything I had ever loved. In my 16-year-old eyes the fire could have easily beaten the size of Everest at any given time. It took both my angels away, never to return. And I was left alone to weep floods and floods of liquid agony, longing and desperation down my cheeks for ten long years. There were times when I thought I should just cut my meaningless life short and go with them, wherever they are.

But God, He had other plans for me. It all began with the growl on the roof, which sounded hungry.

This was my story.

p/s: It could be yours, too.

* * *

You are invited to continue this story in the comment section.

Three sentences per-person, proceeding from where the previous commenter left off. You have unlimited turns to write.

Let's see where the story will go. Hehe. I'll do the first three sentences.

Cute

is not tilting your head 45 degrees to the side, with a rusty thicker-than-hell fringe splattered all over your forehead, bulging your heavily lined eyes out of their sockets staring up like some retard, or winking as you lost control of your tongue that it has to stick out all slimy, or puffing one of your concealer-painted, acne-covered cheeks (the one closest to the camera lens), or putting up your icky pout like some blowfish kicked in the butt, and expressing 'Peace' with your kuku bela iblis fingers (like you know the meaning of the expression when the fact is you're just doing it because some J-Pop artists do it), or placing a finger over your lips senseless, before snapping yourself with your own phone.

Cute is painless. Effortless. And definitely NOT disgusting.

Get THAT through your rusty thicker-than-hell fringe.

Aqua, coloured.

Click for full view.

Stabilo and Faber-castell coloured pencils used. 2 hours. Lineart done with Mitsubishi UniPin 0.2. Forgive the uneven lighting. It made some parts appear unevenly colored. Would definitely look better if scanned.

Anyway, what do I want for my birthday this year? A set of PRISMACOLOR coloured pencils. I'm bored with Stabilo and Faber-castell already. And don't even start on Luna. I want PRISMACOLOR. I really do.

Inspired by Aisya Shurfa's Four Elements.

Inspired

Click for full view.

by Aisya Shurfa's Four Elements, I decided to try to do Aqua. This is the final lineart. Will colour it soon. Yes, she has a wand, with which she uses to command the raging oceans in her mission to save Mother Earth. I sort of think she should have something in her hair, but it was already too late when I realized that it's so empty, the lineart was done by then. I guess I have to work on the colours of the hair to tone down the emptiness, hehe.

I don't have a scanner, so I used my camera to take a picture of this. Thus the gradient.

Comments?

Pegang-pegang, raba-raba itu semua berizin kan?

'I benci laki yang kapel dengan orang lain, lepas tu kawen dengan orang lain. Sial,' said a friend, one day. I was only starting on my ice-cream when she began. So I turned to look at her. She had this frown on her face that made me raise a brow. She looked like she had seen Cookie Monster doing a zapin.

'Izhar kawen dengan sape lepas break up dengan you?' I asked – which was totally something she would never forgive. She shot me a killer stare and suddenly the ice-cream tasted like sand. More like melted sand, I'd say. But I wasn't in trouble. I was the only friend she had. The only one she ever would have.

***

Teacher Nani biasanya test-test baca dulu mana-mana buku yang dia berkenan sebelum dia beli. Lepas test-test, kalau tak berkenan dia simpan balik. Kalau berkenan, dia akan ambil a new copy of the chosen title yang masih berbalut plastik serta tak ada sebarang cacat pada spine dan cover, yang paling sempurna, bawak pergi kaunter untuk bayar.

Jadi Teacher Nani memang faham bila kawan-kawan lelaki dia tak kahwin pun dengan girlfriend-girlfriend mereka. Her mind works the way theirs do. Masa bercinta tu test-test saja. Yang nak dibuat menantu mak bapak mestilah yang masih berbalut – firsthand.

Pegang-pegang, raba-raba itu semua berizin kan? Percuma saja kamu bagi kan? Jadi kenapa bila boyfriend kamu mintak putus sebab dia tersangkut hati pada anak jiran yang bertudung cute-cute kamu nak marah? It's not like he stole anything from you yang kamu nak suruh dia be responsible tu. Kamu pun carilah juga anak jiran yang bersongkok macho-macho.

Manalah tahu, kot-kot mereka berminat dengan perempuan yang belum berkahwin tapi sudah berbekas pegang-raba, kan?