Dreams

I am having my mock exams. The teacher passes down the Chemistry Paper 2 question papers and I ready my pencil. My watch is in front of me, my calculator is on the ready (that little underline thing blinking on off on off), my mind is set on Go.

"You may begin," she says, and I open the booklet.

The first question is about the periodic table - I see the familiar four-group diagram, and I am about to write when I realize that the question is in Chinese. I blink; and then I turn the pages, hurriedly now - and I discover that ALL THE QUESTIONS ARE IN CHINESE.

I am horrified. I turn to the front page, where all the instructions are, and I realize that it says there, right in the first line: 'This paper is bilingual. Students are expected to answer in their mother tongue.' I look around at my classmates and I find that they are all scribbling away at their answer scripts: Teck Chaw is biting his pencil as he thinks, Tay is making clucking noises at the first question, and I realize that I am alone in this -

I wake up in cold sweat.

A few days later I receive my Macbook in the mail. I open it, remove the instruction manual, the Apple stickers, the adapters, and then I tear open the bubble wrapping of my new Mac. I am happy as it chimes on, I type my name into the necessary fields, and I marvel at the beauty of OSX.

Then I go downstairs.

I cannot stop myself. There is this magnetic compulsion to leave my mark on my new laptop - as strong as whatever drives dogs to pee around their property, so I go downstairs and enter the kitchen and take a knife. And then I return to my Mac and I take out the knife ... and I carve my name onto the soft white plastic, under the lacquer Apple logo. As the cover peels under my fingers I am silently screaming in my head, unable to stop myself, but the knife keeps going on and on at the C of my name, deeper into the laptop -

I wake up in cold sweat.

We are in school now! St Thomas's is under monster attack! A dragon-creature lands right smack outside our classroom, sends a couple of cars flying, and starts to blast fire at the nicest vehicles in the immediate vicinity. My classmates go crazy and begin running about, screaming, and quickly I am enveloped in a throng of scared, brainless plebeians who want to get as far away as possible from the monster. I stare at it, and as I am wondering how best to bring it down and kill it my friends start to point at something running helter-smelter right at the monster.

It is my Physics teacher Pn Loh. I am about to shout a warning at her when she stops and rummages in her handbag. The monster turns its fearsome head to look at her; I see its red pupils contract into angry maroon pinpricks. Then - and this is the most improbable thing ever but I swear to you I saw this happen - Pn Loh takes out a plastic star and puts it on her forehead.

And she turns into Ultraman.

I wake up in cold sweat. Exams are not a good time for me to dream in.

Bookeeping

Now I don't really like tags, but this one's from le Edrei, so I can't just ignore him and hide under a bomb shelter. And he's right - memes are a 'lost art people don't really know how to do anymore' - but I think that's mostly because Malaysians grew up in a blogging environment that threw about the Stupidest. Memes. Ever. I mean, random songs as answers to questions? Like that's interesting to read. And then there's this one going around ...

Okay maybe that was a bad example.

On with the tag:

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?
Oh yes. I was a very lonely kid in primary school - my classmates mostly spoke Chinese, my best friend transferred out in Primary 3, and I was stuck in this alien world where running fast meant the difference between being bullied and being - (wait, what's the word for 'not-bullied'?) - happy. Reading - and later on writing - was a very good way of escaping my problems.

There was this one time in Primary 4 when I had two essay corrections to hand up right after recess, but I hadn't done both and there was no way to complete them in time. I was in the 'new' block in Chung Hwa No. 1, and in front of it there is this slice of beautiful slope, covered by trees and always overflowing with kids. I took a book, sat under the roots of one of those trees, and read the recess away.

The caning seemed more bearable after that.

What are some books you read as a child?
I finished a good portion of both the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew series, and I think I ploughed through at least half (if not all) of the Famous Five, Secret Seven and Adventure books by Enid Blyton. I really enjoyed The Secret Garden in Primary 3, and I started reading Harry Potter when I was in Primary 5.

Thinking back on it now I realize that the books I loved were usually the ones with a lonely, misunderstood character in the centre of it all, who finds a reprieve from his/her problems in some way. The secret garden and Hogwarts became wonderful places to run away and hide in, back then, and now sometimes - just for kicks - I take those books out again and vanish into their pages.

What is your favourite genre?
I don't have one. Or rather, I'm not sure I do. I enjoyed a lot of fantasy when I was younger, but after SPM I forced myself to start reading real literature, for what it was worth. And I found that I enjoyed both - and thrillers, and mystery novels, and chic-lit. There are too many good books in too many different genres with too many winning qualities out there to be picky.

Do you have a favourite novel?
Oh that's easy. Lord Of The Flies. Golding's masterpiece is a wonderful exploration of sin, civilization and man, even if using boys on an island to play it out is a slightly perverse premise. But what the hell. Great pacing, jaw-dropping writing and an explosive ending - crazy stuff.

Where do you usually read?
In bed, in the family room, or on the road. I've developed reading while walking to a fine art - you know how those action sequences always never seem to end ...

When do you usually read?
Anytime. And I'm not kidding. Sam lent me Life Of Pi once, and I spent hours on a lifeboat along with Pi Patel, way into the wee hours of the morning. I finished Breaking Dawn at 4 a.m. A whole day on Daniel's Dune. A week in Lord Of The Rings. Ahh. Good times.

Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
Yeap. I've put War and Peace on hold for a very long time, and I recently paused Moby Dick to read some online work. I usually get back to them once the shorter, easier books are done and there's nothing else in the house.

Do you read non-fiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
Yes. I read non-fiction less voraciously, I often reread non-fiction, and I take my time between chapters to think about what I've just read. No choice. Some of the concepts in the non-fiction books I read are way over my head, even if they are easy to understand. And here's a head's up: really good non-fiction books tend to make you rethink everything else you thought you knew about the subject matter (Theology of Economics, I'm looking your way).

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
Let me paraphrase Edrei on this one:

Being poor, I don't usually have the option of buying the books that I want. So I usually borrow them from someone else or check them out from the library. These days though, thanks to the genius that is the internet, I find myself reading more and more books in electronic format instead. I may love the smell of musty pages on a cold day, but that's nowhere near my thirst for reading and finding out new things I never knew.

Being poor, I don't usually have the option of buying all the books that I want. So I usually borrow them from someone else, or check them out from the Sarawak Club library. But I'm reading more and more fiction online, blooks, torrents, the like. It helps that the publishing industry is starting to experiment with using the Internet as an alternative distribution channel, even if similar attempts have failed in the past.

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
No. I feed them to my dog.

If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
I don't have kids at the moment, but if I do ... well. I'll definitely want them to read Harry Potter, and probably Famous Five, Secret Seven and the like, but for their sake I hope they don't identify with the lonely, misunderstood children in those books.

But then again I'll be happy as long as they're reading.

What are you reading now?
My Chemistry and Physics textbooks. Sigh. But I'm also rereading Oren Harari's Break From The Pack, and Stephen King's On Writing.

Do you keep a "To Be Read" list?
I did. But I lost it, so all I've got is a buy all Steinbeck novels you find item flashing in my head.

What’s next to be read?
I'll see if I can get a PDF version of The Wealth Of Networks printed, and then I'll probably consume that.

What books would you like to reread?
It's funny you know, how this question plays out. Some books I've found to be better and better with every reread - the Lord of The Rings, for instance, was horrible the first time I finished it at 14, but then it became better and better everytime I revisited Middle Earth. I'm not really sure why.

I reread Harry Potter too, when I'm bored, and sometimes I open up random books I have in my room to find a particularly memorable passage, or perhaps a particularly touching scene. There is one in The Age Of Innocence where Archer bends down on one knee and kisses Countess Olenska's shoe, because he is forbidden to love her and that is all he dares to do. I friggin loved that. Completely fell in love with that. Yowza.

Who are your favourite authors?
There are many. Steinbeck, for one. Jeffrey Archer. Diana Wynn Jones. Johnathan Stroud. But this really shouldn't matter, no? It's the books we fall in love with, not the authors, and these names aren't as important as the feelings you get when you're curled up, mug in hand, buried in a good book.

I tag:
Tracy
Wen Qi
Ember