Discovery...

Being away in the jungle gives an opportunity to discover yourselves. Going alone, however, can invite danger. When accompanied by others, preferably those familiar with the area, one can sort of put aside the thinking about general safety - the place to venture into and the place to avoid - and concentrate on personal safety.
Nakamora has been in the jungle fairly often. he felt the difference. It is a different world altogether. Peaceful. Only the birds are making noises - beautiful, soothing noise. Occasionally the monkeys chip in too. This is the place where money is valued less, or not much at all. The currency in the jungle is trust, and respect. Respect the animal, and they won't be mad at you. Interact with trust with the aborigines, and they will trust you. Betray their trust and forever you will not be trusted anymore.

Traveling Back In Time...

Ramadhan officially ended in Malaysia, and most countries in this region on Tuesday, which is the end of September. Wednesday, October first is also 1 Syawal 1429, the first day of Eid Mubarak for Malaysia, and most countries in the region. Nakamora was told by a friend that Austria celebrated Eid a day earlier.
As usual there are many of people doing the same thing at the same time. Thus major shopping districts in Kuala Lumpur were flooded with crowds of shoppers at the weekend before and a few days before the end of September in preparation for the Eid. Monday and Tuesday saw traffic build-up in major highways leading to kampungs (villages). "Balik kampung" or returning to the village to meet folks and elders still residing there,the familiar annually recurring event, is here again. It is an opportunity to renew contacts, to touch-base, to meet relatives and friends, to revisit the roots, to keep up with the latest there, as it were.
Idyllic villages transformed overnight to bustling, instant towns.
Nakamora too spent the holiday in villages. Some do not have much differences from what he saw daily in Kuala Lumpur. Kids glued to TV screens, computer monitors, or little screen of the handsets - trading short text messages, multimedia files, or exchanging MP3 tunes. In a particular village in Jerteh, Terengganu, however, he saw a different sight. A sight that he has not seen for a very long time - a sight that reminds him of his childhood days. Those kids really have a good time looking for fish in the mud.
They don't seem to bother about baju raya' - new clothes to be worn on that special day, or about collecting 'duit raya.' It was only the third Syawal. Most kids would still be making the rounds collecting 'duit raya'. Probably they have already done so. After all, in a kampung like this there may not be that many 'duit raya' that can be expected - not as many as their catch, may be.
If it was not for the lack of proper clothing to replace the ones he had on Nakamora would have joined them too. The mud looks smooth. A tourist from Europe or somewhere staying at a homestay may jump right in. Mud is good for the skin, and most of them are crazy about it..

How To Decide...

Deciding what to eat for 'iftar' (breaking fast during the month of Ramadhan) can be challenging from two standpoints.
Heading towards the Ramadhan bazaar and well within it, surrounded by countless food stalls selling varieties of food, Nakamora found it hard to decide what he should get for the day. There are stalls selling traditional delicacies that are not normally found outside the month of Ramadhan. Naturally, that would be the first thing to buy. That settles the first challenge.
As Ramadhan progressed, and as Nakamora continued to get traditional food one after another for his iftar, it became clearer to him that what he thought is traditional is actually not traditional. They look traditional, but the taste is far from it. Thereafter he avoids patronizing such stalls and in the process builds his own list of 'blacklisted' stalls.
he realized that it is quite easy to see such stalls are those that are in business only during Ramadhan. They are no longer a going concern after that and thus have little motivation to 'do it right.'
The second challenge then is not to choose among many, but to choose which ones, as the options are getting smaller. Quite a number of stalls are already in his 'stall to avoid' list. That includes stall operators who do not dress properly while handling food items.
He also noticed that some 'traditional' delicacies looked like being centrally-prepared. Hence many stalls sell similar looking delicacies - same look,same texture, same size, same packaging, and perhaps taste the same as well. The price too, is the same everywhere - high, much higher than what it has been just weeks ago, before the Ramadhan bazaar business starts operating. Some are just in it for the money...

The Meanings of a Day...

The sun rises, the sun sets, and a day ends. The night is another chapter, supposed to be a time of rest, of recollection, of planning. To make ends meet some continue to work to and through the night.
Nakamora was out and about the other day when he noticed a man having lunch of only a plate of rice and gravy and a glass of plain water. There was no meat, no fish, no vegetable either. Could he be someone on the way to amass a lot money to become a rich man, even a millionaire, by being thrifty to a fault? or honestly he is minimizing his cost of living expenses to finance the needs of his family. The man looked like the latter to Nakamora, and he both pity and respect that man for his sense of sacrifice and responsibility.
A day means different things to different people. For Nakamora, that particular day was for walking around and get connected with life outside his study. To others it could have been a hectic day at the corporate boardroom, in the laboratory, or traveling on the road. To others, particularly some teens seen loitering around, it could just be another day; without meaning whatsoever. Being able to meet friends, be together and have fun is all what a day means. They do no have any ends to join.
Everybody else are going their own way. Making their own ends meet. Some are concerned not just to make the ends meet, but to overlap, many times over.
Some of that overlaps perhaps belong to that man having lunch with a plate of rice and gravy and a glass of plain water... or for setting the meaning of a day, and of life, to those loitering aimlessly...

Forget the Engine, Let's Ride a Bike...

It's already more than 60 years ago. It is something that we should forget, others are beginning to forget that too; or are they? It happened so far away, not here. Why should we bother having anything that day, like some sort of commemoration?
Nakamora is not alone in asking those questions. Many others wonder the same too, but he got it cleared after the event. He followed the whole program of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki commemoration day, or H&N08, as the organizer, the Malaysian Nuclear Society (MNS) dubbed it. It was on Wednesday, 6 August, at USIM campus, Bandar Baru Nilai.
He took note of the officiating speech of the university's vice chancellor on the importance of tempering knowledge with morality and having good moral values, of using using knowledge only for the good of mankind, and the environment. The program showed that there are many ways of using the technology to benefit mankind. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened, but that should not be reasons to abandon the many other benefits of the technology.
That was the message he got, and he could not agree more. After all, he thought, the engine that powers his car uses the same principle as the one that moves tanks used in battlefields. To be consistent, we should hate the engine too; let's ride a bike. But of course, he rationalizes, human is not always rationale, is not always logical, is not always consistent...

Environmental Consciousness

Normally Nakamora prefers to listen to debates in his head while driving through traffic jam of Kuala Lumpur. Occasionally he tunes to the local radio stations. Today is one of that occasion and he keeps on changing stations hoping to catch Carole King, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, or even Bob Marley or Michael Buble singing. None of the station have any of them on at that time.
But wait, here is something that catches his attention. The melody is strange and yet familiar. He could not understand some of the words but can make them out with a little bit more efforts.
It was a Kelantanese song. It starts by introducing a hungry squirrel, its tail cutoff, looking for food by a rambutan tree. The song goes on saying that squirrel is a mammalian that can jump from tree branches to another with ease. But sometimes it falls due to impatience.
Villagers used to chase squirrel away from their fruit trees like rambutan and durian using catapults and by throwing stones, woods, or even a piece of tree branches. They run away, escape, and still stay alive.
With the advent of modern technology nowadays squirrels are shot at. Most of them are dead. They cannot escape. The song goes on regretting that killings. Its hard to see squirrel nowadays. We cannot make even one of them, no matter how high is our education.
Finally the song introduced a thin, tired looking baby squirrel. It is on the ground, instead of up at tree branches, trying to cross a small stream, but cannot make it. Some of its feathers are lost, perhaps it has just escaped from a farm nearby, looking for food. Perhaps its mother cannot make it and lost its live there. The singer was touched by that scenery and appealed for more compassion to animals. They are part of our environment.
Nakamora felt moved by it too. It was a good song; while entertaining, it has a strong message. He later learned that the singer is Halim Yazid. That reminded him of a similar song years ago about a turtle by Abu Bakar Ellah. Hmm... we are not poor of songs and singers with good renditions of the environment and the living things around us.
Motivated by the song, Nakamora searched around in the hope of taking a photo of a squirrel. He wanted to make a tribute by posting its photo here; but he needed more time to find one, squirrel is not easy to see anymore. Thus he put the photo of a tortoise just finishing its meal given by a forest ranger at Kubah National Park in Sarawak.
In between Bob Dylan and the rest, he now make a mental note of that local singers and keep on tuning if there would be more such songs in the local environment.