Kodak Hawkeye Flashfun

Last weekend, I was in Taiping to meet up with my parents and also to leave my two boys there with their cousin. It is a first time for them to stay there for the next two weeks and that would give them time to connect with my parents and learn a thing or two about living life.

While there, I leafed through the photo albums at my parents' house in Taiping especially the ones in black and white. I could learn a thing or two about composition from my father, who was a prolific photographer in his younger days. I found this picture, of a young boy, hair plastered to his head from the Tancho haircream, black plastic-framed spectacles hiding out most of his eyes and he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with some designs of musical instruments, short pants from which spindly legs came out and he wore ankle-high moccasins and white socks. His left hand held a plastic strap and the strap went down low, almost touching the ground and at the end of it, was a plastic camera. Behind him, was the old Subang Airport. That camera had some blue colour to it while the rest was in black. I could remember the colours from the memory that was initiated from looking at the picture. That was me, in 1971. The pictures I took of the airport were blurry then, from the inadequacy of the plastic and fixed focus lens and the limited ISO capability. That was my first camera. To advance to the next film frame, one would have to crank a ribbed wheel at the top of the camera until it could not turn anymore.

I had thought that I was 14 when I got my first camera but actually, that Kodak camera was my second. This was the first and I was 11 years old then. The Kodak camera gave sharper pictures. As a Scout, I used to go camping and I would bring the Kodak to take pictures of my colleagues at the campsite. This Kodak was a plastic boxy gadget which was narrow at the base and high at the height. It would be like the modern camera but vertical with the viewfinder in the side middle. The bottom half of it was in light brown to pink while the top half was in silver. The top half had the place for the putting in the flash bulb. The camera ran on batteries and the trigger was placed at the side and one had to use the index finger to push it down so that the picture can be taken. I ran through this Kodak Collector's website http://www.nwmangum.com/Kodak/ and managed to know that it was a Hawkeye Flashfun which was manufactured between 1961 to 1967. Kudos to the Kodak collector for the information!

It is amazing that the pictures, though in black and white can initiate the remembrance of memories in colour. And for a while, I could remember that day, the sounds and colours. I don't remember where the camera went but there was a long period between leaving school to enter university until 1985 when I revived the hobby again.

PEMANDU

Permanently Enslaved Mentality And Nurtured Debilitating Unrest. PEMANDU. No, I am just squibbling. There is no meaning to it. Is that the right word? Maybe. MYR 36 million to the consultants. Justified, of course it is. Anybody can just about justify anything nowadays. Of course, I am thinking it from my own perspective. My career has provided me with working with consultants. At one time, there was the same consultant who advised that we should not invest outside of the Asia Pacific but to limit our investment strategies to only the countries within the region. Somehow, no one questioned the consultant on the time frame. Recommendations are provided based on current facts and future expectations based on current facts. Circumstances do change. What is a recommendation now, is simpLy pure idiocy in the next two years. As expected, there was no time frame provided and the gullible management accepted it. However, one sees every other operator investing every where else. By limiting ourselves to a small room, we have unwittingly enslaved our mentalities within a limited scope of business expansion. The consultant did not give a time frame nor was it ever asked to justify with research facts on how this should be so. All I have seen are powerpoint presentations. Anyone can put words on a powerpoint slide and speak with much confidence in the presentation. I have seen mistakes and lies and I have seen gullible people accepting lies and mistakes as gospel truths.

In the past we had never depended on consultants. We managed fine and with better performance. Having a consultant is like having to pay someone to nail the coffin shut with you inside. I am weary of consultants with the powerpoint slides and with nothing else to show.

Now, there is some unrest. "We need to have Mergers & Acquisitions!" Somebody said vociferously, from the unrest of seeing no additional profitability other than pathetically surviving on organic growth. Another person came and said the same thing and with the same fervour. "We need to have Mergers and Acquisitions!" And it felt like it was sang in the same fervour as witch hunting. True enough, somebody came to me for advice on M&A. So I said, "M&A is just the vehicle, an engine for the achievement of a strategic objective. So what is your strategic objective?". Of course, that query could not be answered. There was never any real strategy for the past four years and the person responsible for it is now in PEMANDU. It worries me, no doubt. If a football player from a small village is so bad at football, how is it that he can be appointed to play football for the country? It worries me. Mind you, I am not referring to Idris Jala.

Sigh

Sighing is the action of whispering a sadness or discontentment through the heaving of an out breath through the nose and mouth. That would be the closest I can describe a sigh. I sighed when I saw that the Stationmaster's Office at the Taiping Railway yard was no longer there, demolished to oblivion for the sake of modernisation. I sighed because there could have been alternative actions to accommodate the historical relic, the legacy of the train service in the early years. It brings home to mind that, what is left of Taiping is its Lake Garden. Certainly the shady trees lining the Station Road have all but gone, decapitated to mere buttresses. Certainly, the old buildings have been left to rot. The Stationmaster's Office could have been relocated. I hope that this had been done. At least, I have the photographs of the office taken over the years. Perhaps, I am just about the only person to have it.

It brings home to mind, the understanding of tourism. Are we on the same page as tourists? When I go to a certain place, I would like to know how that place came to be through its history and through the legacy left behind through historical artifacts. I don't come to a place to admire a hotel or to have fine dining. I come to a place to have a feel of what was before and what it has become. Certainly, the Taiping Town Council has a warped sense of comprehension. I am sure these people have gone to Universities and graduated and were capable of having some sense of reasoning, however peanut-sized the capability is. Are all these bureaucrats apathetic? I should think so. No, I would like to think so, because I cannot find a logical reason to explain the apparent absurdity. I sigh because I had hoped that  the right people should be in the right places of authority but it is not happening. I wish for a better government with the right people. I am still waiting, though. Nothing much has changed. I need to sigh again. Sigh.

Twits and twats

A friend of mine, was deeply engrossed in twittering. Every now and then, his Blackberry tinkled and in response, he would look, smile and thumb into the BB. He was not alone. My wife does that too. But for this friend of mine, I asked what the purpose was, this twittering. He replied, that it was about being known, being part of something, being knowledgable on happenings as they occur within his group of twitters. It was also the same for Facebook, he said. Basically, it gets down to letting known, in words, what you are thinking of, I thought. But thoughts as they are, are also volatile, and subject to change with changing circumstances. Thoughts put into words, become obsolete but remain, thus as words which could define what a person is supposed to be, although the circusmstances have changed. Real-time texting also requires real-time reassessment, when the need arises. Real time insults bring on real time reactions. But of course, twittering is about inconsequential matters or issues. Or is it? I don't know. I don't twitter but I facebook occasionally. I would rather be invisible to the world and pander to my own thoughts. Noise. If everyone has nothing else but radios, then we will hear the chatter of radios. It gets into the mind. Twittering is to me, also like radios. The twitter is engaged in noise, of responding to trivialities on a per minute basis. So what exactly is left for the mind to ponder if it keeps on twittering? Can business decisions be made from twittering? Can a fundamental decision be made from twittering? I don't know. I am not a twitter. But it is noise in some way. It intrudes into person to person engagements. It would be like to talking to someone in a room and every other minute, the person you are talking to, keeps opening the door. Though I don't twitter, I am also affected. My thought patterns in conversations encounter road bumps every now and then. Talking no longer becomes enjoyable with a twittering friend. So what is left for me to do would be to find non-twittering friends to enjoy conversations with. I am sure that, at the end of the day, I will get the significant news from the news channel anyway. I would prefer to be anonymous to the BB world. This world is already noisy as it is. It comes to mind, though. Should there be a gender classification of the twitter? If I can call a male twitter a twit, can I call a female twitter, a twat? So, now we should have twits and twats bringing more noise to the world. Before you jump, "twat" means travelling wave amplifier tube. It does describe the woman. Really.

On Travelling

Travel rejuvenates and excites. It is that small window which opens and one gets to climb through it and be outside for a while, even for a moment, to forget and discard current responsibilities. Travel incurs expenditure, but that is quickly forgotten, once out the window, once on new terrain. Travel brings fresh questions on life, of the variety of it, of Mankind, of so many souls and lives entirely different and differently lived. Even for a while, travel is a fresh breath of air, even if debt is incurred, even if the credit card companies prepare to print their bills to send in envelopes, with urgent reminders of repayment. There is so much to see, so much to feel and so much to capture of little memories, etched from encounters with the reality of new places and people. There is so much of presses of the camera trigger, to capture moments which linger only for seconds and not replicated again. To experience life is to travel, to move around, to board the plane, sit on narrow seats, eat tasteless food with plastic forks and knives and to linger at airport terminals, ride buses and taxis and walk for miles along streets. Life is short, finance is much shorter and I dream of travelling ever more. There is so much to see, so much to experience, so much to see of legacies left behind from the people of yore. I wish it will happen again. I wish I can interact again with citizens of new places, to appreciate their architecture, learn a smattering of new language, eat their food and see how and where they live. I sigh now, as I am back. The small window is closed for now. I am back with my cameras, my memory cards, some souvenirs, some fleeting memories, in this place I call home. I hope the window will open again. Sigh.

THE MEANING OF THE BEE IN THE CUP

It cannot be any other insect but the bee. The bee is always in search of the nectar, like man is to knowledge. The bee is a communal insect, like Man is to his society. Therefore, the Bee signifies Man.

“Coffee” when taken in small amounts is nice to the taste but coffee is actually a poison to Man when taken in large amounts. Coffee here resembles knowledge. Coffee originated from the Sufis and it was drunk to enable the mind to think more clearly.

“One could of course present discussion papers and hold lectures and write books on why this insect should or should not be a bee. One could possibly enact laws and a regulatory framework to regulate the definition of a bee” - shows the disposition of Man to contradict each other on one single truth, thus wasting time.

“as the world then was constantly being created and recreated in nanoseconds” - describes what life is in this world. It is being created and recreated but we are not aware of it. The Tablet of Destiny is constantly being written, not static like other people would want to think. This explains the continuous attempts by the Jinns to read it. It changes as choices are made by each individual. Certain things have been fixed to occur, as you know but the Tablet is not static. It is dynamic and will change. Like the wise man who could “transport” the palace to Solomon. It was not transportation but a small change in reality through the knowledge of things. “A blink of an eye” is likened to maybe a few nanoseconds.

Coffee in a cup signifies the smallness of knowledge and that Man is caught in it, struggles with this limitation of knowledge until it cannot free itself. Left to his own device, the Man struggles with this knowledge until he dies - “struggling in the murky water with its legs vainly, attempting to escape its death. Coffee in the cup signifies the smallness of this knowledge but it too can kill Man. “It would live for a while, but eventually, it would die, like all things should”. Man struggles with this small knowledge, yet is entrapped within by the knowledge until one day, he dies without achieving the whole truth.

“I took the cup, raised it a little and tipped it, so that the bee and its contents fell into used tissue papers on a paper plate and the plate sat at the centre of the round table.” When the cup is tipped, Man thinks of the causative factor but not the Divine intervention which had made the cup empty its contents. Man only thinks that the cup was tipped. His knowledge is limited to when the cup is tipped. Man therefore considers himself fortunate to be saved due to the Cup being tipped. Man’s knowledge cannot extend to why the cup has tipped, he can speculate but he will not be able to determine its part in the scheme of things. “Bee on tissue” is likened to Man having safely returned to safety but like the used tissue, life in this world is weak and will eventually disintegrate. “Round table” signifies the world.

“To the bee, I would not fulfill its own definition of the human being because I was so near that I appeared very big. It could recognise a human being if it could see that person from afar and that person fulfilled all logical equations to be defined as a human being. From near, it could possibly deduce that I was the sky”. God can be so near but not discernible to Man.

When the bee was gently blown from another intervention, “but even the gentleness carried it a further away” signifies his furtherance from the reality or truth even when God has intervened. But from the intervention of God for the second time, Man manages to free his wings and be able to fly but still does not perceive that God has helped him in his endeavour.

I Saved a Bee Which Dropped into my Coffee

In this instance, a description of the place and time does not matter and is of no consequence. I could be at my house or any other place, alone or with people, as these are matters which were of no consequence to the incident at hand. But it happened yesterday. You see, there was a bee which fell into my coffee. I could infer that it was a bee because it looked like a black ant with burnt orange stripes across its abdomen. That would be my definition of a bee. Of course, any other person would have defined it in a different way but still arrive at the conclusion that it was a bee. Still, another person would want to argue that this was not a bee but a wasp or another insect. One could go on to meet and argue and discuss and disagree with each other on the definition of a bee. One could of course present discussion papers and hold lectures and write books on why this insect should or should not be a bee. One could possibly enact laws and a regulatory framework to regulate the definition of a bee. It would not matter which way or the other, as in my definition, it was to me, a bee even as the world then was constantly being created and recreated in nanoseconds. It dropped into my coffee and that was that. And for a while, while my friends were talking and laughing and gesturing, I watched it struggling in the murky water with its legs vainly, attempting to escape its death. It would live for a while, but eventually, it would die, like all things should.

While the people were still talking and gesturing, I took the cup, raised it a little and tipped it, so that the bee and its contents fell into used tissue papers on a paper plate and the plate sat at the centre of the round table. For the bee, of course, it now had the opportunity to free itself from this certain death. Of course, the bee would not be able to see who had saved it. It could simply deduce logically that the cup had tilted and because of that it was able to save itself. It would not be able to discern my presence, because then, in its eyes, I would be so big that I would fill its entire vision of the sky. To the bee, I would not fulfill its own definition of the human being because I was so near that I appeared very big. It could recognise a human being if it could see that person from afar and that person fulfilled all logical equations to be defined as a human being. From near, it could possibly deduce that I was the sky. Any other bee, with a different set of experiences, would of course, disagree on the matter and would have placed me as a human being. The bees could of course gather together and discuss and argue and disagree on the definition of a human being. They could write books on the subject and books discussing the books being written about the definition of the human being. They could possibly enact laws and regulations to regulate the definition of a human being. It would not matter which way or the other to that bee, as in its definition, I was just the sky.

So there it was on the used white tissue and I looked at it intently and closely that I could almost touch it with my nose. Other than the place and its people, nobody noticed this odd relationship between a bee and myself. It picked itself up and with its legs, began to preen itself. For the coffee had stuck to its body and it would not be able to fly just yet. It reminded me of a cat preening itself. It cleansed itself well. By putting its lower leg into its mandible or mouth, it then proceeded to rub this lower leg on its body and its antennae. This it did with each leg. But the coffee was still stuck on its membranous wings and it would still be unable to fly. So, getting as close as possible, I decided to intervene and gently blew on the little insect but even the gentleness carried it a further away. Unfazed, and still oblivious to my presence and my intervention, it preened itself again and finally, it was able to part its wings. Of course, the people above it, were still talking and gesturing, completely oblivious to the presence of a little insect. Finally, the bee was able to fly again and it did. So, I saved a bee which had dropped into my coffee.