Hillsborough Tragedy

In the memory of the Hillsborough tragedy on 15th April 1989 where 96 Liverpool Fans died at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium in Sheffield, I would like to share the song, You'll Never Walk Alone...

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver
Song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams
Be tossed and blown.
Walk on
walk on
With hope in your hearts
I And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone.
Walk on
walk on
. . .

One survivor's account of the Hillsborough's tragedy
Alan Hansen on Hillsborough

Act for Persons with Disabilities

A member of Parliament from the opposition party, DAP, blogged about the Act for Persons with Disabilities, and there some things that I still am not convinced that the Act will be strong enough.

I am questioning the Act although a lot of people are excited about it, including myself, I would like to know - How much teeth that the Act has to enforce things? The government must also start a commission to help monitor that act, but we have to give the government some reasons to get that commission going. One thing which I kept hearing / reading is less than half of 1% of the population is disabled people, and they estimate at 1%. And then when they build the infrastructure, they allocate only 1% for disabled people, ie accessible carparks, accessible housing etc. Imagine for 100 carparks only 1 is accessible. I have sat in meetings and witness that's how they do it. Based on population. But I read somewhere that the estimated number is 6-10% of the population. So how?

I think one priority that we must push for is the census taking done properly for disabled people, and the registration process by JKM. UNESCAP gave guidelines on how government should do this in their website.

The definition of disablities as well need to be enshrined somewhere. Hopefully the Act will be a good one, if not back to square one again… here's hoping and praying…

(I commented this on Peter Tan's blog)

Series on designers: Moholy-Nagy 1895-1946

I remembered Ed Brierley my Architecture Theory lecturer mentioning about Moholy-Nagy many times in his lectures. I found the name to be strange as you don't pronouce the "y". The author of the Guardian article introduced this Hungarian born Bauhaus artist as "the most inventive and engaging of all the Bauhaus artists, galvanising the movement to ever-greater heights." When you read about Moholy-Nagy in the text books, he gets a mention now and then, but not as much as Walter Gropius, Mies Van der Rohe, Marcel Bruer, Paul Klee and the others. She further regretted that, "What a shame Britain never embraced Laszlo Moholy-Nagy when he fled the Nazis in the 1930s." I wonder why and I proceeded to read the article, here in its entirety:

The Fiery Stimulator



By Fiona MacCarthy
Saturday March 18, 2006
Guardian

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of the leading figures in the Bauhaus, arrived to work in England in 1935, two years after that experimental school of art and design was closed down by the Nazis. His English was not fluent. Taken to a party in London by John Betjeman, he said smilingly to his hostess: "Thank you for your hostilities."

The remark was not entirely inappropriate: Moholy-Nagy's reception in this country was not an open-armed one. Even so-called modernists found him baffling, the boiler-suited technocrat with the magnificent grin. His sheer versatility was suspect in a country where they liked you to be one thing or another. Painter, sculptor, photographer, film-maker, industrial designer, typographer: what was Moholy-Nagy not? The Bauhaus itself, which placed great emphasis on programmes and production, seemed alien to a nation still steeped in the gentler traditions of the arts and crafts. London Transport's design impresario Frank Pick expressed a widely held artistic xenophobia in dismissing Moholy-Nagy as "a gentleman with a modernistic tendency who produces pastiches of photographs of a surrealistic type, and I am not at all clear why we should fall for this. It is international, or at least continental. Let us leave the continent to pursue their own tricks."

When he arrived in London, however, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was at the height of his extraordinary powers.



Laszlo Nagy had been born almost 40 years before, on a wheat farm in southern Hungary, near the village of Moholy, whose name he later appropriated. His father deserted the family and he was brought up by his mother and his grandmother. He looked back at that childhood as "a terrible great quietness". The young Laszlo began to study law in Budapest but soon afterwards was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, fighting in Galicia and on the ferocious Russian front in the first world war. He was wounded, hospitalised and suffered horribly. On and around the battlefields, he made his first drawings and wrote poetry. One of these poems, Light Vision, deals with principles that from then on were to obsess him: "Space, time, material - are they one with light?"

Through the 1920s, Moholy-Nagy was part of the new artistic movement sweeping across Europe, a revolutionary movement in which representational and story-telling art was jettisoned in favour of the abstract, primordial, elemental. Functional design for mass production and mass distribution was seen as a means of repairing the devastating social damage done by war. This was the brilliantly iconoclastic period in which Mondrian and Van Doesburg were pursing the objective harmonies of rectangles and primary colours in their paintings, and Gabo was conceiving his constructivist monument to the industrial revolution. Moholy-Nagy was especially attuned to the Russian suprematists Malevich and Lissitsky, with their visions of aerodromes and radio stations, architecture of mass communication for a brave new world. A famous group photograph of the Constructivist and Dadaist Congress held in Weimar in 1922 shows Moholy-Nagy alongside Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara, taunters of the bourgeoisie.

Moholy-Nagy was fundamentally a painter. "It is my gift to project my vitality, my building power, through light, colour, form. I can give life as a painter," he wrote at the end of that most destructive war. His early visual experiments took the form of a return to fundamentals, exploring the relations of colour, shape, position by glueing coloured strips of paper on to backgrounds of varying tones. One of the attractions that constructivism had for him was that it expressed the pure forms of nature: "the direct colour, the spatial rhythm, the equilibrium of form".

At the same time, he was fascinated by the city, by the skyscrapers and factories, the fast-developing industrial landscape of the early 20th century. Moholy-Nagy thrived on ideas of dynamic progress, of mechanisation, the inherent possibilities of new materials. As he wrote in MA (Today), the avant-garde magazine then being published in Vienna: "Everyone is equal before the machine. I can use it; so can you. It can crush me; the same can happen to you." His grasp of new technologies was prophetic.

Moholy-Nagy was entranced by the mechanised production of artworks, ridiculing the artist's traditional stance as individual creator. In 1922, his Telephone Paintings were exhibited at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. The series of three enamel panels had been ordered from a factory specialising in commercial signs. The geometric motif of vertical bar and two crucifix forms was identical on all three panels; only the panel sizes differed. Moholy-Nagy later claimed that he had ordered them by telephone, giving his instructions to the sign painter by means of graph paper and a standard industrial colour chart. This may not be entirely true: Moholy-Nagy could be a joker. Still, he titled the Telephone Paintings not with words but with letters and numbers like a factory production code.



He foresaw photography as the artform of the future. As the discovery of one-point perspective gave creative impetus to the Renaissance, so Moholy-Nagy realised that technical advances in photography and film would transform social and cultural values as the 20th century progressed. He predicted: "It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future."

Moholy-Nagy settled in Berlin in 1920 and married soon after. His Czech-born wife, Lucia, had trained as a photographer and they worked together in developing the photogram, a photographic image made without a camera when objects on coated paper are exposed to light. They developed photoplastics, fluent, lyrical and curious photomontages, sometimes with drawn additions, which had enormous influence on 1960s graphics. At the same time, Moholy-Nagy was one of the first designers to realise the potential of photography in advertising and commercial art.

He was a born teacher, convinced that everyone had talent. In 1923, he joined the staff of the Bauhaus, which had been founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar four years before. Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger and Schlemmer were already teaching there. He was brought in at a time when the school was undergoing a decisive change of policy, shedding its original emphasis on handcraft. The driving force was now "the unity of art and technology". Moholy-Nagy was entrusted with teaching the preliminary course in principles of form, materials and construction - the basis of the Bauhaus's educational programme. His co-tutor on the course was the painter Josef Albers, whose career was to develop in parallel with his. Albers and Moholy-Nagy are joint subjects of a major exhibition at Tate Modern, London, which serves as a reminder of the exhilaration of being at the Bauhaus at that time.

The hyper-energetic Moholy-Nagy also ran the metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar and later in the purpose-designed buildings at Dessau. The metal shop was the most successful of departments at the Bauhaus in fulfilling Gropius's vision of art for mass production, redefining the role of the artist to embrace that of designer as we have now come to understand the term. The workshop experimented with glass and Plexiglas as well as metal in developing the range of lighting that has almost come to define the Bauhaus. The lamps were produced in small production runs, and some were taken up by outside factories. The royalties made a welcome contribution to the school's always precarious finances. Wilhelm Wagenfeld's table lamp, with its sheeny opaque dome, has remained in production and spawned many imitations. As we choose our pseudo-Bauhaus lighting from Ikea, it is Moholy-Nagy we must thank.



"Fiery stimulator", "principal drummer boy and teeth chatterer": the recollections of other Bauhaus masters and his students have left a strong impression of Moholy-Nagy's galvanic personality. He became in effect chief publiciser of the Bauhaus, designing the layout for its publications and directing the typography for the "Bauhaus books", textbooks of Bauhaus principles. Through his "new typography", Moholy-Nagy set an unmistakable visual image for the school using simple modern letter forms, strong colour, intriguing combinations of photography and text. Single letters, vowels, consonants would be isolated and treated as compositional elements. This typographic approach was serious yet comedic, as was the Bauhaus itself.

It was also at the Bauhaus that Moholy-Nagy began the project that was to preoccupy him over the next decade and take its place in his mythology as a kind of alter ego, a Frankenstein's monster. This is the Light Prop for an Electric Stage, a huge kinetic sculpture for the theatre composed of colour, light and movement: light as performance art. The light prop takes the form of a cubic box containing a glass and polished metal mechanism designed to stand alone on a darkened stage. The audience watches, through a porthole in the box, the machine's direct response to a two-minute illumination sequence created by 116 coloured lightbulbs flashing on and off.

In 1930, the light prop was the hero of Moholy-Nagy's abstract film Light Play: Black-White-Grey. Though I knew the work well from illustrations, it was only last summer that I came face to face with the lifesize replica at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. I found myself agreeing with Moholy-Nagy: its effect was magical beyond belief.

By the time the light prop was at last completed, he was embarking on yet another life. Moholy-Nagy was now remarried, to Sybil Pietsch, a film scriptwriter he had worked with in Berlin. As the German political situation darkened, they travelled hopefully to London via Holland. Moholy-Nagy's friendship with JG Crowther, science correspondent of the then Manchester Guardian, had encouraged him to seek refuge in this country. He was also influenced by his reading of Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais, which convinced him that England was a haven of free speech.

Of the influx of mainly Jewish refugees arriving in England in the 1930s, many were artists, architects, designers. Moholy-Nagy had been preceded by his former Bauhaus colleagues Gropius and Marcel Breuer. He and Sybil joined them briefly at Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, one of London's few modernist buildings, before moving into their own house in Golders Green.

There was a solidarity among the emigres. A touching picture of Moholy-Nagy at this period shows him on the promenade at Bexhill-on-Sea photographing the just completed De La Warr pavilion, whose architect, Erich Mendelsohn, was another recent exile from Berlin. Moholy-Nagy's fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda commissioned him to design special effects for the science fiction film Things to Come. He was asked to make a film about the sex life of the lobster, at a time when David Attenborough was still a boy. A quizzical Moholy-Nagy spent several weeks on the Sussex coast getting to know the fishermen, grappling with their dialect, recording their families and close community. At the other end of the social spectrum, he took photographs for Bernard Fergusson's book Portrait of Eton and John Betjeman's Oxford University Chest. Where Sybil responded to 1930s England with an often explosive impatience at its snobbery, Moholy-Nagy remained unemotional, professional. The English class structure was the object of his fascinated observation.

But Moholy-Nagy was not totally cold-shouldered. He designed the publicity for Jack Pritchard's English modernist Isokon Furniture Company. One leaflet included a typically dreamlike small drawing of a figure floating in a bath, suggesting that a Breuer Long Chair gave a similar sensation. Imperial Airways commissioned him to design a mobile exhibition to tour the British empire in a railroad car, promoting the still-novel idea of air travel. He became display consultant for the menswear store Simpsons of Piccadilly, bemusing passersby with his abstract compositions of striped shirts and bowler hats. But these activities were desultory in relation to Moholy-Nagy's far-reaching design philosophy.

In 1936, he returned to Berlin intending to record the Olympics on 16mm film. His aim was to investigate spectator psychology, pursuing the physiological contrasts between the international visitors and the rabid German nationalists. At the entrance to the stadium, he met a former Bauhaus student now in SS uniform. His ex-pupil attempted to persuade him that by joining up with Hitler he could eventually influence the Nazis. The episode so disgusted him that he left Berlin immediately. Not long after, Moholy-Nagy's paintings were removed from public galleries in Essen, Hanover and Mannheim, branded "degenerate art".

Moholy-Nagy sailed from Southampton in the SS Manhattan in July 1937. He had been appointed head of the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Joseph Albers, who had stayed on at the Bauhaus in Dessau until its closure by the Nazis, was by this time also in America, teaching at the radical Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Gropius now held the chair of architecture in Harvard. America appeared a more fertile ground than Britain for the promulgation of the Bauhaus's ideals.

Moholy-Nagy, ever questioning, observed that in the US, "the provocative statement is constantly annulled by chequebook and cocktail party. Am I on the same way?" The most inventive and engaging of all the Bauhaus artists died of leukaemia in 1946, bequeathing to the world one of the prime examples of mass-produced design of the mid-20th century - the 1951 Parker pen.



See the current exhibition:
Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World is at Tate Modern, London SE1, until June 4. Box office: 020-7887 8888.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Pictures in this blog taken from this website and this website. The article was reproduced in its entirety and was not intended to mislead the reader that I had written it. This blog is purely for my private consumption and academic purposes.

Purim Celebration

(Pic taken from website.)

The blast from the neighbour's sound speaker system started yesterday's evening. Normally it is quiet around here. I called Mrs. Kramer earlier, and she told me that the most festive of Jewish holidays, Purim is to be held today, and it would be a fun day for children.

"Purim is the most festive of Jewish holidays, a time of prizes, noisemakers, costumes and treats. The Festival of Purim commemorates a major victory over oppression and is recounted in the Megillah, the scroll of the story of Esther. Purim takes place on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar, the twelfth month of the Jewish calendar. This year (2006) Purim begins at sundown on the 13th of March." (Link)

Further link on the celebration:

"They are to observe these as days of feasting and gladness, and for sending delicacies to one another, and giving gifts to the poor." (Esther 9:22)

There are four mitzvoth specific to the holiday of Purim:

- Reading the Megillah (Scroll of Esther)
- Festivity and rejoicing (the Purim meal)
- Sending food to friends (Mishloach Manot)
- Giving gifts to the poor (Matanot La'evyonim)

The Book of Esther is read on Purim night, and again the next day. Every word must be clearly heard. It is read it in the synagogue, because the larger the crowd, the greater publicity is given to the miracle of the salvation of the Jews.

There is a beautiful custom before reading the Megillah in the synagogue, to contribute three half-dollar coins (or their equivalent) to charity. This symbolizes the half-shekel which every Jew used to give as dues to the Temple in Jerusalem (see Exodus 30:11-16). But why does the Torah specify a half-shekel instead of a whole? The answer is that by giving only a half, each Jew realizes that he'll never become "complete" unless he is part of the larger community. Accordingly, Jewish law states that everyone -- rich or poor -- is to give no more and no less than a half-shekel. "

I wished I had taken my camera along. As I drove along the neighbourhood, there were many people in costumes. I even noticed a woman driving in a policewomen costume, with baloons covered all over her car. Many cars were decorated with sticky foam, colourful decorative cut-outs and blaring horns about. The children were in all sorts of costumes, resembling almost a carnival atmosphere. Young ladies were carrying bouquet of flowers carefully wrapped in cellophane. Young men were prancing about, some in costumes, some in white. The usual black was not much to be seen.

I missed this last year somehow. Perhaps I was away at this time last year. At least I managed to witness the celebration before I leave for home.

Letter to the STAR editor again!

(This was taken from Accessibuilt egroup.)

I would just like to say that we should take advantage of the
announcements that the Malaysian Government had been saying recently
about the upgrading of the public transportation system, and noticably
what the Deputy Prime Minister is saying as well.

A month ago on the 14th February 2006, DPM had been saying about a
National Action Plan for Disabled People, and recently it is the
Public Transport. Despite the uproar of the hike in oil prices, we
have to grasp the bigger picture and keep up the chase with the
Government about providing a "Public Transport for All".

We have to remember when they talk about public transport it includes
the street environment and pavements as well, plus the bus stops and
taxi stands. (The taxi and bus drivers should also get subsidy to be
trained on disability awareness.)

Anyway, I just sent a letter to the editor of the STAR, I don't know
whether they will print it or not, but I would like share with you all
what I wrote. At the end here,  I will also paste
the February newspaper report on DPM's Action Plan for Disabled
People, as a reminder.

(The following letter has not been published in the STAR, so I posted it
at brandmalaysian.com and it was reposted by Mack Zulkifli. Link.)
>>>>>
Letter to STAR editor:

I hope the Malaysian Government will get the public
transport upgrading underway. I for one am really
waiting for this to happen. The Government must do
more to reassure their commitment to the public
towards their objectives in public transportation.

If the Government is saying that they want to invest
on public transportation, the next thing I want to
hear is what studies had they done; and how do they
deal with the safety and accessibility of the public
transportation system.

For example, as I am a wheelchair user, can I travel
without hassle from Hulu Kelang to Bangsar, which
means that: (i) The taxi drivers will stop for me and
not charge me extra for my wheelchair; (ii) The lifts
at Putra LRT do not get blocked with motorcycles
parking illegally and not block my path; (iii) I can
use the feeder bus ramp safely when embarking the bus
and disembarking later at another the bus stop; (iii)
I can cross the road safely with gentle ramped curbs
so that I can manouvre myself safely and no motorcycle
is going to go through the red lights and hit me.

Furthermore, when I need to use STAR LRT and KL
Monorail, will they install lifts so that I can use
the system, and have better choices to travel and use
the transport system.

I want the Government to upgrade the public transport
system but it must be at par with at least what
Singapore is striving for, all wheelchair accessible
buses by 2023 to be done in phases. There must be a
number and set target date for the commitments, and
the budget must take into account the 6-10% of the
population who are disabled (UN estimate) and another
20-25% of people who will be above the age of 60 by 2020. Not
counting people carrying heavy luggage, pregnant women
and small children.

At the moment the public transportation is excluding
about 35 - 40% of the population. Financially the
upgrading will,in the end, benefit everyone, even the
transport operators and more people will share the
conveniences.

And I will forget about the hike in oil prices.

I am really looking forward to seeing the Public
Transportation Action Plan, with providing "Public
Transport for All" the main thrust.
<<<<<    
(This was taken from a STAR newspaper article which I had earlier cited.)

Here is the newspaper article on the National Action Plan:
From BERNAMA, The Malaysian National News Agency KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 14
(Ber-nama) --

The government will come up with a  National Action Plan to ensure smooth
implementation and coordination of programmes, services and facilities for
the  disabled, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said today The main thrust of the
plan was to ensure the rights and full and fair par-ticipation of the disabled
in all aspects  of life, he said. "This assurance is the basis to realise the
objectives of national develop-ment and to create the concept of a  "society
for all', " the deputy prime minis-ter said at the launch of the national-level
Day for the  Disabled celebration here.

His speech was delivered by Women, Family and
Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil Najib said the
plan would focus on seven areas vital to developing the dis-abled and safeguarding
their rights They were the development of self-help organisations, women and the
disabled, detection and early intervention,  education, training and employment,
access to buildings and public transportation, information and communication and 
eradication of poverty among the disabled "If the programmes, services and
facilities that meet their needs can be fully implemented, I believe that the 
status and quality of life of the dis-abled will be more assured and secure,"
he said. He said government agencies responsible for preparing special programmes
and services for the disabled must play  their role more effectively to meet the
needs of this group.

"In this context, I want to call on the Housing and Local Government Minis-try,
city halls and the local  authorities to create a truly disabled-friendly or
barrier-free environment so that they can move around freely, become more
self-reliant and go about their daily lives like ordinary people," he said.
Najib said there were still many physical obstructions for the disabled in the
country that needed immediate action  by the relevant agencies.

He also said that Malaysia had been given the honour to host the
Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled  (Fespic Games), the second
biggest sport-ing event for this group, after the Paralimpiad, in November.
Copyright 2006 Bernama

She's gone to do what she knows best

I met Khoo Salma Nasution before she got married to Abdur-Razzaq, possibly in 1992 or is it 93? She was already quite prolific in Penang, writing deliciously portent articles with beautiful photographs on Penang's heritage magazine called "Pulau Pinang", which has stopped its circulation for quite some time. Khoo Salma then ventured into a variety of things and all to do with heritage, from being a conservation activist, to managing a heritage project (Syed Alatas Mansion) and even helping out Razzaq with the Mandailing book. I worked with Khoo Salma on the Penang's Conservation Guidelines drafts in 1996-97, and stayed at the magnificent 120, Armenian Street home at that time, for about one month at a stretch at one time.

Ever since I went into disability activism in 1998, I had worked less with Khoo Salma, but we kept on contacting each other.

Now she has gone back to what she knows best, writing those articles and snapping those photos, and editing the Lestari Heritage Network. It makes me think about the things that I do best, as well. It's a no brainer actually. Two things that people actually tell me that I do well, and that's teaching (training would be architects) and sketching ideas, and translating them visually.

Nuts and Bolts

M Bakri Musa's latest posting on Malaysian Education System struck a similar chord in my understanding of mission statements and how that could be translated to the classroom. He was suggesting practical objectives, which are really the "nuts and bolts" of making it all work. At the end of the day, as an academic I would want my students to be equipped with the essential skills to do the job right and have many possibilities to position themselves well in getting a job.

In the past, I had often found myself "lost" from the practicalities of teaching. No one else at fault, just my own doing. But I could have had a better guidance from my peers and my line managers, the head of department and dean. How does a team of academics keep a check on each other to keep to the objectives? What evidence will determine whether we all are on the right course of action?

We have a system, but I feel that it did not really work because it became a poltical farce in the end. It was ambitious. Anyway, this gives me something to think about when I start to teach again.

It is easy to be cynical

When I think about the recent ruling by the Malaysian Federal Court judges to declare "immunity for local authorities" when a building collapse, it is so easy to be cynical and skeptical about the accountability and responsibility of authorities in my country. It is easy to turn to despair and abandon the cause.

I think there are people out there who cares. Who wants to have a better education system, a better local government, and better way of life, where there is a level playing ground and no favouritism.

I was thinking about the judges, and it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they are on the take or have their own agendas. The case is so obvious that the local authority is at fault because the local authority officers proceeded to approve the Highland Towers development and construction without a proper drainage system and 40 something people died and many people were displaced and lost their homes. (Victim's verdict)

Even if the developers have to pay compensation due to this "criminal act", the local authority had been a "partner" simply because the local authority concern had approved the development. We rely on our local authority to solve many problems concerning health and safety in our cities. And if they do not do the job properly, how do we solve the problems? How do they perform if there is no accountability, meaning they don't really have to check the drawings and the construction sites because if the building falls down, it is not their fault. They have immunity from such occurences.

So, don't have the planning and building control system in the first place.

It is so easy to be cynical...

Letter to the editor - Highland Towers verdict

Dear Editor,

I wished to express my utmost concern about the lack
of accountability of local authorities when it comes
to the health and safety issues, in particular with
regards to Majlis Perbandaran Ampang Jaya as a
statutory body,to control the planning and building
projects in Ampang Jaya district. This is in relation
to the recent ruling by the Federal Court, which was
quoted in the article, February 18, 2006, "Federal
Court: MPAJ has full immunity from claims".

Quoted:"Local councils cannot be held liable for
losses suffered by anyone should a building collapse".


I question the court's ruling by asking these
questions:

Is it true that the local authority (MPAJ) as a
statutory body passed by Parliament, accepted the
plans from the applicant (developer), approved the
plans, monitored the building and approved the
certificate of fitness when Highland Towers were
completed? Is it also true that the local authority's
duty among others is to make sure of the health and
safety of the citizens in its given authority, hence
having the statutory powers to enforce and monitor
errant developers?

Let us be clear on this. There are many developers who
submitted plans, incomplete and not up to full
specifications, but at the end of the day - Did the
local authority check and monitor the building
undergoing construction, and the local authority
officers be satisfied with the work and then finally
give the approval needed for occupancy?

Too many questions unanswered thus far.

I cannot see any more reasons other than the local
authority being at fault, or at least share the
majority of the blame with the developer. The local
authority's function is to deter errant developers and
give confidence to residents that they are doing their
job, and clearly there should be a clear verdict of
irresponsibility and not "immunity" as was quoted.
What a worrying precedent to be set by a Federal
Court. The court ruling could have easily made local
authorities be more cautious, instead it is the other
way round.

Pseudonym:
Resident, Hulu Kelang

(I sent this letter to the STAR newspaper editor just now.)

Who is responsible for the Highlands Tower disaster?

I read with concern the February 18, 2006, STAR online report on a ruling given by the Federal Court judge on the Highland Towers disaster. The whole article could be read from this link: Federal Court: MPAJ has full immunity from claims

The article by Raphael Wong had highlighted the fact that local councils "cannot be held liable for losses suffered by anyone should a building collapse," and it further stated that,"the court said that the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ) was not liable for losses suffered by 73 residents of two blocks of the Highland Towers condominium who had to evacuate after the collapse of Block One 13 years ago, killing 48 people."

And the reason given by Justice Abdul Hamid (with a three-member panel of judges), was quoted that, "Projects will stall. The local council may go bust"... This is something really serious. Something is not right.

And then the most interesting fact of all is that, "they (the judges) said local authorities such as the MPAJ were given full immunity under Section 95 (2) of the Street, Drainage & Building Act 1974 (Act 133) from claims for the pre-collapse period". Apparently MPAJ had appealed against the decision, "holding the MPAJ 15% responsible for the pre-collapse period". And the court unanimously allowed to MPAJ's appeal to set aside the Court of Appeal's decision .

On reflection, in 2000, "High Court Judge James Foong ruled for the 73, and apportioned liability as follows: Arab-Malaysian 30%, Metrolux and MBf Property Services together 20%, Highland Properties 15%, MPAJ 15%, draughtsman Wong Ting San 10% and engineer Wong Yuen Kean 10%."

My concern is among the lot, who is responsible for the disaster which was clearly a result from not providing enough drainage infrastructure to prevent the building from collapse?

Is it the local authority (MPAJ) who accepted the plans from the applicant (developer) , approved the plans, monitored the building and approved the certificate of fitness? The local authority's duty among others is to make sure of the health and safety of the citizens in it's authority, by using the statutory power that was bestowed upon it.

What is further interesting is based on a 2-1 majority with Justice Shim (one of the three judges) gave a dissenting judgment, "it dismissed the cross-appeal by the 73 residents of Block Two and Three against the Court of Appeal's ruling that the MPAJ was not liable for losses suffered during the post-collapse period."

And finally, "Justice Abdul Hamid Mohamad said that if the local councils were made liable, it would open the floodgates to further claims for economic loss, and this would deplete the council's resources meant for the provision of basic services and infrastructure."

Justice Abdul Hamid said further that, "In my view, the provision of basic necessities for the general public has priority over compensation for pure economic loss of some individuals, who are clearly better off than the majority of the residents in the local council area." The other judge, Judge Ariffin, agreed with him.

The only judge to dissent on the post-collapse liability, Justice Shim said, "MPAJ could not seek shelter in Section 95(2) of the Street, Drainage and Building Act because this was a case of negligence in failing to formulate and implement the master drainage plan so as to ensure the stability and safety of the adjacent Blocks Two and Three."

Let us be clear on this. The developer submitted the plans. The drainage plans (civil engineers plan) may have been included in geting approved but certainly were not followed through and built in the end. Didn't the local authority need to check and monitor the building undergoing construction, and the local authority officers be satisfied with the work and then finally give the approval needed for occupancy?

I cannot see any more reasons other than the local authority being at fault, or at least share the blame with the developers.

This is not a good court ruling and it should be contested further, or be appealed further and more effort should go into finding a satisfactory verdict in the end.

Non disabled-friendly Kuala Lumpur

The following post was a comment that I did on Peter Tan's blog on "Kuala Lumpur City of Barriers".

Hi Peter,

Please allow me to rant about the issue of accessibility of the street environment. It is interesting that you did a wheel-about around the Masjid Jamek area, and highlighted the issues of the lack of accessibility, safety and usability of the streets, pavement and crossings.

We did a report on Pedestrian-friendly Kuala Lumpur back then in 1999, and it was also sponsored by JICA. During the Interim Stage, DBKL decided to take out the title below : "Disabled Friendly Study", hence it was watered down after that, meaning disabled-friendly is not the focus. I wondered what DBKL did with the report. I assumed some of the findings were referred to, but since you highlighted the problems, I realised that the same problems are there.

That reminded me of the question that I posed to a DBKL engineer at a seminar. How come the pavement heights are not 6 inches (15cm) maximum but get to be even 8 inches to a foot at times? He said that is because of wanting the monsoon drain grilles to let the water drain away easily. He also said that when they lay the roads with tarmac, they needed the extra inches so that when they top it up, the pavement is still high enough.

Sorry but I think its all a load of bullshit. Firstly, rather than concentrating on the monsoon drain grilles to be at a certain spot along the underside of the pavement, say after every 30 ft, why not have the whole pavement grilles at the side, so more holes are available for drainage, and also lower the height of the grilles. Secondly, why not scrape the old tarmac from the road first and then re-lay the new tarmac rather than do a patched up job layer upon layer, so that a certain height of tarmac is achieved everytime.

The reason why these issues are the basis for unaccessible curbs are simple. It's a design and maintenance problem, and when they decided to go above 6 inches, the ramped curb if built will not have the correct gradient / slope to be usable.

So the problems that I highlighted here then suggests that it became impossible for them to implement the legislation which by the way never got gazetted at all. I remember now that it was Malaysian Standards MS 1331 - Disabled Access for Outside of Buildings. The problem was when they did that MS 1331, they "copied" the British version. You see, although Malaysia followed British Administrative Laws, when we expand our townships, we never actually followed through, hence we had designed and built the environment to our own set of standards. What is riduculous is the fact that they cancelled MS 1331 which never got to be gazetted through an Act like the Town and Country Planning Act but instead they got an academic to do a set of guidelines. Guidelines are just a set of administrative document, which is not even a standard. At least standard you can go through SIRIM, and make sure of the quality.We only got MS 1884 which is for "inside buildings" (gazetted).

Also many ministries are involved with different elements of the street environment, so that is one of the reasons for poor coordination and management. Min. of Transport - Highways Act, Pedestrian crossings and lights/warnings; Min. of Entrepeneur - Public Vehicle Licensing that determine bus-stops locations; DBKL (?) - Prime Minister's Dept. / Fed. Territory Min.; Outside buildings area / LRT stations (?) - Min. of Housing and Local Govt.; Min. of Public Works (?) - Pedestrian Bridges, Flyovers(?) ( I am actually assuming these functions to the ministries, need to confirm it though...)

Perhaps we should propose for a Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) like in the UK that is a "statutory body" established under the UK Transport Act 1985.

From Bentong to Manchestee - Part 3

How long have I traveled? What did it take for me to get here? Is the length of time proportionate to the lessons that I learned? Have I learned from experiences? If so, how do I know that I have learned from experiences?

I believed that maturity happens with the apparent seamlessness of conscious thoughts. Maturity, like the fermentation of wine or cheese gives more "body" to the senses and thought processes, while believing that maturity is a positive phenomenon.

I have traveled far but not far enough, as I felt that the better part of me has not blossomed yet. The coming together of what are the best qualities of me, have not surfaced in harmony as yet. But it will come as surely as a lot of things that had come into fruition before.

It took a far amount of having to grow up and coming to terms about a lot of things for me to get here. And here is nowhere yet. Here is just a reflection point in time.

You cannot measure experience as you cannot measure time. You may have milestones or rites of passage, perceived through one tunnel, and then leading to another. Some tunnels led to nowhere and even dead ends. And some led to ideas and discoveries.

Experiences are like shifting sands, formed by the currents or the winds in the dessert, formed for awhile and then reformed again and again. Not the object but the process of change. Experiences are fluid and not motionless. Embracing the wind the maker of it, the currents that shifts it into temporal forms. Experiences may be learned once and deposited and surfaced again later, but in different guise, touching you in recognition, emboldened your position to act upon the next decision or action.

I know that I have learned from experiences when I realise that I am no more that person that I was a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago and that is a positive thing because I let myself be free of expectations.

Weybourne Beach, the pebbly one.

Pebbles, pebbles everywhere...all deliciously round...
Crunch, crunch, as I walked...making the sound
(author)

Weybourne Beach, as you come from the car parking area and looking left
where you see the rise of the edge of the land where the erosion starts.

Smooth rounded pebbles of different shades of colour can be found here.

Weybourne beach is located on the Norfolk coast. The beach is full of pebbles, rather than sandy, and as you walk along the edge of the land that meets the beach, you would have noticed erosion exposing more pebbles embedded in these edges of soil and sand.

You can find flint here. A type of stone that people in this area used to make fillers for houses's walls and walls around their gardens. You see by the roadside all the walls are made of these. It is believed that, "flints can reach the size of a cat and may have a coat (cortex) of white or brown. Inside a nodule, colours range through yellows and reds, browns and whorls of pale grey." But the flint stones found were too small to be used for walls.

"Almost pure silica, any impurities give different colours and qualities. Jet black flint is the most pure and is specific to Grimes Graves in Norfolk, whilst a white flint is found only in parts of Lincolnshire...Because flint shines and fractures like glass, it became highly sought after by our early forbears for its hardness and capacity to chip to a sharp tough edge. Four thousand five hundred years ago people were mining 14 metres below Norfolk at Grimes Graves near Thetford, where over 400 pits are evident. This, one of Europe's earliest industrial centres, was a unique source of beautiful black flint, which was expertly fashioned into axe heads for tree felling, as well as saws, knives, axes, scrapers and arrow heads." (Info. found in this link.)

We did not go and visit Grimes Graves, but traveled through many towns in Norfolk, and remarked along the way about the usage of flints everywhere. It seems that there are other coastal towns apart from Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia that uses flint. Brighton in Sussex is famous for its pebbly beaches, too.

Link on Grimes Graves, Flint Knapping etc.

Pic. taken from this website, showing an old church in Weybourne and the walls made of flint.

A finger touching one of the flints protruding from the edge.

Weybourne beach is not for sun-bathing and it did not attract the usual crowds but people who would like to have a quiet walk along the beach, or throw stones into the water, or examining the geological treasure abound. The beach is also a working beach where boats come in from the day's catch. There are plenty of boats moored inland when I went there almost nearing sunset on an April's evening.

There is a myth about a "whistling ghost" on this beach as often the locals could hear persistent whistling, and they even spotted a "chap" with old clothes from far, but when pursued, the chap had vanished. We did not wait around for dusk to descend as the roads were not that familiar and some parts have no lighting. It was kind of sad leaving this pebbly beach and Norfolk. It was a good journey.

Crunch, crunch, I made the sound...

The place I stayed was made of flint!

The Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award 2005

[Pic. of Matisse's "lecon-musique" can be seen on this website.]

The headlines said,
"Biographer Hilary Spurling has won the prestigious 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year award for the second part of her masterful biography of Matisse, Matisse the Master, a work which took her 15 years to complete. "

The other day, I noticed this book, and I really wanted to buy it. Before the author won the award. Spurling told an interviewer, in the beginning, the experts were not very encouraging as they said that Matisse's life was considered to be boring. But she thought, how could someone who painted so wonderfully could be boring, and true enough, when she researched documents, including correspondences and family papers obtained from Matisse's grandchildren, she unearthed a character arguably more interesting than Picasso. (See article.)

I really have a lot of respect for someone who can make a biography a joy to read. I flicked through the book, and it was something that I would love to read.

[Pic. of Matisse's "robe-violette-anemones" can be seen on this website.]

Guidelines of writing and getting a book published.

I don't want to be a broken record

I feel strongly about my identity as a Muslim and being a Malay. These two identities are not separated or alien to one another, but are inter-linked very closely.

I was born in Bentong, Pahang in the General Hospital. At the age of four and half, my family moved to Penang, whereby in the year 1973, my mother, my brothers and I, at the age of 11, joined my father in San Diego, U.S.A. I left my family two years later as I was given a place to study at a boarding school in Seremban, Negri Sembilan. Two years later, my family came back and stayed in Kuala Lumpur. And since 1977, I had always stayed in Kuala Lumpur apart from the 11 years of studying abroad in the U.K. at different stages of my adult life.



I believe that my identity as a Muslim, has been the "rudder" of my sanity. Another controlling mechanism was my parent's influence. My brothers and I were free to think about our lives, but always with some parental advice at hand. Never forced upon us, so we learned to think for ourselves.

However I would rather perceive my identity as a Malay linked to the place I was born, the context to which I grew up in and where my parents and grand-parents came from. My identity as a Malay or rather as a Sumatran/Rawa/Khmer(?) helped to negotiate my bearings and direction in life. The best way to describe that influence is that I feel my Malayness in my blood, in my place on this earth and in my vocation.

Another way of explaining about myself is that I feel the need to thrive on rediscovering my identities. Life is not static. I change as I grow older and discover myself from different viewpoints and perceptions. I adapt to the change by adopting certain values and I see it as enriching my being. The "rudder", however, is always there, sometimes hard and determined and sometimes loose and carefree. But, it is always there...



I don't want to be a broken record and most of all to myself, never mind others. I think it is important that I see my identity as a Muslim, being refreshed when needed as I grow and mature accordingly. What I learned at the age of 13, 23, 33 and 43 need to have a different meaning and perspective to it. If not you get "stale", like a mouldy bread, invaded and useless...

I am reflecting on why I had undertaken a PhD research topic that exclusively investigated the U.K. context and not Malaysia. Is that not a contradiction between my Malayness that I professed before? I beg to differ and clarify that I think it is important to understand concepts and abstracts of meaning and constructs of our self in grappling with idealism and intellectuality. Yes, each of us has that, idealism and intellectuality, but in learning about others, our culture becomes more focussed and intense. We could see better.





[To be continued...]

Borders Book Sale

A boat near the Swansea dock

I really had a good time last night rummaging through the calendars for sale at more than half their original price. It was crazy with some selling for two pounds, when the original price was five times more. There were so many calendars (well, it is January 17th already), and this branch of Borders bookshop had only recently been opened, so you could imagine that not many customers had patronized the place, and / or that they had not envisaged what type of customers would frequent this store. (Maybe not the buying calendars type...)

We bought quite a few calendars (to be used as posters) and there were many discounted books as well. I feel like going there again, as for sure there would be many bargains later this week. I really like bookshops and in Manchester there are not many of those delicious small bookshops where you could find a bargain and having a Borders 7 minutes drive away is some sort of small happiness to me.

I remembered when I used to work in central London near the University College area, I frequented my favourite bookshop every lunch time. What I did was to quickly swallow the sandwich and crisp with an apple juice, and spent the rest of my lunch time at the bookshop. I was into spirituality books a lot at one time, and there was this little bookshop near Duke Street where I was being satisfied a lot with the extensive choice on this subject.

Nowadays, I just cannot find time to relax with a book, with the thesis hanging on top of my head, and I longed to be able to relax again.

Annie Proulx and Brokeback Mountain

I went to see the movie "Brokeback Mountain" with Stephie, last night. I needed a break from work and a friend said that it was a brilliant film and advised me to bring lots of tissues…so I did. (Yes, I used the tissues, and the film, is to me very deep, very well acted and excellently made. I think that was a really good combination, where Ang Lee, the director, did an Annie Proulx story. Ossana and McMurtry did very well with the adaptation.)

I was excited to see the film for so many reasons, and one of them was because E. Annie Proulx was the author of the short story which it is based upon. I went to amazon.co.uk and found out that the book is only 58 pages long.

A couple years ago, on British television, I had seen a documentary on how Ms Proulx researched for a work of fiction, focusing on "That Old Ace in the Hole". She took months to travel and interview people living and working in the panhandle country (Texas and the states around Texas), and went back with boxes of notes, to her place in Wyoming and wrote the book. I have a copy of the book on my shelf. The book is very well researched and the stories are really interesting, but every paragraph has so much research into it, you have to read it really slowly. So finely written and detailed. The only other book that I read was "The Shipping News." And that was also translated into celluloid.

When I saw "Brokeback Mountain", I could feel the details were very true vivid. They really made the movie accurately based on the book and this fact is reflected on Ms Proulx observations below. Because of the success of Brokeback Mountain, Ms Proulx was inundated with so many interviews and have now declined to do any more. I leave you with an excerpt of the interview page in Proulx's website and a full extract of the interview that she did with the Missouri Review, which was done before the film came out, and which she herself quoted on her website. (The pic used in this post is from amazon.co.uk).

On "Brokenback Mountain":
>>>
Interviewer:
How did you feel on first seeing the film?

Proulx:
Knocked for a loop. I had no idea of what to expect as I had had no input into the making of the film beyond some conversation with Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry when they were writing the screenplay, and a letter to Focus president James Schamus and Ang Lee begging them to keep the language of the story intact. I did not visit the set. I feared the landscape on which the story rests would be lost, that sentimentality would creep in, that explicit sexual content would be watered down. None of that happened. The film is huge and powerful. I may be the first writer in America to have a piece of writing make its way to the screen whole and entire. And, when I saw the film for the first time, I was astonished that the characters of Jack and Ennis came surging into my mind again, for (hence the lie in Missouri Review ) I thought I had successfully banished them over the years. Wrong.
<<< Interview with Annie Proulx in 1999

by TMR Staff


Interviewer:
Your stories and novels cover a lot of ground, historically and geographically. Accordion Crimes, for example, is set all over the United States and spans much of the twentieth century. Postcards concerns World War II and post-World War II America. Can you talk about that?

Proulx:
Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures in critical economic flux, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time. Those things interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.

Interviewer:
Even your novels and stories that aren't strictly historical all have a sense of history and place somehow going together and being at the center.

Proulx:
Much of what I write is set in contemporary North America, but the stories are informed by the past; I like stories with three generations visible. Geography, geology, climate, weather, the deep past, immediate events, shape the characters and partly determine what happens to them, although the random event counts for much, as it does in life. I long ago fell into the habit of seeing the world in terms of shifting circumstances overlaid upon natural surroundings. I try to define periods when regional society and culture, rooted in location and natural resources, start to experience the erosion of traditional ways, and attempt to master contemporary, large-world values. The characters in my novels pick their way through the chaos of change. The present is always pasted on layers of the past.

Interviewer:
You studied history at the University of Vermont and Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University, in Montreal. Was there a particular approach to history that most interested you?

Proulx:
I was attracted to the French Annales school, which pioneered minute examination of the lives of ordinary people through account books, wills, marriage and death records, farming and crafts techniques, the development of technologies. My fiction reflects this attraction.

Interviewer:
Had you already decided to write fiction during your university years?

Proulx:
No, while I was studying history I had no thought of writing fiction and no desire to do so.

Interviewer:
Was there any pivotal moment that propelled you toward writing fiction?

Proulx:
The pivotal moment was not a moment but a slow, slow turning. I left graduate school and the study of history to live in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom with a friend. We were in a remote area with limited job possibilities; I started writing nonfiction, mostly magazine journalism and how-to books, for income. At the same time I began to write short fiction, mostly stories about hunting and fishing and rural life in northern New England, subjects that interested me intensely at the time. Almost all of these stories were published in Gray's Sporting Journal, then a new and strikingly beautiful quarterly concerned with the outdoor world in the same way Hemingway's Nick Adams stories are about the outdoor world—the primary weight on literature, not sport. There was an intense camaraderie and shared literary excitement among the writers whose fiction appeared in Gray's, something I have never encountered since. It may have been that the struggles to get paid by Gray's created a bond of shared adversity among the writers; it may have been the genuine pleasure in being part of this unusual publication that valued serious outdoor writing in contrast to the hook-and-bullet mags. It is hard to overestimate how important Gray's was for many of us. Without it I would probably never have tried to write fiction.I continued writing short stories in a desultory way for the next five or six years. When my youngest son left home for school in the late 1980s, for the first time in my life I enjoyed long periods of unbroken time suited to concentrated work and began my first novel, Postcards.

Interviewer:
In your latest book, Close Range: Wyoming Stories, you have returned to the short story. Can you talk about the differences between that form and the novel?

Proulx:
The construction of short stories calls for a markedly different set of mind than work on a novel, and for me short stories are at once more interesting and more difficult to write than longer work. The comparative brevity of the story dictates more economical and accurate use of words and images, a limited palette of events, fewer characters, tighter dialogue, strong title and punctuation that works to move the story forward. If the writer is trying to illustrate a particular period or place, a collection of short stories is a good way to take the reader inside a house of windows, each opening onto different but related views—a kind of flip book of place, time and manners.

Interviewer:
Interesting analogy. Speaking of which, your fiction sometimes seems to ride on a magic carpet of metaphor. How do you do it?

Proulx:
Metaphors—a complex subject. What is involved in constructing them seems not so much a matter of seeking similitude or trying for explanation or description as multilevel word and image play. Metaphors set up echoes and reflections, not only of tone and color but of meaning in the story. The use of running metaphors in a piece—all related in some way to indigestion or water or loneliness or roller skates, or with a surrealistic or violent cast—will guide the reader in a particular direction as surely as stock can be herded. For me, metaphors come in sheets of three or four at once, in floods, and so metaphor use often concerns selection rather than construction. There are private layers of meaning in metaphor that may be obscure to the reader but which have—beyond the general accepted meanings of the words—resonance for the writer through personal associations of language, ideas, impressions. So the writer may be using metaphor to guide the reader and deepen the story, for subtle effects but also for sheer personal pleasure in word play.

Interviewer:
It sounds like it's a natural mode of thought for you.

Proulx:
I was very young, about three years old, when introduced to metaphor, and I remember the first sharp pleasure I felt in playing what seemed a kind of game. I was with my mother in the kitchen of our small house. Classical music came out of the radio, I have no idea what, some sweeping and lofty orchestral statement. I was not consciously listening until my mother, who was a skilled watercolorist, said, "What does this music make you think about, what do you see?" Immediately I translated the music I heard into an image. "A bishop running through the woods," I answered. I had no idea what a bishop was but liked the word for its conjunction of hiss and hiccup. What the music made me see in my mind's eye was a tall, glassy, salt-cellar figure—the bishop—gliding through a dark forest dappled with round spots of light. The connections of perception between the sounds of the music and the image of trees / slipping figure / broken light had been made. Thereafter, and forever more, I found myself constantly involved in metaphoric observation.

Interviewer:
Do you have a standard operating procedure in the way you work? Do you start with place, or history, or character and story, or is it different with each book?

Proulx:
Where a story begins in the mind I am not sure—a memory of haystacks, maybe, or wheel ruts in the ruined stone, the ironies that fall out of the friction between past and present, some casual phrase overheard. But something kicks in, some powerful juxtaposition, and the whole book shapes itself up in the mind. I spend a year or two on the research and I begin with the place and what happened there before I fill notebooks with drawings and descriptions of rocks, water, people, names. I study photographs. From place come the characters, the way things happen, the story itself. For the sake of architecture, of balance, I write the ending first and then go to the beginning.

Interviewer:
What's your approach to research?

Proulx:
The research is ongoing and my great pleasure. Since geography and climate are intensely interesting to me, much time goes into the close examination of specific regions—natural features of the landscape, human marks on it, earlier and prevailing economics based on raw materials, ethnic background of settlers.

Interviewer:
Where do you go for that kind of information?

Proulx:
I read manuals of work and repair, books of manners, dictionaries of slang, city directories, lists of occupational titles, geology, regional weather, botanists' plant guides, local histories, newspapers. I visit graveyards, collapsing cotton gins, photograph barns and houses, roadways. I listen to ordinary people speaking with one another in bars and stores, in laundromats. I read bulletin boards, scraps of paper I pick up from the ground. I paint landscapes because staring very hard at a place for twenty to thirty minutes and putting it on paper burns detail into the mind as no amount of scribbling can do.

Interviewer:
Have you ever fallen in love with one of your characters?

Proulx:
I have never fallen in love with one of my characters. The notion is repugnant. Characters are made to carry a particular story; that is their work. The only reason one shapes a character to look as he or she does, behave and speak in a certain way, suffer particular events, is to move the story forward in a particular direction. I do not indulge characters nor give them their heads and "see where they go," and I don't understand writers who drift downriver in company with unformed characters. The character, who may seem to hold center stage in a novel, and in a limited sense does, actually exists to support the story. This is not to say that writing a character is like building a model airplane. The thoughtful and long work of inventing a believable and fictionally "true" person on paper is exhilarating, particularly as one knowingly skates near the thin ice of caricature.

Interviewer:
I'm curious about Loyal Blood in Postcards. What was his germ?

Proulx:
The character Loyal Blood leaped complete and wholly formed from a 1930s Vermont state prison mug shot. A friend gave me a small stack of postcards sent out by the Windsor Prison warden's office in the 1930s to alert various sheriffs around the state to escapees. I knew nothing of the man on my postcard, but his face was arresting and the character jumped forward at once. The story's genesis was sparked by a small stack of state fire marshal's reports during the Depression. There were a number of dismal accounts of farmers burning down their houses and barns for the meager insurance money. They had nothing else. From this desperate arson, with its roots in the global economic slump, emerged the story.

Interviewer:
Economic desperation is a common theme in your work.

Proulx:
The failure of the limited economic base for a region, often the very thing that gave the region its distinctive character and social ways, is interesting to me. I frequently focus on the period when everything—the traditional economic base, the culture, the family and the clan links—begins to unravel. I have taken a fictional look at this situation in northern New England, Newfoundland and Wyoming. In Heart Songs I began to examine the decline of the small dairy farms that had been the backbone of northern New England's economy since the late eighteenth century, but which began to break down after the Second World War and finally collapsed in recent decades as moneyed outsiders poured into the state. Postcards continued and enlarged on this theme, taking as its landscape the sweep of country from New England to California. The character Loyal Blood denies his natural calling as a farmer. He picks up a dozen different regional occupations on his long journey westward, an ironic and miniature version of the American frontier expansion westward. There is a subtext on the tremendously important rural electrification program. The novel was concerned with what happens when a region has only one economic base and it goes under—the breakup and scattering of families, the subdivision of land, the outflow of old residents or the new position they adopt as service providers to the rich moving in. A population shift of moneyed second-home owners began to replace seventh-generation farm families.

Interviewer:
We see a similar concern in The Shipping News, as well as in Close Range.

Proulx:
If all you have is fishing and the fish stock begins to collapse from overfishing, destructive pressures, foreign and domestic policies, etc., what happens to the fishermen who have no other way to make a living? Relocation, government programs and the like. The Shipping News caught a Newfoundland fishing outport on the edge of the abyss. A few months after the novel was published, the Canadian government proclaimed a moratorium on cod fishing, and the traditional culture and economy quickly began to dissolve as thousands of out-of-work Newfoundlanders streamed onto the mainland, an exodus that continues. In Close Range, a collection of short stories set in Wyoming, the focus was again on rural landscape, low population density, people who feel remote and isolated, cut off from the rest of the world, where accident and suicide rates are high and aggressive behavior not uncommon. Fifty percent of the University of Wyoming's graduation class must leave the state to find work. Again I was interested in looking at a limited economic structure—cattle ranching and extractive industries. What happens when the coal and oil run out, when the beef market falls away, when there are few chances outside the traditional ways of life? On a more intimate scale the stories explore human relationships and behavior, the individual caught in the whirlpool of change and chance.

Interviewer:
In Accordion Crimes you add another layer to the issue of economic struggle by focusing on the immigrant experience in particular.

Proulx:
I was interested in the American character, unlike that of any other country—aggressive, protean, identity-shifting, mutable, restless and mobile. I wondered if the American penchant for self-invention was somehow related to the seminal immigrant experience, in which one had to renounce the past, give up the old culture, language, history, religion, even one's birth name, and replace the old self with American ideals, language, a new name and new ways. The novel looked at several generations of nine ethnic families through the medium of the immigrant's instrument, the accordion.

Interviewer:
Do you believe that the ethnic variety of our nation—despite the "melting pot" history—is somehow forgotten or underappreciated?

Proulx:
A major aim in writing Accordion Crimes was to show the powerful government and social pressures on foreigners that forced them into the so-called melting pot. The social pressures were enormous, and the cost of assimilation was staggering for the immigrants—their lives were often untimely truncated. They did not belong, they were ridiculed outsiders, they worked at the most miserable and dangerous jobs. They gave up personal identification and respect. The successes went to their children, the first generation of American-born. These American children commonly rejected the values, clothing, language, religion, food, music of their parents in their zeal to be 100 percent American. Hence the widespread disdain in America (nowhere else) for the accordion. Canada allowed its immigrants a large measure of cultural autonomy, and ethnic enclaves and settlements grew up in many regions, the so-called ethnic mosaic that contrasts with the melting-pot symbolism. Ironically, it is Canada that is plagued now by a separatist movement.

Interviewer:
Does that imply that although the melting pot was responsible for suffering in the first generation of immigrants, it was the best thing for the nation?

Proulx:
My thinking does not sort out this way—"best," "worst," etc. The so-called melting pot is a vivid phrase that represented a dominant, narrow and forceful attitude in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That social and cultural attitude had no tolerance for ethnic, cultural or linguistic diversity. Immigrants had to become "American" in order to succeed here. Many of them did not and could not conform to the American ideal, and they lived their lives in sometimes dangerous backwaters. It isn't a question of whether or not it was the best thing for the nation or no. It was what it was, an expression of the American national character in that period. It was different in Canada—not better or worse, but different.

Interviewer:
I can't resist asking you one question about your experience with Hollywood. I understand that your experience with making The Shipping News into a movie has been a little frustrating.

Proulx:
I sold the film rights to The Shipping News several years ago and so have no influence on, connection with or input into the fate of the novel in Hollywood's fumbling hands. It was important to me during the option negotiations to plead that the film be made in Newfoundland, and the studio signed a letter of intent to that end. The seesaw history of the work since then, the inaccurate reports, the gossip, the confusion, is best learned from other sources than me. I am out of the loop.
The film rights of the short story "Brokeback Mountain," the closing story in the new collection Close Range, were optioned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who wrote an exceptionally fine screenplay. What happens next with it remains to be seen.

Interviewer:
You have won numerous literary prizes, including the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. How has all the recognition affected your work?

Proulx:
I don't think prizes have affected me as much as they have my publisher. It is pleasant to have one's work recognized and praised, and prizes certainly have an effect on the way the body of work is perceived, and on one's income, but for me, when the manuscript of a story or novel is completed I am done with it and on to new work. I have a feeling of detachment for awards, perhaps because they come a year or more after publication, perhaps because it is difficult to believe that the work is considered prizeworthy. I am critical of my writing and tend to see the flaws and weaknesses. The best time for an award would be the instant one finally makes a stubborn paragraph or sentence lift its own weight off the page.

Interviewer:
How important to you are the responses of your readers?

Proulx:
Response of readers . . . depends on which readers you mean. Readers come in a highly variable assortment—critics, other writers, old friends, fans, reading groups, adversaries, error-chasers, punctuation mavens, clever scholars, those who deeply understand the territory of the book or story, those who don't get any of it. Probably I value the response of fellow writers most highly because they under-stand the work of making fiction. But fine letters have come from every kind of reader, and I am grateful for them.

Interviewer:
What, above all else, do you want your readers to take away with them after reading your works?

Proulx:
The novel should take us, as readers, to a vantage point from which we can confront our human condition, where we can glimpse something of what we are. A novel should somehow enlarge our capacity to see ourselves as living entities in the jammed and complex contemporary world.

Interviewer:
You have been criticized by some for overemphasizing the bad luck and failure of you characters—for not finding the mitigating factor in their lives, if only in the way you frame their stories.

Proulx:
It is difficult to take this as a serious criticism. America is a violent, gun-handling country. Americans feed on a steady diet of bloody movies, television programs, murder mysteries. Road rage, highway killings, beatings and murder of those who are different abound; school shootings—almost all of them in rural areas—make headline news over and over. Most of the ends suffered by characters in my books are drawn from true accounts of public record: newspapers, accident reports, local histories, labor statistics for the period and place under examination. The point of writing in layers of bitter deaths and misadventures that befall characters is to illustrate American violence, which is real, deep and vast.

Interviewer:
The rural farmers of Heart Songs, the unlucky owners of the accordion in Accordion Crimes, the fatalistic westerners in Close Range: they're on the ragged edge, and often—too often, some critics would say—they fall off.

Proulx:
Immigrants to this country suffered unbelievable damage, both psychological and physical. Rural life, too, is high in accident and, for many, suffused with a trapped feeling, a besetting sense of circumstances beyond individual control. Real rural life, enlivened with clear air, beautiful scenery, close-knit communities and cooperative neighbors, builds self-reliant, competent, fact-facing people; but it is also riddled with economic failure, natural disaster, poor health care, accidental death, few cultural opportunities, narrow worldviews, a feeling of being separated from the larger society. Literary critics who live and work in urban and suburban milieus characterized by middle-class gentility and progressive liberalism are rarely familiar with the raw exigencies and pressures of rural life.
I am reminded of the uproar of disapproval over historian Michael Lesy's 1973 Wisconsin Death Trip, the author's gathering of newspaper accounts of nineteenth-century economic failure, madness, hoboes, suicide and murder in company with the extraordinary photographs by Charley Van Schaick. Real lives, real events, which displeased the many critics who denounced the book's darkness as distortion of history. One protesting group got out a rival collection of photographs entitled Wisconsin Life Trip, showing happy families, picnics, affection and peace. There is something in us that wants to believe in sweet harmony against all evidence.
Since I am often accused of writing darkly, I might add that although I am not immune to the flashes of humor and intense moments of joy that illuminate our lives, I am in deep sympathy with Paul Fussell when he describes seeing his first dead in Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic, " . . . and suddenly I knew that I was not and never would be in a world that was reasonable or just."

Interviewer:
Do you think that serious fiction, by definition, ends unhappily?

Proulx:
No, of course not. I would like to get beyond this happy / unhappy-ending discussion, which seems to me to have more the character of trap than open door. It is very difficult to know what is "happy" or "unhappy." I wrote The Shipping News in direct response to the oft-repeated criticism that Postcards was "too dark." Ah, I said to myself, a happy ending is wanted, is it? Let us see what we can do. The "happy" ending of Shipping News is constructed on a negative definition—here happiness is simply the absence of pain, and so, the illusion of pleasure. I was quite surprised when readers and critics alike rejoiced in what they perceived as a joyful upbeat. The label "happy" is comparative, subjective, sometimes deliberately illusory, sometimes—as in Shipping News—ironic or not what it seems. In working endings for stories and novels I try simply for a natural cessation of story. Most of my writing focuses on a life or lives set against a particular time and place. This is the nature of things, and, though it sounds simplistic, this is what shapes my view of the past and present, both as related to my personal life and the lives of characters. One is born, one lives in one's time, one dies. I try to understand place and time through the events in a character's life, and the end is the end. The person, the character, is one speck of life among many, many. The ending, then, should reflect for the reader some element of value or importance in the telling of this ending among the possible myriad of stories that might have been told.

This feature was originally published in Volume XXII, Number 2, 1999 of The Missouri Review.

Wheelchair user versus wheelchair bound

Using the correct terminology in this day and age is very much in demand, less you want to fall-out with people for being politically incorrect. Peter Tan highlighted in his recent blog entry that people using wheelchairs are not wheelchair bound.

I have often heard this term "wheelchair bound", and for the more enlightened wheelchair user, they get pretty upset with this terminology. It depicts an image of a dependent person who cannot do things for him/herself and is confined to the wheelchair. The term solidifies the myth of someone inactive, depraved and useless enshrined and encaptured with this word "wheelchair bound".

The debate goes on, and even the word "disabled" is regarded to be backward and defining a "negative connoctation to the ability of a person". I remembered an Indonesian colleague who never use the word "disabled" ever again, but rather would use the word "diffabled" (Differently Abled). I think perhaps that is where you get "Kelainan Upaya" from, rather than "Kurang Upaya", the official Malay version of a disabled person. It is often a cultural phenomenon, when we find some words in Malay defined and sounding worst than it is in English.

One would ask why would you use "diffabled" rather than disabled. Or in Malay one could ask, "Apa yang kelainannya?" (What's the difference?). I could give an argument that disabled people are different than able bodied people, because of their different experiences in life unique to them, and thus being able to have a different set of skills, as a result.

Take the example of blind people and/or vision-impaired persons. I noticed while interacting with at least four blind persons before in training sessions, they are able to "see in patterns". This different ability has been able to make them quick to the mark when connecting ideas and concepts in their minds. Quicker than sighted persons. (This ability could be debated to be "visual-thinking", but I think we should research it more.)

Emotionally people who have been physically disabled since childhood have the ability to be "not caring what people think of them", and this emotional strength gives an edge when facing with discrimination. This gives the effect of being able to contain emotional setbacks better than able bodied people.

Of course, the things I have mentioned are for the more enlightened ones, as there are disabled people that need to unshackle their setbacks from their minds, like similar able bodied people.

If you want to expand more knowledge on the issue, there is an excellent website with interesting articles, although written academically, the articles provide the background research to terms and terminologies. (See link)

The Malaysian Way - NGO leads

I am beginning to understand how some things work in Malaysia. What I mean by "work" is how things get done. For example, take the issue of registering disabled children / people. We know for a fact that we have a problem with this issue and only about ( a guess estimate of) 0.5% of the 6% of Malaysian population who are disabled were registered. An indication of the lack of commitment to register disabled people in Malaysia wholeheartedly.

Recently in an egroup list posting for disabled persons in Malaysia, a member sought advice on how to register his friend's disabled relative. A representative from an NGO in Penang (I am not putting the name of that organisation here because I have not contacted the representative yet), informed the egroup that they had organised a registration drive for the day, as mentioned here:

Our organisation recently organised a One-Stop Registration Drive for the Disabled in Penang. This is the 3rd time that we have organised this over the past 5 years. We utilised student manpower from USM to assist with filling out of forms, organising crowds etc... We arranged for 3 Welfare Officers, 3 doctors and 2 Sp. Education Dept Officers to be in attendance and that sped up the entire process which enabled us to register 60 people in one whole day.

How did that NGO from Penang managed to come up with this registration drive? I assume that the financial backing come from charitable funds and volunteerism. It would be good to find out more about this. Can you see the pattern emerging of how things get done in Malaysia, especially when it is to do with social work?

Registration of disabled people is a crucial matter. When we do not have the statistics of how many disabled people exist in Malaysia, it had proved to be difficult to request, for example, accessible housing and transportation. Or even accessible parking spacess. The quoted United Nations figure is somewhere from 6 to 10% of a country's population, but we only have an unofficial figure of 0.5% quoted sometime ago, I believe from the registration that the Welfare Department had conducted so far. And during the last census, it was common knowledge that not all households were asked whether there are disabled people in their houses and the effort to register via census was not comprehensive. ( I checked again, I could not find official statistics of how many disabled people registered in the country. Perhaps I have to contact the Welfare Department personnally via post to find this out.)

Another interesting aspect with the Government's ministry concern is that it has to managed so many social services, as indicated (in Malay) below. The Welfare Department within the ministry manages affairs for disabled people, children, elderly, youth and of course women and girls. Apart from that they also manage disasters (?), the poor and destitute and orphans. That is really a lot of work for a government department. In the UK, disabled people are being managed by all ministries concerned. (See link.) At first they had a Ministry for Disabled People, but now they do not have to. Ever since the Disability Discrimination Act and Bill had been enforced since 2004.

For Malaysia, it is evident that work for disabled people is felt more through NGOs. Historically, a council was set up in 1966 under the Welfare Department, in which the advisor is the Welfare Department's Director-General : See The National Council of Welfare and Social Development Malaysia. There are 44 affiliated organisations that benefit from the ministry. However, that particular NGO from Penang is not one of them.

Another good source of information is a report by the Malaysian Council for Rehabilitation found in a Japanese website, if you want to learn some more. (See link.)

From the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development's website:

Bahagian Pemulihan

Objektif:

Merancang program dan keperluan yang berkaitan dengan pemulihan remaja yang bermasalah akhlak, wanita dan gadis yang terdedah kepada kegiatan tidak bermoral dan orang kurang upaya yang memerlukan jagaan, latihan kemahiran dan pemulihan yang bersesuaian ke arah hidup berdikari.
Mengendalikan bantuan kewangan untuk meningkatkan kesejahteraan hidup keluarga, kanak-kanak, warga tua dan orang kurang upaya yang tidak berkemampuan.
Mendaftar dan membantu pemulihan mangsa bencana yang memerlukan bantuan.

Aktiviti:
Untuk mencapai objektif tersebut, bahagian ini melaksanakan aktivitinya melalui perkhidmatan-perkhidmatan tersebut:

Pengurusan Orang Kurang Upaya (luar & Institusi)
Pengurusan Wanita dan Gadis (luar & Institusi)
Pengurusan Kanak-kanak yang memerlukan perlindungan & pemulihan (luar & Institusi)
Pengurusan Bencana
Bantuan Kewangan

Bahagian Perlindungan

Objektif:

Membantu, melindungi dan memulihkan kanak-kanak, warga tua, pesakit melarat, orang kurang upaya terlatih dan ahli-ahli keluarga yang menghadapi masalah, mempertingkatkan kualiti dan taraf hidup mereka, supaya mereka dapat berdikari dengan memberi jagaan, pemulihan, pendidikan dan latihan kemahiran yang sesuai.

Aktiviti:
Untuk mencapai objektif tersebut, bahagian ini melaksanakan aktivitinya melalui 5 urusan iaitu:

Urusan Kanak-kanak
Urusan Orang Papa
Urusan Warga Tua dan Pesakit Melarat
Urusan Anak Pelihara
Urusan Keluarga
Urusan Orang Kurang Upaya Terlatih