Perjalanan Hidup (Click here to view the video clip)

 

Perjalanan Hidup

Ramli Sarip

Aku yang masih di perjalanan hidup ini
Begitu lama berlegar di persimpangan dunia
Menempuh jarak dan titian
Rimba dan lautan
Mencari sesuatu yang abadi

 

Aku yang masih di perhentian hidup ini
Begitu jauh mengembara ke serata dunia
Mengejar siang dan malam
Surut dan pasang
Mencari sesuatu kebebasan
Mencari sesuatu kedamaian

 

Di mana berakhirnya
Perjalananku ini
Esok dan lusa bukan miliku
Oh Tuhanku
Lindungilah hambamu yang hina ini
Aku setia hanya padamu
Oh Tuhanku

 

Dr Wan Zawawi Ibrahim
Dunia Muzik WEA Sdn Bhd
1987 WEA Records Sdn Bhd

Dream Deferred

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Dreams

Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I wasted no time and get my butts off the cubic as soon as the time hit 12.30 p.m. to the Adidas shop nearby my office. My goal is to get a new trainer as it is time for me to get a new pair.

 

For some reason, I prefer Adidas and New Balance over other brands. I was actually looking for Adidas Supernova to replace my old one but it was rather too expensive for me today. Well, when I bought my first Supernova few years back, I bought it without a discounted price and mind you Supernova is quite pricey. Nevertheless for heavy people like me whose weight is more than 80kg, Supernova really helps in supporting my weight and uppermost my ailing  joints.

 

Perhaps after several brainwashing session with Bandit who constantly instill the ringgit sense in me, I caved in and went and look for a trainer with a good bargaining price.

 

I ended up buying Adizero Tempo as that was a good performing trainer that I can get at a very reasonable price. Comparatively, this Adizero Tempo is lighter than my Supernova but in terms of performance I can’t give a good review as I have not worn it for running. Certainly not a good reviewer I am. I am looking forward to run this evening and hoping that it is not going to rain.

 

  

 

 

Last weekend too, I bought a Speedo swimming trunk to join Bandit, Shazly, Shukran and few other friends to swim.

 

So I am gearing up for more sporting activities ahead. I just can’t wait to get back into my sporting life and strike a balance in this life.

Bogged with three major commitments that comes concurrently about 2 ½ years ago, I left the life that I used to have and embraced a new life with mixed feeling, euphoric and also jittery. Those two years also left me with writer’s block phenomenon of which I don’t feel happy for there are so many things happened that I wanted to write about.

 

Full of ideas lingers in my head but my mind was and perhaps still is occupied with unwelcomed challenges which certainly locked the writing creativity. The agony increased and it is raging from inside tearing every possible nerves, crippled my ability to move in an abstract manner.

 

I am now trying to regain the control over my life.

 

Thinking about change and how I could transform myself from a violence inclined person to a calmer one is a troubling journey. Self transformation toward a better person is indeed torturous.

 

It begins with a noble thought, and with that consciousness, you start to translate it to the way you act and react to the circumstances that has been put upon you. Sometime you stumble but sometime you may be able to overcome it with ease.

 

It is tough. You may leave your bad habit, but your bad habit never leaves you. But it is worth it when you realise that you have made progress. Only we, who knows how much progress that we have made.

While I am currently busy with loads of assignments and preparing for my final exam, I found myself indulging into another interesting domain of knowledge. And I can’t resist but to put down this experience into writing.

 

In my usual meetings with TAH, well, there are no fixed dates for our meetings but we’ll try to meet once in a while whenever we need to meet. For the past four months, we don’t really casually meet for the sake of  hanging out as both of us are quite occupied with our own commitment, but whenever we meet to pass some books or something, we’ll always found ourselves indulging into conversations that matter.

 

I know one of our common friends has been dying to meet us and getting involved with discussions, but our meetings for the past four months has been set in a rather impromptu basis.

 

Last Friday’s meeting was another impromptu meeting. It started out when TAH called me to get his borrowed copy from his’ “Institute” of the unpublished copy of the Religion of Islam which we made copies for our personal collections.

 

So we met up at our new usual place at one mamak restaurant along Jalan Ampang. It started out from 9.00 p.m. and to my surprise, we ended up talking for 6 hours non stop!. I have even lost my voice for talking. That was our longest conversation that we have ever had.

 

I guess we were really passionate in our discussion till we forget the time flies for a whopping 6 hours.

 

Our main topic of discussion was the book itself and obviously it leads to other topics that are related. Obviously politics, philosophy, our studies and a few other things which I can’t remember came in.

 

TAH is very resourceful and extremely knowledgeable and each and every time we had conversations, I will always passionately listening to him talking as there are more new things that I can learn.

 

On the way back to my home after sending him, I was wondering, if I have classmates of this type, it would have contributed to my studies immensely. Unfortunately, my current classmates’ ore not belong to this stock and it is just a plain going to class, sitting for exam and gets a degree kind of thing.

 

The thing is, such conversation is really intellectually stimulating and perhaps it could be really productive. Imagine if I were to have such stock of people in my class, I would be extremely satisfied graduating with my degree. It would build a stronger foundation than the one that I have now.

 

So now, let’s see if I can make it to post grad studies and see whether I’ll be able to secure good classmates who are passionate and eager to get involved in serious conversations constantly.

It is very rare for us, the younger people who admire Professor SMNA to get a chance to listen to his lectures these days. Last week my friend SMSed me telling that he found Prof’s transcript on lectures on the religion of Islam when he was at this Institute where he founded. I can’t wait to meet my friend and receive the transcript.

 

Yesterday, I browsed through many messages in my Facebook which was left un-read pathetically, and realised that there is a message sent by SMNA Appreciation Society coordinator telling that there is a voice recorded file of SMNA’s lecture uploaded in the website. I managed to download it and last night I spent listening to the talk. I am so excited to listen to the lecture and it is about 5 hours of talk! I love it when I receive a long lecture by any intellectuals, mind you I can be intellectually exhausted as well.

 

Prof SMNA explains many things about the thought that he has penned down, of which it was intellectually challenging for ordinary person like me to digest it, but it was made simple when I listen to his verbal explanations. One of my favourite on the talk – of which I only managed to listen to half of the lecture thus far – is on the coming of Islam to our part of the world. I wanted to read and own his work on this subject which is very difficult to find, but his thought on the subject was mentioned in his lecture.

 

His published written ideas on the above topic are as follow:

 

Books

 

1.                    Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, DBP, Kuala Lumpur, 1969.

 

2.                    Islam Dalam Sejarah Kebudayaan Melayu (Islam in Malay History and Culture), Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1972.

 

3.                    Islam and Secularism, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, 1978.

 

Articles

 

4.                    A General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay Archipelago, in Profiles of Malay Culture, Histotiography, Religion and Politics, ed. Sartono Kartodirdjo, Ministry of Education and Culture, Directorate General of Culture, Jakarta, 1976.

 

5.                    Islam dan Alam Melayu (Islam and the Malay World), Budiman, Special Issue Commemorating the 15^th. Century of Hijrah, Universiti Malaya, December 1979.

 

 

I realised now that I have to revisit my paper submitted to my Lecturer on the above mentioned topic – which I am very well aware that that research was very shallow – my paper written lacks detailed research as there are few other important literature was not referred to and one of them is SMNA’s research on the said topic.

 

Recently, I discovered few other literatures on the subject, such as Babad Tanah Jawi and The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago. The latter could lead me to another information and literature on this topic.

 

Back to the original idea of this entry, my friend in his SMSed, mentioned that “So now we are officially Prof’s student!” Yes!

Building a library requires a lot of effort and huge amount of funds. As an independent bibliophile, I used up a lot of my own personal funds and substantial amount of my earnings are being channeled to my library building project. One of the latest book acquisitions is Islam Between East and West by ‘Alija ‘Ali Izetbegovic where I just received it last week. After browsing through the book, I must admit that the book is really heavy in content and very philosophical. I need to be in a state of utmost tranquility to read up and understand the book. Last weekend I told DCM on successfully acquiring the book. It was one of the most difficult book hunting that I have ever experienced, as it was not found in any regular bookstore or even normal online bookstore.

 

Last week after attending a lecture on Islamic Revivalism by one famous scholar on Islamic history, I went to my regular bookstore in Bangsar to look for new books. In fact I was looking for Babad Tanah Jawi but to no avail. I ended up buying Syair Perang Siak, classic!

 

I also browsed the library in that bookstore – this library was donated to them by one former civil servant’s children for this bookstore to be their custodian. I must say that this personal library is very impressive in terms of its collections. I have found many old rare books on Malay and Islamic World. As expected as much as my instinct whispered to me, I found The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri. Managed to browse the book and now I know where to look for the book if I need to refer to it, for free to boot. I must say that it is very sad that I could not even easily find it in my University’s library.

 

After walking out of that private library in that bookstore, I told my friend who is manning that bookstore about the book, she was surprised as she didn’t know that they have that book in their private library. I reiterated again to her that I have been looking for that book for so long. Realising that I was so enthusiastic about looking for old rare books, she suggested to me one website to look for the books that I wanted. We browsed and managed to find few rare books, but not Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri.

 

Only today that I managed to check out for the website and to my surprise, I found another old rare book of which I have been craving to own the book since I discovered the information about it. The book that I am talking about is ‘Reflections on the Theory of Religion’ by one famous intellectual in our country and internationally well-known. This is his PhD thesis submitted to the University of Amsterdam. I was surprised when I saw the book is available in this website and without much hesitant I bought it. So now I am anxiously waiting for the book to arrive. After successfully completed the order, I re-browse the page and the book is no longer in the list. I guess I have made the right decision and how nostalgic I can be, this book is going to be shipped to me by one bookstore in Netherlands. There are many old Malay and Malaysian books and manuscripts being kept in this country and I am in my personal effort to source for all this books and bring them back. It is going to be useful for me for my current and future research on my favourite subjects and perhaps this could be my greatest gift for my children in the future. And so I am narrating it now.

 

I must say that these two brothers who wrote the book mentioned above are very intellectually productive and they have written loads of scholarly works. But sadly, those books are no longer in print. Unlike the Western countries, they keep reproducing old important books so that it can be discussed by the social mass. Whereas in our country, those important books are not regularly being reprinted and hence it has been forgotten. There are considerably quite a number of young people in our countries these days looking for all those books and it has been discussed by small esoteric and ordinary rare young people about the books. I can see that there are many revivalist groups among our society to bring back the intellectual glory that we used to have. Still, this is a debatable statement.

I can’t resist, but I have to write it down now. I am in a state of extreme euphoria. But before I come to that, I have bought a few other books last weekend, say about 6 to 7 books? I can’t recall. Right after having my classes in Bangi, I rushed to my friend’s house for Raya open house and on the way back, as this is the only route to my house in this frigging Bukit Jalil, as usual I will stop by at Ampang Point to look for a new arrival books at this favourite second hand book store.

 

I managed to pick few books and the best is that, I found Stoessinger’s Why Nations Go to War. This is a long awaited book to be included into my IR book collections and for some reason that I can’t recall I had to KIV it. I first read this book when I was working in PJ as a librarian and the book that I read was a newer version to the one that I have just acquired, mine is the third edition. Of course there are developments in global politics and this book has gone through so many updates since. But the gist of the subject discussed remains the same mainly on the historical account that begin from the First World War up to the Gulf War. And now I wonder if there are any changes to the conclusions of this book in the new edition.

 

Another two books are on metaphysics by Kant and sex in history; ok this is more academic rather than sexually arousing kind of stuff.

 

And it followed by my normal activities when I got bored at home, I’ll go to Kino to look out for any new collections. I didn’t really plan to buy, but as the temptation to own IR related books is ever mounting, I picked up few books. I found Owen’s Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt. I first got to know about Owen when I got this latest edition of The Globalisation of World Politics edited by Smith and Baylis. This is the only book that I buy for each edition. Yes I know I am crazy. I didn’t have the first edition but if I found it, I’ll grab it. I just like to see the development of this discipline and it is interesting to diligently follow the latest development from this book, oh ya, I love Abersytwyth too! This book was written as a result of good effort from Aber’s International Politics department.

 

Back to Owen, Owen is the newly included editors of this book and she had earlier written the book mentioned above. Again as the fate would have it, I found the book. Furthermore, I am always curious about the thought of Arendt since DCM is very much influenced by Arendt’s work on political non violence. Naturally, after browsing this book, I went to philosophy shelves to pick two books from Arendt on the Origin of Totalitarianism and Crises of the Republic.

 

Another book acquired is, the long awaited Fareed Zakaria’s From Wealth to Power. Coincidentally, this semester, I am taking an IR subject and I chose to do research on American Imperialism from the perspective of Realism. So all this is useful for my research, and I rely lesser on library.

 

And now, today, my good friend is giving away all her collection of IR and strategic studies books and it is damn a lot! So now, I have reason to be in a state of euphoria as my library collections are growing.

 

Since I am writing this in haste, you have to excuse my writings and its highly dysfunctional grammar.