Posted on 8 February 2007 @ 21:25 in Notebooks, Writing
I’d like to say I went on a notebook making frenzy recently, but that wouldn’t be entirely honest. The truth is yes, I did make 4 notebooks but not in a frenzy, not all at once, but one at a time.
The first was a 3×5 notebook with purple covers. This was followed a couple of weeks later by a pink covered 3×5 and a blue covered 3×5. And my most recent notebook – a Moleskine Cahier made with buff covers and containing blank, ruled and squared pages from 6 Cahiers.
Actually, these aren’t the first notebooks I’ve made. I’ve done A4 notebooks for work – dated pages in front, and blank pages behind – but found them to be too big. Next, I tried A5 notebooks, again for work, and again with dated pages in front and blank pages behind, and found them to be the right size for me.
And always there were the 3×5 notebooks scattered here and there. This was my preferred size for travelling, when I would carry a blank one, and allocate a page each to everyday I was travelling. On each of those pages, I would put the date and also the plan for that day. Throughout the trip, I would use the back pages to note what I did everyday, and then pull out the pages to put them behind the dated page in front. This then was my travel journal for each trip.
Why not just get ready-made notebooks? Lots of them available in bookstores and stationery shops.
Well, I am very fussy about my notebooks. First of all, I prefer spiral to bound. And not just spiral, but a specific type of spiral where the pages are not fixed and I don’t have to snap open any rings to take out the pages. Instead, the pages get pulled away from the spiral and put anywhere else in the notebook.
It’s a particular system I discovered quite a few years ago, something called Circa made by this US company, Levenger. The system is similar to a Rolodex where the rings are fixed and the pages have little notches that hook around each ring and do not fall out easily.
Almost at the start of my love affair with Circa, I bought the desktop punch so I could punch my own Circa paper without having to buy refills from Levenger. True to form, almost as soon as I ordered the punch, the price dropped by more than US$10/-. It is probably my most expensive online purchase to date; I still remember my bank calling me to ask if I’d made such an order to a company in the States. I’d replied yes, and approved the purchase.
I used to cut up thicker colour paper to use for the covers. Then, recently I realised I could use some 3×5 plastic folders that I’d bought from Levenger. That was how the purple, pink and blue 3×5 notebooks came about.
As for the Moleskine Cahiers, I’d been buying them whenever I saw reasonably priced stock at the neighbourhood Borders. But for some reason, I never took to the Cahiers, and especially disliked the perforated pages in the second half of each Cahier. The other evening, I had a flash of brilliance and realised I could detach the perforated pages and punch Circa notches in them to make into a Circa notebook. I used the original buff covers of one Cahier and filled it will blank, ruled and squared pages from 6 Cahiers.
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With so many notebooks, I don’t have a problem of having something to write in when I needed one. But what if I had to go somewhere and could only bring one? That was what happened yesterday evening. I didn’t want to bring a bag, and only had pockets and my hands to carry one notebook, my Palm TX PDA and my phone. I so wanted to bring along the Moleskine Cahier, but in the end, decided on the purple notebook. A fitting choice actually, as this is my everyday catchall notebook that I take with me most everywhere.
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Posted on 4 February 2007 @ 12:57 in The Working Life, Writing
I attended a film shoot yesterday for a TV documentary series that my employers are sponsoring (I hesitate to say “my company” as it sounds like the company is mine, when what I really mean is “the company where I work for” , so I feel more comfortable saying “my employers” instead of “my company” , but I digress … ).
The series includes on-screen (or on-camera) interviews with people involved in the various areas of the documentary’s focus. While the main language is Bahasa, the interviewees have been told they can reply in either Bahasa or English.
Yesterday, my young colleague answered the first question on-camera in a mix of English and Bahasa – mostly English phrases with a Bahasa word thrown in here and there. The director stopped the filming and suggested that she either says a whole sentence in one or the other language. Even tho she’d said she was more confident answering in English, she ended up answering the various questions in Bahasa (and answering them very well, too, I must add – both in fluency and in content; okay, maybe she wasn’t that fluent, but her hesitations now and then only added to the authenticity and sincerity of her answers).
I can’t fully remember the director’s reason for why my young colleague shouldn’t reply in a mix of English and Bahasa (AD setting in), but I think he said something about people not talking like that in real life. I would also think it would be distracting to listen to someone speaking in English and then throwing in a Bahasa word or phrase here and there. Indeed, I have heard this before, and found it rather irritating because it came across as condescending. It felt like “I know you understand English, but hey, we’re all Malaysians, so here’s a Bahasa word” .
How does this apply to writing for a multi-racial readership and trying to express the richness of a multi-racial society?
Fast forward to this morning …
I’ve just come back from what I thought was a quick trip into Popular Bookstore to get a copy of Lydia Teh’s Honk! If you’re Malaysian. But since when does one go into a bookstore for a quick trip? I ended up with 5 books more than what I’d gone in to get.
One of the books was nineteen: a collection of stories by women. I’d bought the book based on one name found among the contributors to the book. Dina Zaman. When I got home, I took up the book and flipped to her story “Of Fishes and Wishes”. And there, on the page, dialogue in a mix of English and Bahasa.
Did it sound natural? Was it distracting?
Yes, it sounded natural. No, it was not distracting.
The director of the documentary series was not entirely right when he said “people do not talk like that in real life” . It depends on the situation. In private, among family and friends who you’re familiar with and “talk like that” with, it would be natural and not distracting. But in public, especially in a formal situation, it would not be natural and it would be distracting.
How then, does one present private dialogue in a public setting? A private dialogue as in a family conversation, and a public setting as in a story in a book or even a movie. I think this is a concern that has hampered the local writing scene, altho not one that has been widely discussed.
On the one hand, if a local scene is written in perfect English – even for the dialogue – it would not be real. Malaysians from different walks of life do not speak perfect English all the time. On the other hand, if the local scene featured too much localised English, it would run the risk of being accused of broken or pidgin English.
What’s the answer? An occasional “lah” and “haiyoh” in the dialogue?
Maybe there’s no answer for now. Maybe the answer, for now, is to just keep writing and to keep finding one’s voice. And this is as much for me as for any Malaysian writer who may be suffering from writer’s block because of this.
By the way, for an example of mixed-up dialogue in a movie, go watch Sylvia Chang’s Rice Rhapsody (aka Hainanese Chicken Rice) which features conversations between mother and sons in a mix of English and Mandarin. I read somewhere that it was badly done, but I personally enjoyed the movie, especially the scenes of Singapore life. And then, of course, I’m a big fan of Sylvia Chang, one of the best actresses turned producer and director to come out of Asia.
Oh yah, sorry for digressing …
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