The year I finally said enough is enough to working for someone else.
The year my dream to visit Wolong came true.
The year I took the scary step to set up my own business and work for myself.
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I still have a few more write-ups in my “Among Pandas” series. I will get them written and posted here.
I have been been “unemployed” for six months. It’s been more of a sabbatical as I have not been very aggressive looking for work. (I don’t even have a name card yet, altho I did register my business, it’s called Netsence Communications, in case anyone is wondering.) I did work a little, I sent out proposals to do websites, I set up an editing service (at someone’s request, with promise of manuscripts to edit), but they all came to nothing. I guess the type of work I offer is not considered essential, but doable by oneself or family members.
But I am not penniless or starving. One advantage of being the youngest in a close-knit family is that my elder siblings continue to look out for me. I don’t need to work for money, which means I can pick and choose my projects (not that there are any to pick and choose from). Nevertheless, I do need to work for my sense of well-being (aka to feel useful and wanted).
I do have a couple of sources of passive income, and continue to look for more. Having passive income means I can spend my time doing things I really want to do.
I’m probably not making much sense, so I’ll stop here.
Oh, just one more thing.
The sabbatical is over. After the new year, I will be back on a daily schedule and routine, I will be on the look-out for projects to work on. If you know of anyone wanting a manuscript to be looked at, or a website to set up, please let me know. Thanks.
Posted on 30 December 2007 @ 11:56 in Friends, People
That would be the last Saturday of the month, what I like to call my literary Saturday. That’s when I attend two literary events back-to-back – the MPH Breakfast Club for LitBloggers in the morning, and Readings at Seksan’s in the afternoon. It’s a good thing they are held in the same neighbourhood, Bangsar, and within walking distance, too.
Yesterday was the last Saturday of the month (and the last Saturday of the year), but I had to make do with just one of the two events, the afternoon at Seksan’s, as MPH had its last Breakfast Club meeting of the year last month. But the Seksan’s readings more than made up for it as it turned out to be the best readings of the year – well, at least for me.
Readings, a birth child of Bernice Chauly lovingly fostered by Sharon Bakar (to borrow Sharon’s description), has always sought to give a voice to both published and yet-to-be-published writers. Yesterday’s event was no different. There was a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, and poetry, too, read by their writers, both published and soon-to-be-published. There was Dina Zaman, Patrick Teoh, Awang Goneng, M K Ajay and “bad boy” Amir Hafizi.
I attended most, if not all, of this year’s Readings (beginning from February), enough for me to be called a regular. I try to help out in whatever way, even if it was just setting out the chairs, trying to open a bottle of wine, or taking the used glasses to the sink for the guys (yes, guys) to wash. Yesterday, I helped with a rather important task, plugging a two-pin plug into a three-pin socket, important because otherwise, there would’ve been no sound system. But I digress …
I’ve enjoyed every one of the Readings attended, I always come away feeling rejuvenated and positive that there’s a future for the Malaysian literary scene. I’d even been invited to read, but chickened out at the last minute, but well, that’s just me.
Mostly, I just enjoy being there, being part of the crowd. Yesterday’s crowd was probably the biggest for the whole year, very special because family and friends of Awang Goneng, author of Growing Up in Trengganu, came especially to see him and hear him read. It was like a family reunion … a Trengganu family reunion! It was all the more special for the presence of Awang Goneng’s other half, Kak Teh. I’d first met Kak Teh at the launch of Dina’s book I Am Muslim in March. When I saw Kak Teh yesterday, I apologised for leaving a silly comment on her blog. In the comment, I’d offered to go around the bookstores to help check on how the book is doing and to take pictures, too. The comment was silly because it showed that I’d not read her blog carefully to know that both of them were back in Malaysia for the book’s launch! Duh, Chet.
Yesterday’s Readings was special for a couple of other reasons.
For one, I’d started my literary “participation” this year listening to Dina Zaman read (among other readers, including Kam Raslan and Tan Twan Eng, at the Night of the Living Text in February), and ended it listening to her read at yesterday’s Readings at Seksan’s.
For another, yesterday’s Readings featured someone from my youth, someone who started as my favourite deejay and went on to become a good friend, even a former boss, and probably the only person who still calls me by my other name – Patrick Teoh. No, no, that’s not what he calls me; Patrick Teoh is the someone from my youth, in fact, the voice of my youth, from the days when he was a deejay on Rediffusion, that’s how far back we go. I call him the Voice of Malaysia, altho he insisted the Voice of Malaysia is someone else, but that’s what he’ll always be to me. I’m sure, after yesterday, he’s won himself a new legion of fans among the young ‘uns who might have heard of him but never heard him for themselves.
This morning, when I checked my email, I found that I’d been tagged in a couple of photos by both Sharon and Dina. Dina’s photo shows what I do best …
This is what I do best in life, too – I’m an onlooker (on-looker?), a spectator, an observer. I like the last description (observer) best. Hopefully, in the new year (my 50th year, if anyone is interested), I will do more than observe.
Here’s to a great new year ahead to you and yours.
For international visitors to Wolong, the gateway is Chengdu. I was there twice during my recent panda adventure.
The first time, flying in from Guangzhou, was a mere stopover, for me to meet my tour guide and driver who fetched me from the airport before taking me to lunch, and then straight onto Wolong.
The second time, after my mega adventure in Wolong, was longer – I stayed in Chengdu for three whole days and did various touristy things, like visit the Dujiangyan Irrigation System and the Sitting Buddha at Leshan, and of course, the Panda Reserve in Chengdu.
By the time I left Wolong, I was rather tired, and the subsequent three days in Chengdu suffered. But to be honest, I’m not a very touristy kind of person, at least not with the usual tourist attractions. I’ve always gone with my own itineraries wherever I visited – as a result, paying more than the usual tourist.
I have no pictures of the Dujiangyan Irrigation System. We visited on the way from Wolong to Chengdu, and all I remembered was there was a lot of walking, some of it on steps going down, and some of it across a rope suspension bridge that swayed, and quite badly because of some idiot who decided to agitate the bridge without thought to the elderly (more elderly than me) among the tourists present. If you want to know more, you can read about it here, and see some nice pictures, too, including one of the suspension bridge. Actually, the walk also included a nice stroll through a park towards the exit.
The walking experience got me questioning my tour guide about what to expect for the visit to the Sitting Buddha. She said yes, there would be quite a bit of walking, and quite a bit of it up some steps to go around the shoulder of the Sitting Buddha, and then down, etc. No way was I going to do all that walking (and outside in the sun, too). She then said there was an alternative, which was to see the Sitting Buddha from a boat. Without hesitation, I told her we’d go on the boat.
Unlike the visit to the irrigation system, I did take some pictures at Leshan.
You can see how huge the statue is, compared to the people filing past at its feet. Here’s a close-up of the right foot:
Apparently, we would also be visiting the Sleeping Buddha statue. When I asked my tour guide where it was located, as I couldn’t see another statue in the vicinity, she said to wait, the boat would take us there. After a short ride, everyone turned to face where we’d last seen the Sitting Buddha, and there it was, the Sleeping Buddha:
It’s actually just the combination of three hilly outcrops that produces a silhouette of a sleeping Buddha, which really looks impressive in “person”, but less so in a picture.
I finally got to the Chengdu Panda Reserve on my last full day in Chengdu. After my glorious four days in Wolong, this was almost an anti-climax. But for many people who do not know about Wolong, or do not wish to travel further for a fuller panda experience, the Chengdu Panda Reserve, located near the city (instead of out and up in the mountains), is a great introduction to giant pandas. In fact, if Chengdu and Wolong were to work together, there could be information at Chengdu for visitors who want more and are willing to go further to Wolong. As it turned out, I tried to do my bit by sharing about my Wolong volunteer experience with some of the visitors sharing the buggy ride with me. I hope it piqued their curiosity to find out more about Wolong.
Like Wolong, Chengdu has a kindergarten area, very lush and very green – it reminded me of the giant panda habitat at the San Diego Zoo.
The one major difference is that in San Diego Zoo, there is usually just one panda cub up in the trees, whereas in Chengdu, it’s at least two panda cubs.
And then, there were the older pandas, always the ideal balm for stressed hoomans!
It was a nice sunny morning when I visited, which this panda took full advantage of:
But not for long. By 9:30 a.m., it was getting too hot for the furry cuties to be outside, and the keepers started calling for them to return indoors. Those that did not comply, got carried in.
So, yeah, it was a short visit to the Chengdu Panda Reserve for me. But I’d had my fill of giant pandas – well, this trip, at least – and I was not sorry to leave and return to the cool indoors of the hotel and the free Internet service in the lobby lounge.
Apart from my keys (house and car) – and wallet! – these are the two things I always carry with me:
My PDA (a Palm TX) and handphone (Sony Ericsson K750i, in custom made Vaja case from Argentina).
While the TX is my one-stop entertainment centre (music, games, ebooks), mostly for the latter these days, it’s all I need for things like checklists and also for writing, too.
On the screen is the ebook version of Stephen King’s On Writing. There may be dedicated ebook readers available in the market, but I’m very happy with my TX for my ebook reading needs.
Meanwhile, my “Among Pandas” series on my recent panda-related trip to Wolong, China, will resume soon.
