Zen and the art of making baby

adik, originally uploaded by Syed Syahrul Zarizi.

I'm a dad. Again. Yeay!

Star Wars Transformers

Toys for big boys. Or do you prefer something cuter?

Tags: star wars, transformer, toys

23 Ogos 2003

Sudah dua minggu aku kerja di tempat baru. Fizi demam, sampai Plaza Seni dalam hujan renyai dengan berbekalkan air teh limau yang aku sempat buat sebelum keluar tadi. Fizi demam panas, lin telefon, makan panadol dua biji terus terbaring hilang separuh nyawa. Ingat malas juga nak datang kalau Din Akar tak mesej, duduk rumah dengan mak aku, layan TV sambil bual fesyen dan gossip pasal jiran Singapore sebelah rumah. Makin besa air pancut depan rumah jiran aku ni. Seronok kut pasal lama sangat duduk flat, sini ada tanah, free hold lagi. Makin banyak itik yang diaorang bela, sampai nak kena sudu tiap kali aku nak keluar rumah pergi kerja. Hangin juga kadang-kadang, nak aja aku tuba air minuman diorang.

Tidak macam minggu-minggu lain, semua yang berlaku rasanya macam deja-vu, pre-planned atau sub-conciously aku dapat rasakan ini semua sememangnya sudah di rancang atau terancang. Aku makin percaya pada takdir dan suratan. Suatu perkara yang dulu selalu buat aku rasa ragu-ragu. aku seronok dengan keadaan aku sekarang, tiap kali rehat tengah hari aku jalan dari pejabat aku, tingkat 10 menara TJB ke Plaza Seni. Rasa macam 1996. Walau panas, aku rasa tak pernah sekali pun belakang aku berpeluh. Mungkin sikit tapi memang tak terasa bila kita buat sesuatu dengan rasa senang, tanpa paksa hanya usaha. Pergi balik lebih kurang 15 minit, tak lah berapa jauh. Itu yang okeynye tu. Petang pulak terus pergi kedai, lepak dengan Fizi. Dengan budak-budak. Kadang-kadang Din Burung turun, hari minggu ada pulak Endy datang dengan baju Atari Teenage Riot yang nampak makin ketat. Aku kasi lagi enam bulan, pasti hancus. boroi. budak-budak umur dia ni mana boleh jaga perut tu nampak kempis sampai bila-bila. Nafsu makan dengar makin menjadi-jadi. Keli masak lemak tah hapa tah. Itu belum campur kena payung lagi. Mokh pun kadang-kadang ada datang, bawak adik dia. Tadi datang dengan Big Show. Tanpa fikir panjang, Big-Show terus pergi kedai depan beli topi jaring. Apa benda la, 'in' lagi ke pesen ni? Nasib kurang baik aku akan ajak diaorang tolong hias balik kedai. Bukan berselerak sangat pun, benda pun tak banyak. Suka-suka je, dah ramai-ramai lepak tak buat apa rasa macam rugi pulak dah. Baik gode-gode apa yang patut. Dah macam pompuan si Fizi. Nak kata pereka hiasan dalaman, aku rasa citarasa dia ni memang tak cukup mainstream untuk orang normal. Tapi cukuplah untuk diri sendiri dan budak-budak yang datang.

Aku naik key crane dekat Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas semalam dengan manager aku. Aku ingat aku gayat, pening-pening ke, paling tak senak perut. Aku bajet muka aku jadi biru. Eh, rasa okey pulak. Tinggi kooo. nampak Singapore. Patut la Singapore goyang, nak join venture pulak dengan PTP. Mana plak aku taruk kunci rumah ni.


Tags: nostalgia

Perdana Global Peace Forum 2006

Sifoo PDF zine XLimit #02 is out

Dari Sifoo.com

Sifoo PDF zine XLimit #02 sudah keluar, dengan tema 'bebas'. Untuk melihat sila ke xlimit.sifoo.com

Untuk Volume #03 2006 bertajuk "I.S.A = Ikut Suka Aku".Ikuti kehendak kreativiti anda, ikuti seni anda. Atau terjahkan minda kreatif anda ke tahap paling tinggi! Hantar karya kreativiti anda dalam bentuk Visual Imej (Digital, tradisional) atau penulisan (sajak, puisi, artikel) atau dalam bentuk fotografi (snap! snap!) kepada kami untuk terbitan volume seterusnya. Apa-apa pun karya anda tak perlulah terikat sangat pada tajuk.

Tarikh tutup penyumbangan hasil kerja ialah pada Minggu pertama bulan Julai 2006 (tarikh akhir 10 julai 2006).

Berikut adalah saiz ukuran helaian majalah:-
Satu muka - 567 x 567 pixels (20cm x 20cm)
Dua muka - 1134 pixels X 567 pixels (40cm x 20cm)
Semua imej mestilah menggunakan resolusi 72 dpi, RGB atau Grayscale.

Format fail yang boleh diterima adalah seperti berikut:
Imej: .jpg, .tif, .png, .gif, .pdf, .eps
Teks: .doc, .txt, .rtf

Semua hasil kerja mestilah dihantar ke alamat seperti di bawah:
visual imej hasil kerja dan fotografi : xlimit@sifoo.com
Penulisan dan Artikel: 307mags@gmail.com

Sila sertakan nama, nama samaran, laman web dan alamat email.

Nota tambahan

IdN world keluaran terbaru V13N2: War & Peace. Terdapat artikel berkenaan artis-artis Malaysia

Creative City- Kuala Lumpur Small town networks, big city ideas

The Malaysian story, like that of many other developing Asian nations, is underpinned by change, and racing to become a developed global city.

And like many developing Asian cities, Kuala Lumpur is still in the process of becoming. Granted our aesthetics may not be quite as sophisticated as those of Tokyo, Hong Kong or Bangkok; there is, however, a genuine enthusiasm and intent to make a difference, push boundaries and have fun along the way.

Selamat hari bapa!

dua dua menyengih, originally uploaded by Syed Syahrul Zarizi.

Ulang tahun yang pertama. Dapat kad comel warna biru dari mama & Haziq. Selamat Hari bapa kepada Hj. Wahab & Al fatihah kepada Syed Abdullah Al-Edrus, semoga roh dirahmati Allahh. Juga kepada Hafiz Hashim di Subang, Yusri (bila lagi) Adam, Nazarul, Azam dan semua bakal-bakal bapa. Semoga dapat menjalankan amanah yang Allah berikan dengan sempurna.

Tags: father, parent, family

Aidil Adha 1999...It was so quiet, it was actually deafening.....

Note : Written few years ago (circa 2002-2003, bad grammer and all). Tribute to Syed Abdullah B. Syed Mustaffa, allahyarham. A Father, husband & grandfather. Al-fatihah.

19th November 1999. I was at home in Taman Rinting, barely awake when a call came and everyone was suddenly up and ready. It was in the middle of Ramadan. The day was normal and everyone were in no mood to go to the hospital. It was Saturday, there were no sound of school busses and cars dropping school kids at the primary school nearby. It was so quiet that it was actually deafening. Everything was quite as the Toyota Cielo left the house with my two brothers tagged along in their own cars. My older sister opted to stay back. Just incase anything came up. There was nothing in his eyes other than emptiness and some hope.

I don’t actually remember who was driving that day. It might have been my brother. My mother or myself. During the short drive to Hospital Penawar, many things going through my mind. Only yesterday morning that I remember helping my older sister to prepare breakfast for my father. It was porridge and mashed potatoes. In a split second things got complicated as his body started to shake nervously, in a subtle but alarming way. We called the ambulance and everybody waited anxiously for the result.

My father just got home after spending nearly 9 months in various hospitals. First, it was in Hospital Sultanah Aminah before being transferred to Johor Specialist Hospital at Jalan Abdul Samad. He spent a couple of months there to undergo some treatment to check and improve his condition. My mother spent the whole time there, it was like a second home for my mother. She slept there and accompanied my father, going back to Taman Rinting only if anything important came up. She never drove at night before, let alone in a thunderstorm but in those days one could only understand what true love really means. She braved anything that comes by, as nothing was impossible to her. As I was studying then and live in Ulu Tiram, I wasn’t able to visit my father that often. My second brother was working back and fort from Pasir Gudang to Bintulu and Kerteh, so every chances that we had we would went to the hospital. The condition seems to be under control and doctors were trying to find the cause of the illness. My brothers and I would sit outside the main entrance, sipping extremely hot coffee from the vendor machine and checking out the hot cars the doctor’s drive in.

Everything was fine a year ago. It was still in the midst of Hari Raya. My father was getting ready for work when a sudden pain on his back left him lying and not being able to stand up, let alone walks. An ambulance had to be called to our house to pick him for a checkup in Hospital Sultanah Aminah. He was released a couple of weeks later but was advice to relax at home for the time being. We were quite shock as my father doesn’t really have any major illness prior to this incident. He was really active, likes to jog and occasionally plays soccer. He was a very health conscious person and doesn’t smoke. He was a workaholic and dedicates much of his time to work and family

We spent some the time in our house in Ulu Tiram and his condition wasn’t improving. Just seeing his taking the stairs to the second floor was really painful for us. He took one small steps at a time, and managed to complete it in just less than an hour. It was really different, seeing a vulnerable side of my father that has always been very strong and active all his life. In a split second, everything changes, quite drastically. My father, being a stubborn man that would not just let fate had the better of him, tried to fight it but to no avail, until he was again admitted to hospital for the second time, to Johor Specialist Hospital.

He was diagnosed of having a kind of bone cancer. An injury that might occur during a sporting activity might lead to the damage of my father’s spine and this lead to more serious injury. My father was the kind of person that doesn’t like to go to clinics or hospital whenever he wasn’t feeling good. He rarely took medical leaves and only took his annual leaves at year end to spend time with us. Drive to Kedah or Penang to visit our relatives there.

My father was born in Kedah. Yan Kecik, Kedah. I still remember my grand father’s house although we haven’t been there for quite some time. The last time in 2002, to visit our late uncle that was critically ill then. He passed away soon after the visit. But that was in Sungai Petani, not Yan Kecik. I’d heard the house was rented out to another family. The crystal clear stream not so far from the house. Duck and fishes, it was just like in a travel advertisement shown in television, picture perfect.

His condition wasn’t getting any better so the hospital recommended to transfer my father to Mahkota Medical Center in Malacca. The hospital here was bigger, with spacious room and better facilities. That year we spend Hari Raya Korban in Malacca, with everyone sleeping in my father’s room and ate ketupat, rending, satay. It was a definitely special moments and quite bizarre, celebrating Aidiladha with the whole in a totally unique place……

Tags: father, death, tribute

Top Ten list Bulan Jun

Bulan lepas berlalu dengan pantas. Sekarang, bulan Jun. Esok Julai, esok-esok 2007. Bulan ini sahaja sudah 2 kali balik JB. Sen pun cuma tinggal serdak. Top ten list bulan ini,

1 - Taman Bukit Tiram. Jalan dah cantik, tak macam dulu. Bapak Sam cakap tiap pagi masa pergi kerja mesti jem dekat lampu trafik simpang Bukit Tiram. Pulak.
2 - Lepak dengan Haziq sambil minum Milo ais.
3 - World Cup upset. Support Togo. Nyaris menang semalam.
4 - Tagbod Hilang Punca.
5 - Masakan Johor.
6 - Baca zine HeartattaCk isu dulu-dulu.
7 - GPA 3.4
8 - Balik kerja terus lepak depan TV tengok bola sampai pukul 2
9 - Kawan-kawan kahwin, tak sempat pergi semua. Berderet.
10 - Makan nasi lauk sayur sambil tenguk siaran ulangan world cup dekat restoran mamak bawah rumah.

Tags: top10, worldcup

“This is Clint Eastwood Music. This is music with no name.” A look at music and the genre / labeling process.

Note: Taken Cronically Donut 'zine #9, November 1998. Written by Syed Syahrul Zarizi

Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom…. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything – tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes – anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, smashing, making sound in every possible way… What we can’t do ourselves will be done by machine, which we will invent. ~ John Cage, 1939

Music is at its most exiting when we don’t quite have a name for it yet. Once the press has come up with a label for the music, then anyone can do it. First, you have the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and then someone says ‘punk’ and before you know it you’ve got The Stranglers, Shame 69 and the Police. It’s the different between The Beatles and (Hey! There’s something called a ‘Liverpool sound’! ) Gerry and the Peacemakers.

Normally this pre-label period only lasted a moment. That is why we all want to claim that we saw special band at that one special gig – the one before the whole world discovered them. Because that was the moment before the press told us that this new music was called and what we were supposed to think about it. Over on one side we have all that ambience-with beat or techno-with-prettiness stuff. Intelligent techno? Electronic Listening Music? The names haven’t stuck, because they are inadequate to describe what’s going on. Then we’ve got all thin dance stuff that won’t fit neatly into any genre at all. That’s why it’s so good. It’s still free to borrow from anywhere, sound like anything and no one can deliberately set out to sound like it because no one can say exactly what is sounds like.

It might sound like Beth Gobbon’s voice, but then again it might sound like the wah-wah guitar in KarmaComa, the drone at the beginning of the Method Man track, the over-eager kick drum in Bug Powder dust, or the rhythmic sway of Ben Harper via The Dust Brother.

A song is anything that walk by itself ~ Bob Dylan

There’s always been music around that defies genre barriers, but normally that is called avant garde and it doesn’t sell. What is different today is that this stuff sells. Gets into the charts, even. So why now?

Art has always reflected the state of contemporary science and technology. The inpressionist fed off the discovery of photography; the futurist borrowed from the speed and violent of the automobile and the train; cubism took reality apart as quantum theory and special theory of relativity were taking classical physics apart; the atom bomb spawned the theater of the absurb. So where is science now?

Last year at the Santa Fe Institute – where cutting edge thinkers think about cutting edge, they held a congerence to discuss ‘The Limits of Scientific Knowledge.’ Is it possible for science to know (they asked) what it cannot know? Good question.

I know but I don’t know ~ Blondie

So what is it that we don’t know?

We don’t know the speed and mass of a particle (uncertainty principle). We don’t know how the universe works (Unifies Field theory). We don’t know what the weather will be like next week (Chaos theory). We don’t know how to make a killing on the stock market (Complexity theory).

It’s hardly surprising that, in an age when science finally admits it hasn’t got a handle on things after all, that people want to listen to music without label, music that doesn’t follow any clear rules, music or possibilities.

Freed from the rigid disciplines of what’s hip, you can float in the freedom of the cool. Let it take you wherever you want to go. This music have no agenda. But it probably sets the next one.

The Birth of Cool Phive, 1995


1

I remember reading sometime ago about an Indonesian writer that wrote a novel about nothing. That’s an idea. In the age where one can quickly be bored with usual repetition and daily protocols, experimentation is getting more and more advance and can get confusing. Surging forward with one style is a way to prevent oneself from being a part of the norm and million other creative writers.

I don’t know what was the outcome of the novel but I’m sure it was interesting. But what I don’t really understand was the writer’s writing process of such a novel. Was it the same with other millions writers out there? Or was it something else, that in the process in creating ‘nothing’ there is ‘something’ that was needed to make it works?

From what I understand, the ‘nothing’ must only be on the theme, because if it was applied to other aspect of writing the novel, ‘nothing’ will ever come out. It is hard to think and talk about nothing. Last night, as I was laying on bed, starring at the white ceiling, I will tried to think of nothing, but I doubt I can really do it for a long time. The most might be seconds, maybe less.

The writer must really have ‘nothing’ to say. Or does have something to say about ‘nothing’ what I am sure about is that I am not sure what he was writing about. What was his novel about?

“This is really disturbing.” I said to myself. “Is there’s such thing as nothing?”

2

I grew up on a healthy diet of the Beatles, Jamali Shadat, the Favorite group, Santana, Buddy Guy and many other great things. My gather has a great collection of LP’s and not so successful cartridges. They were pop bands, a go-go and blues.

When I was in my mid-teen, I discovered Hendrix. It was a pleasant surprise. Still shocked, I asked myself, was this blues, rock and roll or progressive rock? It was just as the first time I’ve listen to the Stranglers, Leftfield and Goldie. What the hell are these? What should I call it?

We sure do have many questions in out life. Every day, there are new questions that come to our mind. These questions need to be answered. And when there were no answered, we made it up ourselves.

There are also many uncertainties in our life. Many things we don’t understand and some of it we don’t have a clear explanation about it. There should be more explanation about it.

“Can someone explain it to me? Please, please we are begging you, just lie if you have to.”

This is how and why the labeling and name-calling begins. It was from the pure pressure and the need to secure the insecurity of the people that make other people to put words into our mouths and tell us what to do, listen to and how to live our life. We are the one that asked for it.

Many people realized this there are some questions that can’t be answered. Or there are more than a way to answer a question? Here where Dadaism come in and people that were bored with punk turn to no-wave or other avant-garde or alternative genre that even I don’t understand. They want to be alone, they want to be free. They don’t want to be tangled in any things that will poke the normal folks imagination or be label as the next in thing.

Neeli Cherkovski, a writer from the Beat generation said,

“In every artist I know there’s a yearning for anarchy. You are rushing toward anarchy because you want to be left alone; you want to be able to write and say what ever you want. At the same time, you are yearning for a sense of order.”

There are in many sense, a person can be free. A man live all his live on a wheel chair can feel free as a bird when he go to the park with his friends in weekends. A blind man feels free when he talks to someone.

Will we be free from the labeling and all the name-calling? I doubt because it is just human nature. But if you look inside yourself, you will realize that freedom is in ourselves and our mindset is sometime the real threat.

the broken laptop i bought on ebay

Amir Massoud Tofangsazan live in Barnet. He is 19 but pretend to be a lot older and like to pretend that he is a big businessman when he is not actually that clever. on 29th November 2005 he sold a laptop on eBay.

Eventually, the laptop didn't work. The buyer was really annoyed and wanted a refund.

He took the hard disk out and behold! one laptop crammed with pictures that I really should have deleted before trying to sell it!

But revenge is SWEET. A reminder to all, be careful when buying something from Ebay.

Tags: ebay, laptop, computer

jimi hendrix on MS paint

Komputer pertama di rumah kami mempunyai kelajuan hanya 100MHz dengan sistem operasi Window 3.1. Belum kenal Adobe atau Macromedia, jadi MS Paint lah kawan baikselepas bosan menulis. Bukan sahaja Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison pun ada tapi tak sempat cetak atau selamatkan apabila komputer itu akhirnya lebur kerana dimamah usia. Dengan komputer tu & komputer din kambing Cronically Donut dihasilkan.

Your own USD100 laptop!

Remember the cute and adorable laptop, developed by MIT that cost only USD100? Unfortunately, the laptop is only for sale to goverment & organization, not to individuals. Buy what if we can change that? Sign a pledge and you might even get your hand on that tasty laptop.


Tags: computer, laptop, technology

Lagenda Rock Search kembali dengan single terbaru 'Ying dan Yang'

Kumpulan rock lagenda tempatan Search yang kini kembali dengan anggota asal Hillary Ng telah mengeluarkan single terbaru di laman web mereka duniasearch.com. Untuk memuat turun lagu terbaru mereka, Ying dan Yang peminat perlu terlebih dahulu menjadi ahli. Seterusnya

Tags: music, rock kapak