Cara membuat projek trio

Sabtu dan Ahad lepas, aku dan Shikin (Zara Amani) pergi lepak kat umah Liza Nur.

Cadangan asal sebenarnya nak bincang fasal trio. Tapi disebabkan editor masih belum usik pun manuskrip yang kitorang hantar Disember lepas, kitorang tak dapat proceed dengan all those ideas yang nak dibuat untuk promote projek tu.

Sebenarnya projek trio tu cuma 'Projek Chums' - something yang kitorang intended untuk buat -as chums/buddies/good friends - secara tahunan supaya takkan ada satu tahun di mana kitorang tak keluarkan buku. Bukan senang nak keluarkan satu novel setahun, apatah lagi penulis macam aku yang kisahnya hanyalah kisah orang biasa. Bukan senang nak buat kisah orang biasa - tanpa overdramatisation, tapi tak terlalu over dari sudut ideologi atau terlalu controversial untuk penerimaan orang. Jadi cara paling mudah ialah dengan keluarkan trio.

Itu rancangan asal trio. Aku tak tahu apa pulak publisher punya take on the whole idea. Sebab analoginya samalah macam buat majlis - kau cuma nak majlis kahwin yang simple kat tepi laut dan dihadiri orang2 terdekat tapi mak bapak nak majlis kat dewan dan panggil semua orang yang dikenali. The clash of odeas memang akan berlaku sebab there will always be the business side and the creative side of everything.

But anyways, kami putuskan kot2 buku tu dapat sambutan, kami nak buat trio yang seterusnya. Dan kalau nak tahu macam mana cara kitorang bertiga buat kerja, it is something like this:


"Macam mana dengan atuk dan nenek?"
"Mungkin ada tapi dah tua."
"No, I think we should just buang altogether. Akak tak nak nanti ada orang akan tanya what about their grandparents? We want them to be totally off."
"Maybe your character should know them."
"But then we have to write their stories. I don't want them ada watak penting. Kita tak banyak pages untuk muatkan semuanya."(*sambil melingkar atas sofa, degan kertas dan pen, dan muffin yang dah tinggal bekas atas lantai*)

Dan...

"Macam mana dia interact?"
"Mungkin something happened kat tempat kerja."
"Mungkin ada sth yang akan relate kan them both. Like a memory."
"Tapi karakter kau dengan aku punya karakter tak ada link whatsoever except for that one part kan?"
"Tapi kalau akak punya karakter dengan kita punya jumpa, mungkin ada someone yang jumpakan diorang?"
(*sambil makan maggi goreng*)

Dan...

"Let's use first name basis."
"No, kalau nama dia macam ni, maksudnya karakter I punya nama pun kena ada something like that."
"It must have a name yang biasa. Nama yang normal pada tahun 80-an, something yang seorang mak akan rasa 'cool betul nama anak aku ni' tapi sebenarnya sangat corny."
"Dengan weird spelling."
"Bapak dia mesti nama yang bunyiknya macam sangat macho dan sangat tak guna dalam masa yg sama."
"Macam *toot*?"
"Hahahahahaha.... itu just 'tak guna'. Tak macho pun."
(*Sambil teguk air coklat)

Dan juga sesi bash novel aku:

"Seriously Shai, bagi la karakter ko chance untuk bercinta."
"Tapi memang watak novel aku bercinta pon."
"No. Ko suka letak kat belakang sekali dia punya happy ending."
"Ya, betul. Atau sangat vague. Kesian la."

Ya, macam tulah cara kitorang habiskan pagi Sabtu. Lepas tu tertido dengan jayanya. Lepas tu pergi makan free kat rumah sedara Shikin yang sambut birthday. Lepas tu pergi melalak karaoke kat Semenyih. Lepas tu pergi dataran KL untuk tengok skydivers (di mana aku end up beli bubble gun dan annoy every single cars on the road with bubbles). Lepas tu balik tido. Pastu bangun makan McD.

Dan begitulah caranya anda menulis "Projek Chums" (not our official name, by the way). Anda kena spend time dengan novelis lain, saling mengutuk dan mengeji, saling nyanyi lagu "Unintended" sekuat hati dan kemudian buat plan seterusnya yang entah bila nak dilaksanakan.

Or at least, that's how we deal with our shit.

Goodbye blue-eyed buddy (Phibun, August 2008 - 15 March 2012)

The vet told me it was jaundice.

It's common for a cat four years and above. Especially cats like Phibun - that are not wild yet not that domesticated. We let him go wherever he wanted, and who knows what he ate and drank during those times he was outside.

He was given a shot, pills for the jaundice and pills to increase his appetite, since he's almost skeletal from not eating anything we gave him. The vet told me to bring him back to the clinic in two weeks and see his progress. I left him to sleep on the stairs as I was leaving to Tim's and to help her with the engagement preparation. Told the guy "Please, try to eat something and be healthy again." He blinked slowly, like his usual "What-do-I-care" look and then shut his eyes to sleep.

That was the last time I saw Phibun.

If you asked me if I am upset with my cat's demise, of course I am. Phibun has been part of my life for nearly five years. As soon as I saw his weird brownish white colour and blue eyes when he was just but a tiny little thing, I wanted him to be mine. Phibun was a routine that made me feel sane. He was the one creature I can be mad at, scream at, cuddle, love, hate, all at the same time.

I am a busy person. I am always in front of my laptop, working. The only way to distract me from the laptop was when I saw Phibun outside the glass door, waiting for me to let him in and give him food - mainly his Smart Heart meals. That's the only time you will see me stop working and moving away from all shit I'm working on. If you ever watched THE GOLDEN COMPASS, Phibun was like my very own dæmon. He follows me around that sometimes I just walk in circles just to make fun of him. Every morning I wake up and open the door, making sure that he is outside, waiting for the door to open. He'll have his food and then sat next to me on the sofa while I eat my breakfast and streams tv series online - hoping that I will not finish my food and he can get something from that. Everytime I opened the tudung saji to get lauk, Phibun will climb on the chair and waited for something, anything. He will not try to climb the table or steal the fish, no matter if it was open for his eyes to see.

Sometimes as he waited for me to finish my food in hopes that there is something to eat, I will intentionally eat only half of my fish or chicken or meat so I can give the rest to him. If he's full, he will sit in front of the glass door and clean himself. Sometimes he sat there and looked outside the window, maybe grunted about the squirrels outside that kept stealing his food. Sometimes when he was bored, Phibun would get up and then sleep on my feet. I'll tell him that he's a nuisance, and he retaliates by holding on tighter to my leg while stretching, writhing, yawning and twisting, without moving away from my feet.

During Ramadhan, he will stay by my side while I do my tahajjud prayer in the darkest nights. Sometimes when I was reciting Fatihah, he would lie down on the praying mat and making me recite more surah because I can't do my sujud with him on my sujud position. When he's bored or wanted to go out, Phibun will scratch the carpet with his sharp claws and waited until I opened the door.

Sometimes when I'm mad at something or someone, I will rant it to Phibun. Not like the dude understood anything, but the look on his nonchalant face is just hysterical. Sometimes I rant on Facebook about him, his annoying behaviour, the fact that he just watched the rats walking across him without doing anything and only waste my money on cat food taing care of a lazy pet. But it was just something I do. That's my love hate relationship with my cat. I screamed at him, he tore my skin because he seemed to think he was a tiger, I pulled his ears when he left fish bones on the carpet and I stepped on it, he crapped on the expensive sofa and I give him a piece of my mind.

But now, I don't have a routine anymore. I have no Phibun to scream at, talk to, laugh at, or spend the remaining cents in my account balance buying food for.

This is gonna be a shitty time.

Thank you for the four years, Phibun. You were surely the Frank Sinatra to my Rat Pack.

His favourite thing to do: Rubbin his head on my feet

Every single morning...

a book hoarder | a writer-stalker | a woman in her late 20s

Remember that time, masa aku sangat excited order buku TENTANG & KENTANG karya Saharil Hasrin Sanin?

This time, I made a special request to Kinokuniya to find me this:

And then this happens:

And now, this will happen:

Does that make me a book hoarder, a writer-stalker or just a woman in her late 20s?

Their voice... it's in my head now...

My latest craze nowadays is watching THE MITCHELL AND WEBB LOOK, PEEP SHOW and David Mitchell's SOAPBOX on YouTube.

..................wow, it does sound like I'm stalking David Mitchell for some reason.

Well, anyway. Yes, I am upset with the state of the shows on television right now. They have every single crap there is, with all the Kardashians and all those reality TV shows about cake people, cupcake people, housewives brawls, more Amazing Race (I don't know when THAT will ever end), and loads of single-camera mockumentary crap and sitcomes where everybody speaks like they are in a rush (COUGAR TOWN, HAPPY ENDINGS, etc).

And they even stopped showing 30 ROCK and IT CROWD. The only shows I loved in this whole wide world. And no more BBC channel. Isn't it interesting how the country is oh-so proud for using the UK English  (being former commonwealth and all that brouhaha), but then most of the channels on TV are from America? That's like saying, "Hey, we are Malaysian. We speak Malay. Let's watch most shows in Indonesian."

So finally two years ago, I turned to YouTube. It actually started with IT CROWD. And somehow I found "THE BIG FAT QUIZ OF THE YEAR" (and that became my latest obsession, but since they only have it once every year at the end of the year, I will get spider-webbed waiting for those). And true to the normal behaviour of anybody surfing YouTube, I ended up watching Mitchell's "Soapbox" and he mentioned something about "Peep Show" and then I watched that and now I'm watching their "That Mitchell and Webb Look".

And now my head is filled with Robert Webb's "daradan daradan daradan" version of Devil's Gallop and everywhere I go, my head is filled with monologue in the voice of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.

I love that name by the way. And that was one of my favourite sketch from the show.

two hands | one head | five different work

Sorry sorry sorry. 

Agak busy bulan ni. FB pun tak berapdet.

Meanwhile, you can read my other works here:

"John Carter" Review
Lima Filem Latiff Ibrahim
Top 10 Filem Pontianak Terbaik