Everything

“In the beginning were words. But not the sort of words you might expect.” – Amir Muhammad , Once Again – Trash, Our Trash Generation: A Collection of Contemporary Malaysian Ideas (1997) I don’t remember a world without language. Always, language and imagination, speculation, utters of sound. Words, beginning of words. What would I be without language? My existence has been determined by language, not only the spoken but the unspoken, the language of speech and the language of motion. My childhood was the oral tradition of Melayu people – which included my immediate family of one elder sister, one younger brother, one youngest sister, my father and mother. My world was the world of several places in memory; Changlun and Yan (Kedah), Lenggong (Perak), Jalan Pekeliling, Sungai Besi and currently it is Taman Tun Dr. Ismail (Kuala Lumpur). The years when I was an offspring (baby to 12-year old), I grew up within a people who didn’t get well with education, including my...

"In each century since the beginning of the world, many wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century, more amazing things were found out than any in century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done, then they see it can be done - then it's done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago."