Bibliophilic Bouts

I was at the barber just now and I had to wait a short while for my turn. As always, waiting is never an issue as it means that I am pleasantly rewarded with some reading time. 

How often do we complain that we do not have the time to indulge in our hobbies. Well, if reading happens to be your pastime of choice, then you're in luck. You can squeeze it into the interstices of your life--all those tiny amount of time in between major events or tasks which make up your day.

Reading to me is like eating. Every sentence is a morsel of food, which you savour with your mind. And you'd relish it exactly like a tantalising piece of delicacy dropped into your salivating mouth. Only that the nourishment from the former is, I would argue, exceeds anything that is consumed orally.

I do not only read everywhere, I've also acquired the habit of annotating the pages of my book with a pencil. And I'm not doing it because I have to mark up facts for some research project, just that reading and annotating is my way of fully concentrating and enjoying every word and sentence that the author has carefully and painstakingly assembled for my edification. 

I know, it's a peculiar sight these days to find anyone reading in public, what more with a 2B pencil in hand, dissecting blocks of text on a piece of printed page. And to extend the food analogy further: my pencil is like an eating utensil--not unlike a pair of chopsticks--picking out and shoving bite-sized chunks of savoury delights into my mind.

An annotated page immediately becomes mine: it is the conquered terrain, which I the reader-traveller had ploughed through, with some effort. Experiences movingly carved with the scalpel of my pencil.  The marginalia becomes the journal of my reading life. Thoughts, events and silent chuckles captured in black scrawls, marking the width and breadth of my bibliophilic realm, 

I read for the sheer pleasure of consuming text; the nourishments of its contents is an additional bonus which my mind is rewarded with. And over time, I realised that my sensitivity to words and their multi-various meanings becomes greatly enhanced.  My mental tastebuds have acquired aptitudes in ever-expanding dimensions, opening vistas of delights hitherto unknown.

Ah, I'm waxing lyrical again about the ecstatic joys of reading, especially the form that involves the dead-tree variety--this gluttony of books, which I succumb, unashamedly to; this hill of hedonism which I willingly die on. I do not claim any intellectual or moral superiority--it is simply an indulgence, pure and simple.

So do not attempt to save me from this addiction which had and is consuming my life. This junkie seeks no pity nor sympathy. I read, therefore I am. And occasionally I write too, in blog articles like these here. But these are just the sober interludes between my blissful bouts of bibliophilia.

The Fuels of Happiness

Today is Chinese New Year's eve and as always it is a time for rest and reflection for me. Most people will be away for an entire week and it is a great time to catch up on work. A certain peace descends on the city after everyone has finally made their way back to their hometowns.

It is a time I relish. It feels like I have the city all to myself. I was at the mamak cafe just now, enjoying a cup of coffee and the last chapter or Orhan Pamuk's The New Life.

Why, one might ask, indulge in such a melancholic read on the eve of Chinese New Year when every household is so boisterously happy and the expansive night skies are punctuated with bursts of celebratory fireworks?

Books make me happy, even a sad one. Every book, no matter its subject or genre, makes you a better person. To finish a book, having digested and integrated every thought and idea of the author into one's system is a great feeling. It is happiness of the most sublime kind.

Reading and writing to me are sacred activities on par with prayer and meditation. These are activities of the heart and mind and one finds tremendous happiness when these inner faculties of ours are engaged in lively interplay.

The pleasure of a writer, like that of a dancer, is expression. Allowing the vibrations of the soul to seek their outward potency. The reader on the other hand, derives his pleasure from absorption and integration of ideas and emotions into his inner being. It is deeply spiritual. And spirituality is but a form of yearning that is inherent and primeval in every individual, finding outward expression in the multitude of organized religions that we see in the world today.

Let me stay clear of the subject of religion for now as I have written a lot about it in the past and still have many unexpressed thoughts on it that I might want to articulate at a latter occasion.

And let's go back to the happy occasion of Chinese New Year. The ethos of the Chinese is growth and expansion. Gloom is anathema to the spirit of Chinese New Year. To move forward with a healthy sense of confidence and optimism is how one should lead one's life. Attaining prosperity and material success in this world is the happiness one seeks as a Chinese.

Such is the positive mindset of the Chinese that drives them towards such great heights of achievements. It is on occasions like these that I reconnect with my ethnic virtues and harness its motivational power. The outer motivation is the sunshine that makes the plant rise skywards. And my spiritual quests are like the invisible reach of its roots that seek nourishment deep within the ground. Both are fuels for the happiness of the plant.

A Gymnasium in Paradise

I had always imagined paradise as a kind of library. - Jorge Luis Borges

The most enduring image that has lingered in my mind from the movie Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg) was the final scene where the pre-cogs were seen in a some kind of rustic cottage, surrounded by piles of books, blissfully reading. I thought to myself then, heaven must look like that--filled with wonderful books and all everyone does is read all day, and all night.

Reading is one of the greatest pleasures of life, and among the cheapest too. People like to complain that books are expensive. No they are not. The price of a paperback book is probably about the amount you'll spend on a typical outing with friends at Starbucks. And how many books does an average person read a year?

You'll be considered quite an avid reader if you manage to read a book a month. If the average paperback costs RM50.00, that amounts to only about RM600.00 a year spent on books. I'm sure your smartphone (which you'll probably change every year) costs more than that.

And don't forget, you can also read for free at the local library. Not to mention all the free e-books that you can also download to your favorite reading device. No other equivalent pleasure in life comes that cheap.

Why don't people read more then? In Malaysia, if you ask someone what he or she is reading now, you'll probably get a blank stare. Ask them what TV series they are watching now or which nightspot do they hangout these days, they'll probably light up immediately.

Most people consider reading boring. It takes a lot of effort to focus page after page of words. Reading is hard work. Reading is passe. Why not surf the web? Isn't it a much more efficient way of absorbing information in today's fast paced world?

Yes and no. I don't disagree that the internet is a great source of information and knowledge. One can probably find out more up-to-date information about a certain subject much more quickly from the web. I'm a great fan of Wikipedia and Youtube. One can learn whatever one desires to learn these days. All knowledge is available on one's fingertips, if only one is willing to invest the time to absorb them.

No, surfing the Net does not provide one important benefit one gets from reading printed dead-tree pages: the practice of concentration. Reading a book from cover to cover, tracing the authors thread of thought one word at a time, watching his ideas and concepts take shape sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph is like a kind of meditation, with words acting almost like prayer beads.

It is the hard work of slowly scanning line after line of monotonous text, lumbering along page by page at snail's pace that provides the necessary exercise that our mental faculties need. The book is the mind's exercise machine. One reads to sharpen one's mind. Reading keeps the brain sizzling with healthy electro-chemical activity, forging fresh connections among neurons, stimulating neuro-transmission across synapses.

Reading keeps one mentally fit. And I can imagine Borges, who passed away in 1986, blissfully working out at the gymnasium of the mind in Paradise.

The Lost World

I remember a whole without TV, without the Internet, without cellphones. Was it a better world then?

I read a lot as a child because my parents had a lot of books and encouraged me to read; my neighbours read; my friends in school read. To me reading was like breathing, eating and sleeping--it was something natural, something that everyone did.

It was only when I entered the university that I realized how wrong I was.

As a child, I was also fanatical about football. I used to wake up early in the morning, before the sun rose, to play football with my friends. I even recorded the team list and details about all the goals scored in every match we played in a dog-eared exercise book, which I still keep.

I played barefoot for many years before I saved enough money to buy myself a pair of second-hand Puma boots. I remember paying 25 bucks for it, and I still keep that pair of boots back home.

I used to take penalties for my team, because I was good at it. I had a very accurate shot. I spent many hours practicing how to place the ball just inside the goalpost. Most of the time I aim to hit the inside of the upright--if you hit it at that very sweet spot, not even the best goalkeeper in the world could save it. I knew the basics of soccer better than many of my friends because I had learned them properly--from books.

Yes, it was a world without the Internet, without cellphones, without satellite TV. But I had friends who read and friends who shared my passion for soccer--Malays, Chinese and Indian friends. It was heaven to me.

It's a different world now. I spend my days and nights staring at a computer screen. I attend meetings. I listen to podcasts while I'm driving. And I watch EPL matches beamed live to my living room.

I have more books than I could ever read in my lifetime. Why did I buy so many books? Why do I have to suffer the pain and joy of watching Liverpool play every weekend?

I know now: It is to recapture that world which I had lost.

A Life of Leisure

I've finally managed to complete my long overdued upgrade to the new Blogger template. When I first started blogging in 2003, Blogger didn't have a lot of the features which come standard with any blogsite today: things like comments, tags/labels and blog titles were not supported.

Only paying pro-Blogger users were allowed to upload pictures to their blogs. We had to integrate comment services and picture-hosting from other free service provider sites; blog entry titles had to be hardcoded in HTML. That is why you still see these ugly double titles appearing for all my old posts. And also, now that I'm using the Blogger commenting feature, all old comments are not displayed anymore.

Even though I have been blogging less and less frequently lately, I don't intend to stop doing so. I'll blog whenever I find those bits and pieces of time in between more "important" tasks. There are so many things vying for my time, but this year, I hope to allocate more time for leisure activities such as blogging.

Despite my hectic work schedule last year, I'm quite surprised that I still managed to read quite a number of books. Among the books that I thoroughly enjoyed last year were Chin Peng's autobiography, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History; Marquez's Memories of my Melancholy Whore, Theroux's Hotel Honolulu plus all the 3 volumes of Ted Miles's diaries. In general however, I'd usually go for non-fiction, unless there's something interesting from Marquez, Kundera or Theroux.

One of my many eccentricities is a fondness for reading musical scores. Classical music is one of my major passions, and I find my enjoyment of the classics greatly enchance if I am able to read and listen to the music at the same time. Hence I also collect musical scores. Whenever I go to Borders, I'd try to check out their collection of music books. Among my most treasured possessions in my library now is a wonderful five-volume set containing the complete piano works of Beethoven, which I'd chanced upon in Jakarta.

The Internet is a great place to download sheet music and so many of them are available free. I also find musical notation visually and aesthetically pleasing--it's like calligraphy. (Calligraphy is also one of my many interests).

I must admit: I have way too many hobbies to pursue! That is why I am always reluctant to take up things like golf or diving--they are simply too time-consuming and not to mention, expensive. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in one's lifetime. I have no choice but to prioritize.

I've always believed in the healthy formula of 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work and 8 hours leisure in a day. If we manage our time well, we should have sufficient time to enjoy our favourite leisure activities, and also to blog about them too!