Busy facelifting and reading birds

It's been a while since this blog is updated. I'm not sure if anybody notices or not, but the template underwent a facelift of sorts.

Despite the opinion that I get from many people saying the colour white is boring and bland, I still can't find a colour that matches white's flexibility. It complements either light and dark colours and it improves readability on computer screen displays. A versatile and underappreciated colour white is, IMHO.

It took me many, many, many hours to tweak the template in order to get it to look like now but alhamdulillah it turned out better than I expected. I was about to give up half way when I couldn't the suitable colours to go with one another. It's times like these when I really wish I have a web colour chart with me so I can see and pick the suitable colours more quickly. I believe webmasters buy colour chart/poster/book/guide that lists all the possible colours usable on the web with their value to help them with their work. Colours are often represented in RGB (red, green, blue) or HSV (hue, saturations, value) values.

There are still design bugs here and there, maklumlah, a work in progress.

As a result, no posts were written for some time. That plus assignments and group works from my classes. My group is up for an accounting presentation this Thursday night and I'm the slides-preparer of the group, which is good because it frees me from having to present. I still have to go in front and help control the slides' transition, but still, better than having to present. My classmates are one tough crowd to please.

See bird, write bird

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'
-Anne Lamott

So goes the story behind this book's title. I found it at Pay Less Books in Ampang Point.

This the second book about writing that I bought and actually read. Books like these really open up a whole new world for you as they invite you to view writing in entirely different ways.

Got too much on your mind? Write them all out, they say. The children acting up? Mothers, the pen and paper are never too far from reach. Horrible childhood? According to writer Flannery O'Connor, anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.

In short, they claim writing to be therapeutic, calming to the mind and spirit. It liberates oneself from hidden fears and unlocks the hope that is trapped somewhere in the psyche. And I'm beginning to see it too.

Usually the inability to come up with something to write stems from the fear of having to search into the mind and having to conjure up something unpleasant about one's self or others. The mind needs to sort the details out and rationalises the whole thing thoroughly, be it a school trip to Melaka (I think every school in Peninsula Malaysia do this) or a family tragedy or a thing that only you yourself know. It's a daunting and mentally exhausting exercise, and people rarely went through the process till finish.

But the payoff is both stimulating and satisfying. You'll be able to form a clear and concise train of thought and your communication skills will improve significantly. You'll see yourself, others and the whole world in a different light as your mind will continuously amaze yourself in its undying wonder and unrelentless pursuit for greater understanding of things.

Getting published, receiving rave reviews or clinching the best-seller list are just bonuses that may result from writing. But they should never be the true reasons for a writer to write. Otherwise the writer will miss out on the delicate but delectable fruits that bear from the patience, discipline and humility of being 'just another writer'.

Start small, the writing teachers often say. Scrap paper, the back of an envelope or business card or unused diary of years past can be used to get your writing engine started. And few lines every now and then is enough to get you going as a writer.

So go and write something, and get creative. Come up with a shopping list for your next shopping trip and write short anecdotes for each items if you can think of any. Mine would go: "Milk. A wonderful natural bounty. And it makes me wonder how lactose-intolerant baby cows cope with their intolerability..."

Not just that though, but don't just go unleashing your creativity everywhere. Your boss may not be too impressed by your jabs about the office's working condition that you so funnily (and accidentally) describe in the report you have prepared for him.

Be smart, be creative, be kind to your learning self, be patient, be crazy, be inquisitive. Anne's brother went writing bird by bird. Others may go from a short story to another. Or a diary entry to the next. I often go from scrap paper to empty space on a newspaper to whatever paper I may find at the moment when ideas struck inside my empty head. No matter what you wish to write on and what pace you may decide to take, just keep going and picturing that one day you will reap the bounties of writing that only you may be able to taste and enjoy. If anybody else wishes to savour them too, then tell them to "get a pencil and paper, and..."

" ... write whatever you feel like writing."