I was scheduled to undergo minor surgery, an outpatient procedure to remove a lump from a place where lumps had no business to be. When I told my friends, all of them reacted with shock, concern and a great deal of worry on my behalf. I felt like a fraud. Mine wasn't a severe condition or a life-threatening matter -- I wasn't even going to be spending a night in the hospital!

My best guess is that "surgery" is associated with grave and somber procedures such as "heart bypass". But the Compact Oxford English Dictionary merely defines surgery as "the branch of medicine concerned with treatment of bodily injuries or disorders by incision or manipulation".

Which I tried to explain to my friends. "It's minor surgery," I said, emphasising the word minor. "The surgeon is just going to cut that part open, take the lump out, and sew me back up. No big deal!"

"These doctors, they always tell you it's minor. Everything is minor to them!" was the reply. I grinned to myself; likely this friend had forgotten that my father is a medical practitioner!

I suppose my background (with my doctor dad) had denuded the word surgery of its 'stigma' in my sight. On the day of the operation, several people asked if I was worried or nervous and I said no, what is there to be worried about? I'm sure I got many strange looks, and even stranger ones when, the next day, I declared I wanted to go out and about.

"You should stay home and rest!" a friend insisted. "You just had surgery!"

"Good grief, I had minor surgery to take out a lump. All the rest of me is okay apart from the part where the surgeon made his incision. I can still walk and everything!" I replied.

My friend's mind was boggled. Not needing to recuperate after surgery? How can this be?

I'd never realised that this word carries so many heavy associations for others. To me, it merely describes a medical procedure; it's the type of surgery that lends weight to the word. That's why I increasingly feel that it's very important to be careful of the words I use, in order that I should convey my intended meaning to others. Sometimes it's not that we use the wrong words; it's that the hearer or reader interprets them differently from the exact dictionary meaning. T'was a good reminder, this.

However, I was elated to discover that I had a book in my car. Plus, it was one which I'd planned to read but hadn't yet gotten down to reading (something that can be said of 80% of my books!). I snatched it from the back seat of my car and walked into the clinic.

As it turns out, I had ample time to savour the book, since I spent four hours at the clinic. Unfortunately, I soon realised that the book was making the waiting more difficult, rather than helping me to while the time away!

What's really sad is that Don't Sit On This Book: A Collection of Chinese Taboos ought to be an interesting read. I'm Chinese, but my family has never practiced many of the old Chinese traditions and superstitions, so I thought this book might fill in the blanks for me. Give me a better understanding of Chinese culture. Show me where I'm from. And provide me with interesting bits of trivia.

Too bad the trivia and interesting information got lost and buried in the writing style.

Take the opening paragraphs, for example. Almost every description of a taboo, superstition, or belief starts out with a general statement; a discussion of Chinese New Year beliefs and traditions opens with the paragraph,

Even in the age of e-commerce and space travel, the Chinese community has retained their penchant for celebrations and merry-making. (page 188)

Let's say the reader decides to brave the uninspiring opening paragraph in the hope that the best is yet to come. He'll then discover that the writer seems to have some sort of aversion to paragraphs that are more than three sentences long. I'm not kidding -- the paragraphs in this book are so short that they sound like bullets, which in turn causes the style of writing to be choppy and difficult to read, never mind enjoy. Let's go back to the Chinese New Year essay:

After the elaborate reunion dinner, the elders must present the younger generation with money-filled red packets or 'ang-pows'. Children and youngsters will be happy to receive the red packets.

However, the money is not to be used. It is for depositing into the piggy bank. The reason is, it is a taboo to have an empty piggy bank on the eve of the Chinese New Year.

After putting the money in, one should also stick a piece of red paper with the Chinese characters 'always full' on it. This way, you may be blessed with a constant supply of spending money throughout the coming year. (page 189)

The lack of flow is exacerbated by the inappropriate use of tenses and lack of adequate description or explanation. "Children and youngsters will be happy to receive the red packets"? Of course they'd be happy! Which child doesn't enjoy receiving gifts? Instead of wasting space with that completely irrelevant remark, the writer could have inserted a short explanation of the history of ang pows, like how they came to be given out in the first place and why the money is always packaged in red envelopes. Why not yellow envelopes? Or blue? Or orange? It would also have been helpful to note that only married people are expected to give ang pow; singles (no matter what age they might be) are exempt. Again, I'd love to know why this is. I'm probably going to have to google it.

I would've liked more stories about ancient China, how certain practices originated and evolved, why they are still considered important today. Don't just give me a statement like, "It is a taboo to bathe, shower or wash your hair on the first day of the Chinese New Year." I know that. What I want to know is why it is a taboo! The lack of explanation makes me think that the writer did not research the topic thoroughly; if one aims to give others a better understanding of Chinese culture (as is stated in the book's Preface), then explanations -- not just dry facts -- are necessary. Facts are well and good but a lone fact seldom helps anyone to understand anything.

In some places, the taboos are not even presented as fact; they are put forward in such a way as to sound like instructions or commands:

Never go empty-handed when visiting. Fresh bouquets and health food and beverages are appropriate get-well presents. Fruit are also popular gifts. However, please remember not to offer pears as get-well presents. Pears are not appropriate according to Chinese customs. (page 115)

All in all, it was a sadly disappointing book. There are lots of non-fiction books out there which succeed in being both informative and entertaining; unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.

Who's to blame? While amateur writers may, as Malaysians say, "spoil the market", they also have less leverage. An established writer like Ellison can tell Warner Bros to go jump in the lake because he's well-known enough that Warner Bros might actually turn around and try to negotiate in order to gain the rights to his work; and if not, somebody else who is willing to pay an appropriate fee will likely eventually come along.

But a little-known writer is bound to be excited when approached by such a company as Warner Bros, and he knows -- or at least, he thinks -- that if he doesn't grab this opportunity, another company of this stature might not come along for a long, looooong time. Put it down to a lack of faith in himself, a desire for a 'shortcut' to get his name out there quickly, or perhaps just a very human tendency to grab whatever you can for fear you may never get a better deal (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, remember?). He may know he is being shortchanged, but he may choose to discount that due to the other factors mentioned above, and console himself with the thought that at least this will look impressive on his portfolio or resumé.

I once attended an interview at a publishing company where I was informed that the editorial staff frequently stay overnight in order to meet tight deadlines, and "Do you have any problem with that kind of schedule?" Then I discovered that they were not willing to pay above RM2,500. Leaving aside my four years of writing experience, the fact that the job would require such long hours -- even weekends might need to be sacrificed, I was told -- caused me to feel that the remuneration offered was inadequate.

But such things are so subjective; what I consider inadequate, another job applicant might consider acceptable, or even fair. Isn't this what a market-driven economy is all about?

My classmate kindly asked for my student number and offered to help me keep a lookout, but when she told me what I'd scored, I decided I had to see for myself. Just like how, in my undergraduate days, I called my college THREE TIMES to verify my final year results. In case, y'know, the person reading the results to me over the phone had accidentally read those of the candidate listed above or below me. It isn't wildly beyond the realm of possibility, after all!

So I traipsed over to the university today during my lunch break. Lo and behold, my classmate's eyes had not deceived her!

Research Methodology: A-
Critical Discourse Analysis: A

*blinks*  I distinctly remember walking out of the exam hall after the Research Methodology paper and telling friends, "I'll probably pass, but most likely won't score."

So much for predictions! *super silly grin*

The cool thing about the Reader's Digest was -- and still is -- all the little anecdotes scattered through it. After reading the funnies, I'd flip through page by page, looking for the other funnies. Then I'd read Quotable Quotes and Points to Ponder. After that I'd go through the articles, winding things up with Drama in Real Life just before finishing with the longest one, the Book Section.

I normally do have a system, even if I look like I don't!

Today's Reader's Digest somehow just isn't the same. It's not as funny or as heartwarming and insightful as before; it's also thinner, and seems to have less content. When I was in my mid-teens, my parents stopped subscribing to it for that very reason, and Dad began subscribing to National Geographic instead. I didn't always read the National Geographic articles, but I was fascinated by their gorgeous pictures.

There are very few things from your childhood that you can go back to and find still as captivating as before, but the Reader's Digest seems to be one of them. I'm re-reading some of the old issues and laughing just as much at the jokes as I used to. Luckily I don't have a very good memory, so I don't have that "I think I've heard that joke before" feeling to spoil my fun!

      Two children were bragging about their intelligence. "When I was eight months old, I could walk," said one. 
      "You call that intelligent?" responded the second child. "When I was that old, I let them carry me."
--Laughter, the Best Medicine, Reader's Digest (September 1994)

Somehow, words that had danced and sung on the page seemed tawdry and clumsy when read out loud. For that reason, I've never tried to read a romance novel out loud. Ever. They've never been about good writing anyway, only fairy-tale worlds. Why tarnish the illusion?

Other works can't get away with the same excuse, however. The best pieces ought to be able to weave a spell and still be well-written. And good writing is good writing, no matter what the medium -- print or audio.

Having attended the 'Readings' at Seksan's on Saturday (an event where writers -- both published and unpublished -- read their works to an audience), I think I finally understand why all the writing advice I've heard keeps telling me to use adjectives sparingly. Too many adjectives clutter the piece and lose me when I'm listening. They're okay on the page, because then the reader has the chance to read at his own pace, absorb the image that is being painted, go back and re-read the description to let it sink in. But when something is being read aloud, at some point a bunch of adjectives get to be too much information.

I remarked to Erna that pieces with action or dialogue are probably more suitable for reading aloud to an audience, but she disagreed with me. Maybe it's just the person I am -- I don't have a high attention span when listening to somebody read or lecture, but I'm always captured by flashes of insight, emotion, humour, whimsy, movement, rhythm and rhyme.

 
If my dad were here, he might have placed that ad in front of me and said, "Hey, Miss Journalist! Tell me what is wrong with this ad!"

He used to do that all the time with random sentences in newspaper articles. He's sharp, is my dad. Can't pull the wool over his eyes, no sirree.

Do you see what I see? If I were to be kind, I'd say this company is trying to hedge its bets and cast its net as widely as possible to catch all possible candidates. However, if I were to be unkind, I'd say this company has no idea what it wants.

Is it looking for experienced people, or is it looking for fresh graduates? Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose this proves that they truly do need an editor, not least because "editing skill" should be in the plural!

Basis for the ban? The book's "tawdry subject matter" -- after all, it was a story about a black slave and the son of an alcoholic -- and "the coarse, ignorant language in which it was narrated" -- because it was written in the vernacular, the sort of dialect a young, uneducated boy would use. [source]

The story goes that Twain, upon learning of this ban, proceeded to take out advertisements in newspapers across the country, saying, "My latest book, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, has been banned in the state of Massachusetts FOR ALL OF ITS DIRTY INCIDENTS." Sales of the book, which had been slow, picked up overnight.

I'm rather sceptical about this advertisement business, though, because I've only been able to find one reference to it, from Elliot Engel in A Dab Of Dickens & A Touch Of Twain. Makes for a good story, but needs more verification.

Nevertheless, I found this little tidbit interesting. Perhaps because it makes Alcott less of a one-dimensional name printed of the cover of a book and brings out her human-ness. But also because I wouldn't have expected her to dislike or criticise the work of another well-loved author. I mean, you'd think she'd recognise good writing when she saw it, considering the fact that she herself wrote so well. But nooooo--!

Moreover, it's astonishing (to me, at least) that she felt so strongly about the book that she even approached the board of the public library to get it banned. Obviously, the book aroused some fierce emotions in her, so fierce that she wasn't content simply to criticise it or write angry letters to the author. She had to Do Something.

Come to think of it, I didn't even know that Alcott and Twain were from the same time period, let alone that they knew of each other. I always somehow think of authors as autonomous entities who churn out books... not as real people who might interact with one another! Especially when their books are as unrelated as Little Women and Huckleberry Finn!

 
At first I was insulted. Are you trying to say my blog is unintellectual? And not to be taken seriously?!?

On second thought, I decided to take it as a compliment. Writers are supposed to write clearly and simply, and my blog is so well-written that it appeals even to elementary schoolchildren! (See, everything depends on the spin. The spin is king. Long live the spin!)

 
LOLcats are starting to affect my grammar. Badly. OH NOES! I IZ SPEAK TEH LOLCAT!

If you don't know what a LOLcat is, allow me to acquaint you with them: pictures of cats, overlaid with pithy captions written in what one writer has called "kitty pidgin".

There's something very contagious about this kitty pidgin. Its tentacles have reached deep into my brain, and now I want to speak it. Deliberately flout all the rules of grammar. Not care whether my subjects and verbs are in agreement. Wilfully litter pages with misspelt words. Fly in the face of my normally perfectionist self.

 
Upon closer inspection, I think kitty pidgin might be fairly close to our Malaysian slang, which might explain why I so easily slip into it when I'm talking. Then again, it's not hard to conjugate wrong once you know how to conjugate right. It has been said that it is possible to get cat-speak wrong, which means you must actually know how to alter the words and where to omit others.

Apart from the fact that the cats are normally cute (and I'm not even a cat person!), the captions can be unbelievably apt. Not to mention clever. That's enough to keep me visiting icanhascheezburger.com daily to see what's new in LOLcat World. Even if mah English it iz corrupted!

Yep, we were at the Penguin & Pearson warehouse sale yesterday, where I was systematically going down row upon row of books. So as not to miss anything, you know. What to do, I'm kiasu (afraid of losing out). Not to mention a bit OCD at times.

But the place was so hot and stuffy, and my feet were killing me -- I was wearing high-heels because I'd had a meeting in the office that morning -- so in the end I gave up and didn't canvass the entire left portion of the place at all.

Still, I ended up with far more books than I could afford to buy. "I'm only bringing RM100, so I can't spend too much," I'd laughingly told friends. Who knew that, even with that wide a margin, it would be so frustrating?

After much weeding out, I ended up with these:

• Saki because I've wanted a collection of his stories for ages;
• 1984 because it's one of those books I know I should read, but haven't, although of course I know the rough gist of the story;
• In Silence: Why We Pray because prayer is still very much a mystery to me -- our contemporary culture is more au fait with the "God, please bless me, help me to be successful and give us good weather for tomorrow's picnic" type of prayers;
• Poirot In The Orient because it was 3 stories for RM12 and Agatha Christie is a genius;
• So Many Books because it incorporated this quote from Socrates: "If books don't encourage us to live life to the fullest, they are dead";
• Call Me Elizabeth because it's a story of a mother who became an escort to put food on the table for her children; and
• The Gift of Stones, Fascination, Innocent Eréndira and Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules because they're short story collections, which are easier for light reading -- plus Gabriel García Márquez is a well-known literary name (more well-known to me than the other three, anyway).

 
The ones that got away:

• Eyeris and Suanie both mentioned seeing Stardust but I couldn't find it, much to my disappointment;
• Erna bought a collection of John Donne's poetry but there was only one copy left  *sobs*;
• Left behind the two Bridget Jones' Diary books because I was over quota, and though they're entertaining it won't kill me not to have them, even if I did kinda identify with Bridget;
• Was contemplating collecting Ian Fleming's works but decided that can wait (what I really want are books by Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint. Anybody???);
• Gave up Poems & Readings For Funerals because, well, in the balance, I'd rather buy something that makes me happy;
• Discarded Miguel Street by VS Naipaul on Erna's recommendation: "Naipul no need lah. Very hard to read." I thought the premise of the book was fascinating though;
• Placed Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass back on the pile... I do like his poetry, but figured I'd give priority to prose instead.

 
Now to read them all! I haven't even read those I got from the last book sale...

Heck, I still think of myself as a writer.

And I'm seriously considering taking up writing again as a means of putting food on the table. Having tried other ways of making a living, I find that writing is the one thing I can do that seems least like hard work. Everything else takes a great deal of effort (which is not to say that I cannot do those other things, just that I find them HARDER to do!).

I've always subscribed to the Confucian saying that if you find a job you love, you'll never need to work a day in your life; so, well, maybe something to do with writing is the key. Although I don't love writing the way a friend of mine does:

Writing is so much more than putting your train of thought in words. When I write, I feel transported, a kid again, playing with my King Kong toy.

I never feel like that. For me, the lure is the desire to get my thoughts across to the reader, helping them to see what I see, making them understand what I think and how I feel about an issue. It's about presenting ideas clearly, producing what journalists call "clean copy" -- a piece that is tight, coherent, smooth-flowing, and comprehensive -- a piece requiring little or no editing. It's about telling a story so well that the reader gets caught up in the story and forgets that it is made up of words, because all he can see is the story.

When I manage to do that, I feel quietly satisfied, as if I've done what I was placed on earth to do. It's almost as if writing were my raison d'être.

 
Five boxes of stuff landed at my house, but the ONE THING I'd told my mom I wanted -- the dictionaries -- got packed and sent to my brother's house.

"But I told you I wanted them for my studies!"

"I didn't know you meant right now."

"Of course right now -- I'm studying now, aren't I?"

"Well, it's already done. I've sent them to your brother's house."

"Arrrrggggh!"

I am fast coming to the conclusion that I wrote some very bad poetry in my teen years. But it's funny too -- odes to crushes, laments about exams, and paeans to friendship.

I especially like this one, written to a pen-pal of mine who was taking an inexcusably long time to reply my letters. It's very aptly titled 'Sarcasm To A Pen-Friend':

 
Sarcasm To A Pen-Friend

I hope your fingers will heal real fast
So you'll be able to write neat indeed
I hope you recover from your tests quick
So your brain can function at its normal speed
I hope you've rested well and long
To replenish your lost strength
I hope your memory starts to improve
So you'll remember me, at length.
I hope your self-imposed quarantine will soon end
So you can communicate once again
Above all, I hope what you have isn't catching
And it isn't causing you THAT much pain.

Starting 12 days late, still with no plot, no characters and no novel inside me dying to be written, but who cares? I'm going to be completely silly and not worry about anything having to make sense. I'm going to worry about the word count least of all (famous last words from a person who didn't think she was competitive until she started playing Scrabble on Facebook!).

Erna was, of course, the influencing factor. She kept tempting me with mentions of dancing chimpanzees and such; it sounded too fun to miss out on.

Besides, it's been ages since I've allowed myself to let go in my writing. One of my school-going cousins let me read an essay of hers the other day and I realised that ever since I entered law school all my writing has been serious and fact-based. Of course, it didn't help that I became a journalist after graduating. I think I might have forgotten how to give free rein to my imagination. I'm such a control freak sometimes.

So I'm going to allow myself to be silly and write nonsense. I hope it'll be funny nonsense, then it'll at least have some redeeming value, but if not, well... c'est la vie!