I understand the need for other people to tease the newlyweds, although it has been almost half a year. So they asked how was married life, how was the new house and all the cliche baby questions. And I probably have spilled a bit too much, naively I told them that I'm happier with the new house because I get a seperate wardrobes, where he has his and I have mine. I also excitingly told them how we don't have a washing machine and sometimes Fakhrul helped me with the laundry. 

But oh my God, the look on their faces. I swear one of them almost turned green I thought she was going to vomit. And being sarcastic they are, their replies were like, "You are the first couple I've known all my life who doesn't share her wardrobe with the husband.." I smiled bitterly, confused and probably was as shocked as she was when she learned about my domestic life.  And as I shook their hands, gave them a peck or two on the cheek, I apologized having to leave that early as I had laundry to do. Suddenly I heard another sarcasm saying, "Well, your husband does it, so what?"

Oh I'm telling you, it went straight to the heart.

I was annoyed with the comments, also confused. Which year are they living in anyway? As selfish as it may sounds, I don't think I would marry Fakhrul if he was the kind of man of who sits all day on the sofa, grow his ass on it and if possible, would like his meal to be fed in his mouth. I just don't think that all house chores are automatically women's. And I'm pretty sure neither Fakhrul thinks that. I'm not trying to be all Yasmin Ahmad about it, but women deserves her time too. Marriage is not about men take care of money and women take care of households, but it's more about taking care of each other.

At the end, I failed to contain my feelings and I said, "Well, what can I say? My husband loves me." And then I heard a good 11 seconds mute from the kitchen as I put on my heels and bid my salam.

Why?

Because I have this other website which I think present my works better.

I don't think it'll be the same with Fotopages. Anywhere else, you won't get the feedback that you were used to. That's what had been keeping you alive.

Maybe that phase is over. Do I still need the feedback?

Well, you ask yourself that.

That's the thing I love about Fakhrul. He always make me think. I guess he doesn't want to get the blame when I regret my decision if he gives me a straight answer.

Well, I have been thinking about shutting it down. It's a photo blog, so I always feel pressurize to update it. Like there's an obligation to put new works, when currently I have none. The only work in my life at the moment is my marriage and architecture. I'd love to include photography, but I just can't pursue it the same way I did. My life's a routine, it's not a drama anymore. I feel dry up, emotionally. I can't take my time anymore. One time I'll come home with photos and it'll be left off for months until I can get back to it. By that time, there are new photos, and then I'm confused on which I should finish first.

I wish I could be disrespectful and put any crap on it and write something to help it look good, when it's just an empty picture, that doesn't tell anything, that doesn't recall any memories, that doesn't have any significance to it, that doesn't speak and bleak.

What is the purpose of photography, if not to capture a memory? Places, people, fleeting moments - they all alter significance as time passes. And now all my photos that once had a meaning get boxed up and pushed to the back of the cupboard or under the bed.

Fotopages is another thing. I feel like people took advantage of its existence and popularity and made it a free billboard for advert of their businesses, and my comments section became the same. I hated it, a place where once respectful artists made their names and acquaintances of same interest has long gone, and what's left seems to me like a mediocre spot for gossip columns and where people sell stuff.

Well good for them. But long enough time passed, I found another place where I can group my works, put a title to it - sort of like my personal best. Recollection of memories, events of my life, places I'd been to and people I made friends with. Every photo made me say, "This is when..." And I love it. Am proud of it.

I think my Fotopages won't be long. I already know what to write on my final entry in it. We'll just wait and see.

 
This entry is long overdue, but you watched Sex & The City yet?

UK got the first look of the much anticipated movie and I remember it was Wednesday when it premiered. My office came fourth in the UK as an architectural practice that employs most women - so you can imagine the fuss that day with who's going at which time slots. Most of them took the intention to dress up a bit than usual, putting on their Louboutins and Blahniks in its honour, I felt like I dropped off from no. 400 bus to Oxford City and landed in Conde Nast building, at Vogue, in NY instead. I, on the other hand had my very buruk and busuk DKNY trainers instead (but by far the most comfortable shoes I'd ever bought in my life), dragged my poor husband to this all-women's world. I drove like a maniac after work trying to catch up 6pm show because  8.30 was totally sold out. I couldn't believe it - the long awaited Lucas/Spielberg's Indiana Jones was out beaten by Carrie & The Gang.

I have to say, I dropped a tear or two at the ending when Big whispered that thing to Carrie's ear. And also when the four got together again, I wished I was somewhere nearer my girls. Is that kind of friendship could ever be possible? Or is that just what they call it what it is - television?

How do you keep in touch without being restricted to move on with your life? When work demands more and God knows, with family and soon there will be kids, how can my friends and I be in touch the way we do now? How do we keep on being so loud, despite being middle-aged, acting like we stopped aging since 17 hits? How do I make sure my friends won't marry a jerk and take them away far from our hometown or lock them up so that we cannot meet the way we usually would? Although while SATC may seem real and typical, I'll just keep an optimistic mind for mine. 

Any of you tasted salt before I did? 

My late grandmother used to sit here every afternoon waiting for Maghrib, and everytime I passed her house I would see her small figure on the swing, gazing out. With her cotton kurung Kedah and whatever few white hair left she had tied up, she raised her wrinkley hand to say she saw me. I sat here with my many cousins when we were kids, plotting our next game when we got together. The swing broke once when me and my cousins got so fat we thought we would never weigh as we were growing up. I sat here with the first boy I fell in love with when I was 13, who was my brother's best friend. My face almost explode from the blush and I almost peed in my pants.My mother sat here with her sisters when they talked about funny things and then laughed so hard loud like that was the last joke on earth they would hear about. I thought they sounded like hyenas.

Too many memories it witnessed. Now it hardly swings.

When my 18-year-olds sister asked me who she should choose when she can vote one day, I just couldn't give her the answer.  As somebody 8 years older, I should be able to. But the truth is, I never really cared about politics during Mahathir's time. Politic was just a subject pakcik and atok talked about in warung but now, I found myself feeding with Malaysian political information in between the elevation drawing I have to draw and and the 3D model rendering in office.

Fakhrul said, we should care this time.

Damn right. It's a bloody circus now, leaving people who are politically naive like me confused and in the dark. I had always thought that politics is something people use to gain self-interest. You can speech on about the people, but at the end of the day, it's always about yourself.  

Whatever it is, I miss Mahathir's time. Sure, he has flaws and imperfection no body can deny. But I know when I first came to UK in '03, all my foreign friends knew who was my Prime Minister. I wasn't home when he resigned so deep down inside, I am still in the state of denial that he's still my Prime Minister. That everything will be OK soon under his hands, our economy is not worse than Thailand or Vietnam, that there will be more development to be proud of, that this current scene is just a nightmare and we'll soon wake up. I might sound bias, but if I have to choose, I'll choose him all over again. I'll choose somebody with a proven record track to run my country. No doubt about it.

This is just a talk from a politically-naive girl. I hope I don't cause a stir. 

In my fantasy world, our mornings are our smelly breath, our noons are shops by the streets and our nights are jumping on the bed like this. 

In my fantasy world, we don't go anywhere but to each other, we go everywhere with each other and we stay close to have each other.

In my fantasy world, we'll be as beautiful as this, as happy like this and as silly as it is.

In my reality world, this is it.

Rupa-rupanya masih ada orang yang tersinggung dengan tulisan basi saya tentang dilema mencari jurugambar kahwin saya. Mungkin kerana agak kurang bernasib baik, dia tidak mahir mentafsir kata-kata isi hati saya. Mungkin kali ini dengan menulis bahasa ibunda, maksudnya akan lebih jelas.

Dia meninggalkan komen di Fotopages saya. Seperti orang yang bosan hidupnya, atau orang yang kecewa tersangat tak terkata, seperti tipikal Melayu terasa tak menentu, dia menulis;

rasanya shz memilih sangat last last dapat yang asal-asal jer. I don't think photographer u tu ada quality. Bad taste. I baca blog you, nampak macam terlalu memilih sangat. Sbg salah seorang photographer malaysia, kat sini dah ramai bengkek dgn statement u yang menyakitkan hati photographer malaysia seolah-olah macam kitorang tak bagus. Last-last ambik orang malaysia jugak...yang kokak kapak pulak tu.

Aduh. Tersinggung rasanya Nazim jika dia membaca ini. Maaf ya Nazim, kerana saya, tak pasal-pasal Nazim dilabel kokak kapak, walau apa pun maksudnya itu. Tetapi jangan lah singgung, seperti saya. Saya kasihankan orang ini yang mungkin hidupnya tidak gembira, kecewa seperti failed artist, mencari bahagia dari menulis kata-kata caci kepada orang lain untuk membuat dirinya terasa lega.

Saya tahu jenis orang begini. Sudah banyak kali jumpa, mulanya marah, tetapi lama kelamaan marah itu bertukar menjadi kasihan bila saya perhatikan mengapa dia bertindak sedemikian. Orang yang gembira dalam hidupnya tak akan melungsurkan dirinya ke bawah untuk benarkan hatinya mencaci orang sedemikian rupa.

Tanyalah semua perempuan di dunia, rata-ratanya semua akan jadi memilih dalam segala hal berkaitan majlis perkahwinannya. Termasuklah saya. Dari hiasan, tema, makanan, pakaian dan pemilihan jurugambar, kalau boleh semuanya mestilah menepati citarasanya. Ini bukan bermakna apa yang bukan mengikut citarasanya salah atau tidak bagus, tetapi bukankah bosan hidup ini sekiranya ada satu sahaja pilihan untuk segala-galanya? Contoh yang senang : jika saya suka perisa coklat dari perisa vanila, adakah ini bermakna vanila tidak sedap? Jika saya lebih berkenan dengan warna merah, adakah tidak cantik warna hijau?

Benar. Pilihan pertama saya bukan seorang jurugambar kahwin. Dia hanya seorang jurugambar, period. Saya teruja bila dia melayan pertanyaan saya, kerana saya sudah lama mengagumi hasil kerjanya. Namanya Suryo Wibowo dan jika anda lihat kerjanya, anda faham maksud saya. Tanyakan, dan carikan saya orang di Malaysia yang boleh menghasilkan fotografi begitu. Mungkin ada, tetapi saya yang tidak jumpa. Saya akui, saya terlalu bercita-cita tinggi, mana mungkin saya setuah itu. Too good to be true. Lantas cita tak kesampaian, dan hikmah bertemu  Nazim pun datang. Saya jatuh cinta dengan kerjanya yang lain sifatnya, tetapi cukup bagus untuk saya.

Ini adalah soal pemilihan. Sebenarnya saya tegas dengan apa yang saya suka. Saya tak suka jadi hipokrit. Rata-rata jurugambar yang saya lihat suka mengarahkan pasangan melakukan aksi-aksi palsu. Artificial actions. Saya dan suami sudah nekad, kami mahukan gambar tradisi. Mungkin bosan seperti gambar dulu-dulu, tetapi jujur. Dalam imiginasi kami, gambar kahwin yang akan tergantung di rumah kami adalah gambar kami duduk kaku sebagai pasangan pengantin baru. Dan itu juga lah yang saya tekankan pada Nazim pertama kali saya jumpa dia. Selainnya adalah dokumentasi majlis perkahwinan saya betul-betul sebagaimana ia terjadi. Itu yang saya mahu lihat dan ingat tentang hari bahagia saya.

Saya tidak akan memilih sesuatu hanya kerana orang lain rasa itu yang sepatutnya. Jika asyik memilih kerana orang lain ramai yang suka, bagai keldai diikat tali di hidung lah namanya. Saya pilih kerana percayakan diri sendiri, tindakan sebegitu belum lagi mengundang rasa sesal selama hidup saya. Dan saya masih bingung mengapa pilihan saya dijadikan subjek sensasi, padahal banyak lagi persoalan penting dalam dunia ini yang lebih layak diberi masa untuk difikirkan. Padahal banyak lagi pasangan lain yang memilih jurugambar kokak kapak mereka.

Nazim Zafri adalah jurugambar kokak kapak saya. Dan saya suka. Saya puas hati dengan apa yang saya terima. Saya bersyukur  dan gembira. Malah, kerana terlalu menghargai hasil kerja dia, sangat murah rasanya apa yang saya bayar pada dia. Mungkin orang itu patut mencari kegembiraan dunia dan cuba bersyukur diatas nikmatNya, nescaya saya percaya dia tidak akan marah lagi dengan saya kerana mungkin tidak memilihnya.

Sesiapa saja dia. 

And then the time comes. Like revenge, I didn’t wait a single minute getting even when I unpacked and revealed all the stuffs and also ideas I had collected during my years working at those furniture shops.

Alhamdulillah, Fakhrul and I finally can afford renting a 2 bedroom flat just two houses away from my old one. Although pretty much my living room looks like Ikea’s catalogue page 184, nevertheless I believe it represents who we are. Most of the furniture we have in is something that we already had before during our student years. When arranging the room is finally completed, only then I knew this is us.

I like organic forms just like how I usually adapt in my architectural designs, hence the chairs and table from Marks and Spencers. Fakhrul is a very cubic person with his designs, hence the TV table and the book shelf. And we read photography, arts, movies and travel books, hence Sex and the City, Schiele, Magnum Stories, Icon and Black and White Photography Magazines. We like to keep everything in white, hence the white TV but also like to define another space with colours, hence the red carpet and black 3-seater.

Kitchen and master bedroom are the best because they are my turfs, my areas. I want to achieve retro look in the kitchen as I have this awesome Bush radio that I got for 50p to start it all. But it will take months before I can afford Morphy Richards’ kettle and toaster or SMEG refrigerator. (Well, I know SMEG ain’t happening). Or Kenwood Café Coffee Maker. (Although I hardly drink coffee). Or a Dyson vacuum cleaner. (Although that will only be used just once or twice a month). Or anything likes it.

Fakhrul got the spare room all to himself, where he plugs on his big-ass macho PC and brutal looking Altec Lansing, which would look all wrong anywhere else, listens to his Foo Fighters or Snow Patrol or anything alike out loud, blowing the room into pieces. So the master bedroom is all mine, with non sharing wardrobe so I can once again hang my pretty coats and blouses in coloured order, line up Choo next to Ferragamo and lay a Dior down next to another Dior. Ah bliss, I do like to see my money where I can see it – hanging, lining and laying happily, playing tea party in the wardrobe.

The bathroom though, is really bad. I would be greatly embarrassed if you come to my house and wanting to pee. The walls all cracked up and mouldy, the bathtub looks like it just hits 80 and the WC is rustic but luckily can be concealed with cistern block. The landlord promised to redecorate and still waiting quotes from contractors but until then, Fakhrul and I can only dream of having a bubble bath together after a tiring day of work.

Apart from that, I am very happy. We are very happy. We cannot thank Allah enough for this bless and rezeki and opportunity. Life is finally looking up, and everyday towards 5, I just cannot wait to go back to my happy home, doing what Alanis Morissette would recommend in You Learn – walking around naked in my living room.

I'm not pregnant, just in case you're wondering within few coming seconds while reading this. I get addicted to things I usually don't eat like a routine. Last year, I had to have strawberries and whip cream everytime I finish my meal or when I'm bored. The last two years, I was addicted to Bird's Strawberry Trifle that I make myself at home. I would head straight to my big ass fridge and scoop 3 or 4 spoonful of it and ran up to my room, eating that layers of whip cream, custard and jelly all up watching Sex & The City. That was 2006. I did strawberries and whip cream with Grey's Anatomy in 2007.

So, 2008. It's not from home this time. There's this ridiculously delicious chocolate ice cream they sell at Throntons that I just cannot get my minds off it. Throntons sells chocolate, and there are other ice cream flavours as well but man, the Heavenly Chocolate is surely scooped from heaven itself. So circa 5pm when I finished work, all exhausted from designing staircase that probably will get rejected by the clients, I would stop on my way to the bus stop for a cone.

Everyday since the last 3 weeks, except Sundays when I stay at home.

So yesterday, I went there for my usual treat, and the dude who makes the ice cream spotted me.

"Small chocolate, please." I said.

"Would you like the big cone?"

"No."  It's bad enough I eat it everyday, I'm not going to upgrade it to a big cone with an extra scoop for an extra 20p. Hopefully that will make me less fatter than I already am. Denial said.

 As I hand out my £2 coin, he shooked his head.

"That's alright. It's free."

I was overjoyed. Wow! Free delicious ice-cream?! Am I lucky or what? I smiled happily while sloppily licked my ice-cream. I had the best day yesterday.

Today I went there again and I saw him at the counter. He waved! I was like -oh no shit. He's probably thinking there she is - the 26 year old woman is here for another free ice-cream.  And it was !!! He wouldn't charge me again. What does this mean? I was so embarrassed, I walked away with my free ice-cream - this time it didn't taste so heavenly.

Like all other addictions the year before, there will come a time when something happened and I will stop the routine. When one time I overcooked my custard, I stopped eating the strawberry trifle. And that time when I accidentally ate an expired whip cream with my strawberry. In this case of Throntons Chocolate Ice-Cream, this is it. 

I'm going to start to act like an adult. 

I am adjusting to life where my toothpaste, shampoo and shower gel are empty quicker than usual. I'm adjusting to picking up stuffs on the floor and put them back in the right place. I'm adjusting to a sore sight of three mugs with dried coffee in it by my IMac. 

I compromise.

I am compromising my closet for other stuffs I'd never wear. Compromising to put my designer tops I usually wear once in paper bags and tucked them away. I usually have the whole drawer full of lingerie but now I have to make room for checkered boxers. I lost half hangers to stripy shirts and trousers that usually hang my pretty coats and blouses in colour order.