IMPAC – Shortlisted!

Went out to the cybercafe behind my house from 9-11pm yesterday for 2 hours worth of CS with Ding, Andy, Wai Hong, Kai Shen and Sze Tah. It was kinda fun playing at the usual iceworld map and sniper map, but being a Labour Day and all, the cafe charged us RM3 per hour. =___= Paul was working there as well.

Aha, that’s just the obligatory journal I wrote for my own personal reference in the future, whether you like to read that or not. What I really want to shout out is:

I GOT SHORTLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD!!!

Like, omfg. If things couldn’t turn out better. Was idling away in my room earlier playing with my DS, then felt slightly bored, then went to my computer to log on. My Gmail Notifier dictated that I had two new e-mails, one of which is from the IMPAC Dublin committee or something.

I told myself, nah, not gonna happen. The first few words I saw courtesy of Gmail Notifier weren’t very telling: “I am pleased to attach below for your information a letter from the Ambassador of Ireland…”, so yeah, hence the low hopes.

Then Suet Li MSNed me, saying that she got shortlisted. I went O_O and my heart went thumpthumpthump and quickly went to my Gmail account which took ages to load.

Then I saw them. The words. “..notifying you that your essay has been short listed.”

My joy and ecstasy was apparent; I couldn’t have felt this happy about something - SPM results, scholarship; probably didn’t have that much effect on me. Probably because.. it’s kinda like a dream come true. And the irony that I passed up the essay on the very last day itself. *sheds a tear*

So here’s the attached e-mail from the Ambassador of Ireland:

Dear Mr Clement

I am writing this letter to certify that your entry has been short listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Young Malaysians 2006.

Congratulations on this fine achievement. Out of about 1100 entries, yours was one of just 20 essays that qualified for the final round of judging. This places your effort in the top 2 per cent of all the entries received. When you apply for a place at university, or for a scholarship, this is an accomplishment that you may wish to highlight in your CV.

The panel of judges comprised myself, Dato’ Dr Peter Mooney, The Star’s Group Editorial/Education Advisor Dato’ Ng Poh Tip, Publisher Mr Raman Krishnan and Deputy Director of the National Library Puan Siti Mariani S M Omar. Given the high standard of entries, the judges had a very difficult task in selecting the top twenty.

The winner of this year’s IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Young Malaysians will be announced at an Award Ceremony Dinner at the Park Royal Hotel on Friday, 19 May 2006. You and the other 19 finalists will be invited to the Dinner by its hosts, Asia Control Systems IMPAC (M) Sdn Bhd, who will contact you shortly.

I look forward to seeing you on 19 May.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely

Eugene Hutchinson
Ambassador

*sheds double tears of joy*

What are the odds of two friends, of the same class and school, getting shortlisted for the same competition? Honestly I didn’t think I would get shortlisted at all, since I wrote this essay like 2 years ago and merely edited the ending on the last minute.

I am really at a loss to describe my sheer euphoria.

This is the essay I submitted (corrected the grammatical mistakes I spotted, which weren’t corrected when I submitted them >_>), based on the topic, “If I could change the world.”

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He grunted uncomfortably, shifting his torn and patched up old brown hat that he found in a ditch in roads long forgotten. He’s a lonely traveller, a wanderer of sorts. He tugged at the coat covering his worn denim T-shirt and slacks, as the cold shifting air blew on him like a big bad wolf threatening to blow some house down.

As he continued walking down the empty street, with a single lamp-post lighting up the dark empty night, he now noticed the wind rapidly blowing the clouds above, occasionally shielding the light from the gleaming yellow moon. He remembered the fairy tales, about the moon being made out of cheese, Chinese legends about a lady Chang Er who flew to the moon after drinking the elixir of life. He smiled to himself, absorbed in his thoughts till he did not notice someone sitting within the shadows of the shops.

“Mister, any coins to spare?” called out a young voice. He noticed a boy roughly 6 or 7 years of age, sitting quietly cross-legged, in a most dismal state. The lamp-post metres away was illuminating part of the young boy’s face; both of them stared.

“Don’t you have any home, boy?” he asked quietly.
“No mister, my parents died a month ago. Car accident,” the young boy gestured. He remained strangely calm.
“What’s your name?”
“Matt.”
“Matt? that?s my name too,” the elder Matt said, amused.

It’s a moment of reckoning for the both of them. Something you don’t find it everyday in the streets, of someone having the same simple yet profound name of yourself. The younger boy looked delighted.

The older Matt sat down beside the younger version of himself, as he took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. “Smoke?” joked the elder Matt.

“Uh, no, mister. Bad for your health,” the boy replied, pointing to a billboard across the street screaming “EVERY PUFF DAMAGES YOUR LUNGS”.

Mister Matt laughed, and inhaled the tar and nicotine deeply; he felt relaxed. Two rings of smoke escaped his mouth, taken away gently by the blowing wind. He stared at the moon, and the nagging imaginary image of a beautiful Chang Er was etched in his mind subconsciously; then he stared at the Dunhill between his fingers blankly.

“Why aren’t you at somewhere safe? Like… an orphanage?”
“I ran away. They’re evil.”
“Evil?” his eyebrows raised questioningly.
“Yeah, they forced me to do stuffs I don’t like doing. Like sewing these weird things to sell. I get nothing out of it – they told me it’s a requirement in exchange for me staying there,” the boy answered, his eyes downcast, shifting about uneasily.

“Child slavery,” the elder Matt rolled his eyes. He puffed again more grey rings into the air, as the boy stared at them, mesmerized.

“How old are you, mister?”

“39,” he replied. The wind was getting stronger, colder, more brute at force.

“I think we better get going now,” said Mister Matt. He lifted up the boy in his arms, and carried him to a small alley nearby. The cardboard boxes laid before them, as if they were a common haunt for the homeless.

Setting down little Matt on one of the cardboards, he covered him with his dirty, wrinkled coat. “How are you going to make yourself warm, mister?”

“Oh, I’m gonna hug you tight,” his eyes twinkled. Like father and son, they hugged themselves warm beneath the minimal comfort of the coat, with the elder Matt’s legs jutting out beneath it.

---

A splinter of sunlight shone through the trees, leaning above the alley where the two Matts were. The elder Matt, a light-sleeper he turned himself into (so as not to get himself mugged whenever he had to stay out in the streets), was roused by the glimmer of the sun. Stretching himself to get the fatigue off his muscles, he woke his younger counterpart up.

“I’ve to go now, son,” he brushed his sleeves and adjusted his hat.
“Why? Where are you going?” the younger boy looked disappointed.
“Somewhere. Some place. To find a meaning to this life,” he replied cryptically. He shoved some paper notes into the boy’s hands – the president’s face emblazoned on the note. “Go get yourself some food, and promise me you’ll find yourself some place safe?”

The boy looked up at Matt, and nodded. With that, the boy ran off.

---

His wife left him for another man, his best friend backstabbed him, and he resigned from his clerk job. With a considerable amount of money in hand that he saved throughout the years, he went for a soul-searching journey.

He blamed the world, he blamed his wife, he blamed the man whom he trusted and thought was his best friend, and he blamed the old rambling house he had. He shuddered as he reminisced his happier past, when he thought the world, his wife, his best friend and his house were beautiful. Everything was beautiful.

He walked past the people, ignorant of his existence. He was just some smelly, dirty, homeless, jobless man. Just a speck of dust among a billion others. Insignificant.

Suddenly, he saw the younger Matt squatting by the street, metres away ahead from him. With a cigarette on his lips, he stared at him sadly. A young child learning the artful way of begging. “If I could change the world, I want every child to have a father, and a mother. I want every child to be safe in a place they could call a home.”

He walked quickly, jogged, and strode up to Matt Junior holding up his hands to beg, eyes pleading at every passer-by, and said, “Come with me Matt, I’ll bring you to your home.”

“What home, mister?” he looked up, amused.

“Your new home.”