Muallaf and the Qur’an

Last Sunday, I was torn between laziness, working on my assignment, and going for a photography session termed as “Phoplay” which was organised by a CouchSurfer. After the previous night’s alcohol-fueled card games session, I woke up in the morning suddenly with a strengthened resolute to take good photos, and I thought I shouldn’t pass up on the chance.

It was supposed to start at 2pm, but after waking up late in the afternoon, took my time to get ready, ate brunch, and purchased two packets of sausages and a 2L Homebrand Apple Juice from Woolworths QV, I only reached Brunswick via tram at 3pm. Philip the organiser (who has a mix of German and Australian cultures) earlier told me it was alright if I was late, since most of the rest were gonna come late anyway because they forgot about Daylight Savings or something. >_>

The back of Philip’s house opened to a backyard, followed by this awesome place for relaxing. The hammock completes it. And to the left of this is his own studio of sorts with studio lights that I got to play around with!! (They’re normally very, very expensive.) Ahh I can now die in peace wtf.

His backyard slash garden.

I was introduced to his friend, Elsbeth, and we eventually sat down in the garden on a picnic mat (Philip on a reclining chair) just chatting and unwinding. The weather last Sunday felt absolutely spring-y—not too hot, not too cold—and it was the first time I experienced how spring was really supposed to be like; the past few weeks, or rather the entire September felt just like winter when it was supposed to be spring.

The back lane that was described to me by Philip and Elsbeth as maze-like, which I didn’t explore.

Hanging bells from a tree.

Worms point of view.

Philip’s cat, but I forgot her name. She happens to have a male name lol.

One of the flowers in the garden.

Me playing around with the studio lights against a large sheet of white cloth.

Another shot.

A shot of Philip munching on an apple.

Yet another shot of me, prolly a little too dark.

Daniel from Switzerland who brought along his Macbook—compared to Philip, he was actually a little shorter. (No offence if you happen to read it, it’s just something I found it amusing for reasons I don’t know of.)

I initially couldn’t get the effect I wanted using Aperture priority mode, but after switching it to Manual and then playing around with the settings, I managed to get this. So all that talk about shooting in Manual (I’m a lazy, lazy person) does have its merits after all..

And another of the hammock.

I stayed around for a little bit more, before returning back to my residence to my neighbours cooking. :D This is awesome, because what used to be a communal cook-off every weekend turned to nearly every night for the past week.. beats eating the same dish (ie: aglio olio) every night wtf.

Then on Wednesday, I met up with Ivan and Desmond at the corner of Bourke St and Swanston St as we were supposed to watch a movie together. After a scrumptions, cheap $6 dinner at Don Don (and I use “cheap” as loosely as possible, as it’s the cheapest price one can find for a complete meal in Melbourne), we went to ACMI, Federation Square, and I collected the tickets to Muallaf. A few Malaysian movies were being screened at ACMI from 3rd to 7th of October in conjunction with the Australian Malaysian Film Festival (yeah, we were there on the last day of the festival), including Talentime, Pensil, and.. Cicakman 2: Planet Hitam. You must be fucking kidding me. -_-

I got the tix off a lady who seemed to not being able to get the spelling of my surname right, on the basis of my pronunciation. She was at first amused that my full name appeared differently on the credit card (don’t ask me why, ask the Westpac bank officer who did this for some odd reason), then even though I spelled each individual letter of my surname (C-H-A-N), she somehow managed to end up with ‘Chen’ and declared that she can’t manage to find my name.. =>_>==

As we were rather early, we went to the loo, then downstairs to The Cube for some batik exhibition. I was looking around, and a familiar face sitting alone from a distance who caught my eye—she stared back at me too. I quickly turned my back on her and whispered to my two partners-in-crime, “WTF is that Jaclyn Victor??”, to which Ivan looked and stared behind my shoulder and said “Yeah.. I think she is”. Her hairstyle was different than the one I was used to seeing, which may have caused our hesitation, but otherwise it’s definitely her. I found this terribly amusing for some reason, to see a Malaysian celebrity in the flesh and up close like that in a completely foreign country..

“Should we approach and talk to her?” I asked.

“Nah don’t want lah,” Ivan replied. And so we left it at that. v_v She was later joined by an unfamiliar figure.

We then went upstairs and waited outside the cinema hall as it was rather early (at about 6.30pm, movie was scheduled to start at 7pm), and it was free seating. To avoid having to sit on the first few rows and strain our necks, as happened with our free movie screening of An Education, we waited patiently outside—Melvin arrived a little bit after we sat down.

At 6.45pm, we were allowed to enter the hall, and we were the first to be inside. We patiently waited for the movie to begin, and as we looked around, we were amused to see a deluge of Malaysians (or Singaporeans, maybe) everywhere around us, with the occasional Caucasian I saw quite a few Caucasian man/Malay woman couples as well.

Yasmin Ahmad’s Muallaf was undeniably beautiful, with verses from the Qur’an, the Bible, and Tao Te Ching incorporated within as mysterious numbers. I remembered halfway what Jess told me about jotting them down, so as quiet as possible, I took out a piece of paper and my pencil, and began scribbling down in the dark. While the movie has several dialogues I found to be a little unnatural, I thought it was otherwise brilliantly executed in Yasmin’s trademark directed. The fact that she managed to incorporate these religious elements without being preachy is something.

Desmond, who lived most of his life in Brunei, wondered out loud why this would cause our Malaysian censorship board to delay/ban its screening in Malaysia, as it was respectfully harmless. If the Singaporeans found nothing wrong with it, perhaps our higher-ups who often find it their obligation to be our moral guardian need to grow up. Even the Malay dude who sat next to me, after we chatted amicably, mentioned to me that he was here in the cinema because we can’t watch it back in Malaysia.

Funny how we have to go across the sea at least 8 hours away just to watch a Malaysian-made movie.

All seats were also sold out. I managed to get the tix for $5 each (a special price for students) by booking online, not inclusive of the $2 booking fee. You can’t get any movie tix cheaper than that.

We adjourned downstairs to The Cube after the movie, and at the foyer we snapped a few photos:

Absolutely rubbish quality if you ask me, but ah well.. at least we got to snap a pic with Jaclyn Victor!

Sharifah Aleysha, one of the main actresses of Muallaf. (I was also wearing the new Threadless tee I bought off the Net, which arrived a few days prior on Monday! A USB hub and a WiFi USB adapter arrived the day after that too, which I bought cheaply off from dealextreme.com).

There were free currypuffs (mmmm, it looked a little different than normal though) and some free drinks, which include a selection of pineapple juice and red wine (we had the juice instead).

At The Cube.

The AMFF, with some Malaysian movie posters to the left of the banner in this photo.

Then a few days ago on Friday, Spencer came by and he cooked bak kut teh for dinner!! It tasted good enough for me; sigh, I’m pampered with so much good home-cooked food for the past week. I know it looked un-delectable in the picture, but it tasted fine; we just didn’t buy enough the packet of sauce or whatever it is that they used, so the amount of the bak kut teh soup was not that much.

At about 1am-ish, Ethan buzzed me on MSN, and apparently Des wanted to play some cards, so we went over to Ivan’s very cosy room (I can even feel the aura of cleanliness from it, compared to my room wtf) and huddled in the warmth of the room while it’s hovering below 10C outside. We played our usual familiar choi dai dai after they roundly rejected the 31 card game I introduced to them, as we listened to Coldplay, Hoobastank, Dream Theatre’s experimental rock, Blink 182, some songs self-composed by Ivan.. and this dream-like nearly perfect moment of fun swirled around me. I exhaled a sigh of contentedness; it feels like home. It feels like a moment with my clique of Melburnian friends that I don’t want to part with.

In an act of typical male silliness, we imposed punishments to the losers in the form of collecting clothes pegs (aka points), and those who collected the maximum of 10 has to run outside on Walsh St topless. At below 10C at nearly 4am.

Guess who lost? ..==>_>==

Surprisingly it wasn’t as cold as I thought it’d be, with blood pumping through me or perhaps I’m just used to the cold already after all.

And yesterday, our other neighbour, Kelvin (Ivan’s housemate) cooked chicken herbal soup as he was going on the Melbourne Marathon today and needed it for energy, or something. As he talked to us about it, I regretted not partaking in it as apparently we’d get a medal when we complete the 5km run.. which isn’t too tough imo considering that I’ve done it twice (or thrice?) in Subang in the past. Not to mention all the free goodies we’d get, and I could’ve run under Team RMIT like Estee and get a snazzy tee.

And today, I had burrito for dinner (Ethan’s dish), and we had a brief and pretty intellectual conversation with Ethan and Des’ housemate, a Singaporean Indian who’s studying medicine here. Alvin had talked to me on MSN the night before and gave me a “progress report” of his new diet and body-building regime, and there were actually substantial changes.. considering that he was a pretty skinny guy like yours truly. And hence when I asked the Singaporean dude about GI (Glycemic Index), he did manage to explain it pretty well to me; and when I brought my DS up to play Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days while waiting for Ethan to finish preparing the burrito, Ethan, Singaporean dude, and I had a pretty decent discussion about the Kingdom Hearts series. Huzzah when we have similar interests.

We also played choi dai di again (just me, Ethan, Spencer, and Desmond).. and as Spencer had to go back early at 8.30pm, we decided to collect pegs till the appointed time, and those who collected the most has to run outside sans T-shirt again. -_- In the end, Ethan, Spencer, and I lost with 2 pegs each wtf.

But it was all in good fun. :)

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Verses found in Muallaf, in order:

Al-Fil (The Elephant) 105:1
Seest thou not how thy Lord dealt with the Companions of the Elephant?

Psalm 130:1
Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD.

Al-Kauthar (Abundance, Plenty) 108:3
Lo! it is thy insulter (and not thou) who is without posterity.

Al-Noor (Light) 24:31
And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O ye Believers! turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.

An-Nahl (The Bee) 16:41
To those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, after suffering oppression,- We will assuredly give a goodly home in this world; but truly the reward of the Hereafter will be greater. If they only realised (this)!

Al-Noor (Light) 24:37
By men whom neither traffic nor merchandise can divert from the Remembrance of Allah, nor from regular Prayer, nor from the practice of regular Charity: Their (only) fear is for the Day when hearts and eyes will be transformed (in a world wholly new),-

Al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:286
On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) “Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith.”

1 Corinthians 13
The Way of Love
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Al-Humaza (The Traducer, The Gossipmonger) 104:3
Thinking that his wealth would make him last for ever!

Al-Kafiroon (The Disbelievers, Atheists) 109:6
To you be your Way, and to me mine.

(Interesting note, in context, from Surah 109:
1. Say : O ye that reject Faith!
2. I worship not that which ye worship,
3. Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
4. And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,
5. Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
6. To you be your Way, and to me mine.)

An-Nasr (Succour, Divine Support) 110:1-3
1. When comes the Help of Allah, and Victory,
2. And thou dost see the people enter Allah.s Religion in crowds,
3. Celebrate the praises of thy Lord, and pray for His Forgiveness: For He is Oft-Returning (in Grace and Mercy).

I’m missing 1 or 2 Tao Te Ching’s quotes—as they were exact quotes, no mystical numbers—but these are as complete as I could get. I’m unsure with the 1 Corinthians 13, but it should be that (correct me if I’m wrong!).

Muallaf makes me want to get a Qur’an and read it—and I applied to get one from free from Islam Australia—and it should be arriving in the future! Already both Ethan and Des asked if I’m converting to Islam wtf, to which the mind boggles: reading a holy scripture maketh not a believer, your heart should be set into it. I’m merely rekindling my fascination with religions, even though I’ve no deep-seated inclinations to subscribe to any beliefs, and it now dawns upon me why Enrique, the Miamian who organised the Melburnian ballroom dancing events, has a Qur’an himself and found it as fascinating as I am now to read it.