MUCH SOLACE FROM WORDS

LOOKING at the Cliffs of Moher, I stood inspired by the unspoilt beauty of nature. The 214m high cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean take their name from a ruined promontory fort "Mothar" which was demolished during the Napoleonic wars to make room for a signal tower. The Cliffs of Moher are also home to one of the major colonies of cliff nesting seabirds in Ireland. Indeed, nature has a calming effect on the soul and spirit.

If we think back to when we were young, we can always remember the people who have encouraged us: dad, mum, teacher or friend. Even in adulthood, a pat on the back by a boss or coach does wonders to the soul and spirit.

Other than the usual "awesome" and "fantastic", I picked up a number of interesting local phrases of praise and encouragement. "You are no daw" means you are smart, "you are deadly" means you are seriously earth-shattering. The power of words is unquestionable. Being encouraged gives a boost to our confidence. Uplifting words can come from anyone: a security guard, a priest or a car salesman.
It was late in the night when I visited a loved one at the intensive care unit of a hospital. I was thirsty and decided to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine. However, the glass door that led to the vending machine was closed and a security guard signalled to me on the other side of the door to press a button to open it.

The door opened in a jiffy but I noticed that there was no button on the other side of the door for me to get back into the ward. "How am I going to get back in?" I asked. He said, "Just holler, and I will come running." Then some small talk ensued. As I was making my way back into the ward, he said, "You speak very good English." I smiled and thought that was nice.
Then I saw a very elderly priest making his rounds hoping to encourage the patients. He approached an 84-year-old Catherine, held her hand and instead of saying the usual "Get well soon", the witty priest asked, "Are you ready to go back to the hurling field after half-time and continue the match?"

The elderly lady laughed and I thought that was hilarious. Hurling is an outdoor team sport of ancient Gaelic origin, played with sticks called hurleys and a ball called a sliotar. It is somewhat like hockey to the uninitiated.

The priest held her hand and prayed for her. Then before he left the ward, he said, "Now Catherine, no more hurling for the rest of the season, okay?"

As I walked to my car after the hospital visit, I was reminded of the salesman who sold me the car. He told me I would have to buy insurance online. Apparently, the quotes differ greatly from company to company. One of the determining factors would be age. To the average Mat Salleh, all Asians look alike and it is difficult to tell how old they are. So I asked him how much it would cost to buy a year's insurance for a particular model.

He sized me up in my jeans and T-shirt and very seriously without batting an eyelid said, "That depends on your age. I won't ask you how old you are but I can tell you for a lady of 25 to 30 years, it would cost..." I guffawed within. Call it sales talk but if that is what he thinks I am, so be it.

A TESTING TIME

A search for the definition of ‘test’ yields interesting results. It is a quiz to examine someone’s knowledge of something. It has to be a standardised tool for measuring sensitivity or memory or intelligence or aptitude or personality in order to achieve a certain score or rating.

I can remember those schooldays when we studied and were put to the test. No one in their right mind would welcome a test with open arms. Yet, ironically, when we hold the test paper in our hands and find that the questions are spot on and we are well prepared for them, a sudden surge of confidence arises within.

I thought my public tests days were over until I got a call from a stranger, a fellow Malaysian who has lived abroad for years. She has got my name from a common friend and she called me just to welcome me and then she told me I would need to get a provisional driving licence as it is cheaper than an international one.
‘You have to sit for the undang-undang test first before you take the road test.’ She said.
Friends from some countries do not have to take a local driving test. A Singaporean driving licence is readily accepted in this part of the world. Naturally I was flustered and upset to know that my many years of driving experience did not count at all. Just thinking of memorising 851 road rules left me numb. I remembered the last driving test I took was when I was 18 and in my school uniform.
My daughter told me she wanted to take the test as well. So we marched down to the nearest book store to buy the driving test book and the practice CD, both sold separately. We registered online to sit for the test and the studying began.
I chugged uphill like an old steam train. I fussed and I ranted. I argued with the book even though it was a losing battle as it was the written word. There were road signs that I had never seen before and rules that were different. Sometimes for a single road sign there were so many varied answers. The first example: a broken white line on the driver’s side next to a continuous line would mean the driver could overtake. But the correct answers given were: (a) You may overtake by crossing the continuous white line and (b) cross the broken line. The second example is a continuous line on the driver’s side next to a broken line would mean that the driver could overtake with care. The correct answers given were: (a) Overtake only if you do not cross any of the lines (b) Do not cross the white line and (c) You may overtake provided you don’t cross the continuous white line. After looking at all the lines in the book and studying about overtaking, I felt I did not want to overtake any car at all. Try changing a dogma of truth that you have learnt eons ago and the brain would not cooperate.
My daughter whose mind is akin to the tabula rasa (clean slate) where driving is concerned, breezed through the book within hours. She was perplexed at how I saw all the rules in a complicated manner so she pitied me and said,
‘Mum, just study by heart all the answers and don’t question.’
I was lousy company for the weeks that ensued. It is a clear picture of the woman and the book. I took the book with me to the park. I took the book with me when I was a passenger in the car. I took the book with me to bed. When I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, I would sit by the computer and practise the test questions on the CD. I was not contented with the scores until I had tried numerous practice tests. Deep inside, I thought I was sitting for the Higher School Certificate all over again.
Then the day came.
The test was held in a mobile truck which shook when the wind blew. I had 40 minutes to answer 40 questions. The room was cold and my fingers were frozen whether from the cold or impending arthritis, I would not know. The questions looked exactly like the ones I studied in the park, in the car and before I went to bed. Carefully I clicked the answers and pressed FINISH. Then I waited for the words to appear.
Congratulations. You have passed.
As I walked out of the truck, I knew the practical part of the road test would be coming up soon but for the moment, I smiled as I thought of shopping for winter coats, feasting on pastries and sipping hot coffee – treats we had promised ourselves if we sailed through the ordeal.

Call Willie if you are seeking a soulmate

WHO can forget the lyrics of the matchmaker's catchy song in Fiddler on the Roof? In the name of tradition, much care must be chosen to find a good catch, complete with looks, reputation, intellect and riches. Interestingly enough, such tradition still finds its way into a quaint town called Lisdoonvarna in Ireland.
About 40,000 single men and women flock to the small spa town of Lisdoonvarna in Ireland every year with one thing on their minds -- to find the perfect mate. This 150-year-old matchmaking festival is the subject of folklore and the whole town comes alive in September and early October. It is probably Europe's biggest singles festival.

There is much music and speed dating during weekends. Other exciting activities are held in 17 venues throughout the town during the week, for example the "Lisdoonvarna Meeting" -- a horse race for amateur jockeys. As with every much celebrated event, the festival culminates with the awarding of the coveted titles of "Mr Lisdoonvarna" and "Queen of the Burren" to the best-matched couple.

This festival was borne more out of necessity in those days where farmers, who had eligible sons and daughters, were often too busy or lived too far apart to have any social life of the regular kind. Thus, "basadoiri" or matchmakers of old invited these eligible bachelors to meet once a year when the hay and crops were gathered, their reward being the collecting of generous dowries once successful matches were made.
Rumour has it that Willie Daly, the present day Lisdoonvarna matchmaker, has been bringing couples together for more than 40 years and has his grandfather's matchmaking book dating back 130 years to prove it. Just a simple filling of form listing basic details and interests for a nominal fee sets the hopeful on his romantic quest for a life partner. It is all done in a decent manner, with no secret trysts unlike what Will Smith, the date doctor did in Hitch.

In fact, I was told that a friend of my brother-in-law met his bride at the festival and they are still happy together. But Willie once lamented to a local tabloid that a decade ago it was all about falling in love and finding a soulmate, but in the last 18 months, people are asking, "Has he a house or is he solvent?"
What is it about match-making that intrigues us and is it still relevant in today's society? When I ask students which they would prefer: match-made or love marriages, there is always a split down the middle with half the class preferring one to the other. Sometimes, discussions turned into heated debates and like warring chieftains defending their territories, I fear war might have broken out had I not stepped in.

Most people in my parents' era found their partners through a matchmaker.

Others argue that falling in love is a magical experience like in Barbara Cartland's ageless romantic rendezvous. But people can also fall in love for the wrong reasons. For example, some people love the idea of being in love so much, they end up falling in love with the first person that is nice to them.
A lot of people are scared of being alone, so they get committed to someone quickly and people also fall in love to show off to others that they can be loved as well. But my students will unanimously agree that neither arranged or love marriages are made in heaven.

The festival, itself, is brilliant, really. It is like a hunting game for hordes of lonely souls seeking the prize of an Irish heart. I hear that 10 cheerleaders from Texas are due to arrive in Ireland, and these high-kicking girls are heading to Lisdoonvarna and have already got in touch with Willie. They could have fathers who own oil wells or they could perhaps be searching for rich, lonely travellers such as themselves.

Some have thumbed their noses at the festival saying that no self-respecting person would join the hunt which is contrived and commercialised. Others may go away feeling shortchanged as they had set their hopes too high and could not find their princes among the down-to-earth bog farmers there.

But if there is this willy-nilly feeling deep down that will not go away, telling you that the biological clock is ticking, then by all means call at Willie's office at the Matchmaker Bar or one of his clinics in the Hydro Hotel. The Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival is simple fun, and as they say "the craic is mighty in Lisdoonvarna".

ACTUALISING ANGELA'S ASHES

MANY of us have stories to tell but how many are able to tell them so well that they do not look like washing dirty linen in public? Memoirs that are detailed at the right places and punctuated with candour and wit are a breath of fresh
air.
W. Somerset Maugham once said that “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” Somewhere after “make a million dollars, have a make-over”, “stop p r o c r a st i n at i n g ”, and “be on time”, “read more” is one of the top goals that many people set for themselves.

The first step is to get a good book.

This can be hugely satisfying. It shows things beyond daily horizons, and characters are so vivid you feel as if you really know them. The reader and the writer may be separated from each other in time and space, yet there are links common enough to ignite the faintest connections as we recognise that we have been there and done that. The settings may be different but human folly and wisdom cut across boundaries.
The next step is to embark on a walking tour. Walking tours are good for the soul, whether leisurely or purposeful and help us truly appreciate historic neighbourhoods, buildings, and culture. They allow the unraveling of both facts and juicy bits on the side, giving them the personable touch.

Compare this with a bus tour where the driver speaks into a microphone and you use the headphones which promise to explain the necessary in a number of languages of your choice, that is, when they are not faulty. You may see a variety of sites but yet never really see what is revealed in just an hour or two as you walk the same paths as someone else did decades and centuries before you.

Historic neighbourhoods scream of sufferings, trappings and troubles as stoic determination results in ambitions realised and hopes fulfilled.
Indeed it is difficult to think about things the same way after you have beaten the same streets as real people have walked. It is like dessert after a meal. Pleasurable.

So I called Noel Curtin and enquired whether we could take a walk.

Not any ordinary walk, but a walk through the late Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prizewinning book. I was not disappointed.
Noel fixed a Saturday where I could join ten other tourists to meander through the once squalid roads of Limerick, Ireland.

I quickly re-read the book so I would not miss out all the details that set the pulse of the memoirs and waited anxiously for Saturday to arrive only to find that the ten other tourists had made other plans. Undaunted, Noel assured me that the walk was still on.

Much to my delight, what had started out as a group walking tour became a personalised tour .

It had drizzled earlier in the morning.

As I contemplated taking an umbrella, I abandoned the idea once I realised that the rain would only make the streets of Limerick more endearing and authentic. Pervading through the book was the smell of the damp cold climate of Ireland where each child once had only one set of ragged clothes, patched shoes, and lacked a coat. Someone once said that Angela’s Ashes probably got its title from the Irish oral tradition of telling stories while stoking the ashes of the fireplace.

Noel painstakingly stopped at strategic locations featured in Angela’s Ashes: the post office where the author worked as a telegram delivery boy, Leamy school where he studied and the churches that played significant roles in his life. Even as I scribbled interesting notes, images of McCourt and his brother picking up coal dropped along Dock road vividly played in my mind.
McCourt wrote, “Mam is in a terrible state at home. There isn’t enough coal to cook the dinner, the water isn’t boiling anymore and she says she’s demented with worry.

We ’ll have to go down the Dock Road again to see if there’s any coal or turf lying around from the lorries. Surely we ’ll find something on the road this day of all days. Even the poorest of the poor don’t go out on Christmas Day picking coal off the road. There’s no use asking Dad to go because he will never stoop that low … .” It was once again life in Ireland, specifically life in Limerick city during the 1930s and 1940s in all its grittiness and grinding poverty. Going through the city streets and lanes helped relive the memoirs and I felt like a privileged intruder into another’s private world.

RELIVING FLEET-ING MOMENTS

COMICS are a source of fun. I know that because I was an avid reader of Beano and my favourite characters were Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids. I often wondered why after having read the 100th copy of Beano, the Bash Street Kids still remained in Class 2B and the teacher had not aged one bit.
Nothing is more powerful than the memories created by a child's experiences. Childhood is when life is uncomplicated, meaningful and straightforward when compared to adulthood where society in the persons of significant adults, model that life has meaning only when we limit ourselves to the labels of productivity, effectiveness and success.

Time has a way of breaking up our memory into little jigsaw pieces and through time we try to capture and preserve them within the confines of our mind.

So I made a bucket list of all the things I would like to do. Interspersed among the common things like travelling to exotic lands or feasting at grand hotels, there are a number of small things which are delightful to me.
One of them is standing in front of 185 Fleet Street, London with a Beano in my hand.

Just as one would associate the blue door with the famed Notting Hill movie, this particular address was where Beano was first published. While others dreamt of seeing the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty, I knew I had to walk along Fleet Street.

Somehow to a child, every page of the comic running through the printing machine promised more laughter, more antics and more fun. I also imagined the rumbling machinery of the printing press, starting off slow then gathering momentum and emitting hot steam, not unlike a steam engine train.

Although Fleet Street is now associated with matters of the law, it was once synonymous with the written word. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s when it headed east to Canary Wharf and Wapping.

I could well imagine the scandals, the gossips and the exciting news exchange between journalists of that time. I could not resist trying the sticky toffee pudding that famous journalists rooted for and then entering a British red telephone box not to emerge as my alter ego (like Superman ) but to try to call my friends at the press.

If rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous is important to reach one's station in life, being physically close to where the famous journalist, the poor playwright or the humble novelist of the past is important to fulfil one's sense of personal achievement. Thus, I sauntered into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which true to its name, had a gloomy charm.

Charles Dickens, who frequented the tavern, even alluded to it in A Tale of Two Cities where the character Charles Darnay had "a good plain dinner and wine at a tavern on Fleet Street".

I chose a chair just next to where Charles Dickens would have sat. There was a plaque bearing his name, thus reassuring me that I was at the correct seat.

It has often been said that we live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect. Perfect conditions may not happen and life has a way of accelerating as we get older.

I have seen so many senior people, despite having weak knees and bad feet, still actively climbing up and down tourist destinations. They seem to tell me that the best way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as a magnificent adventure.

I gaze at the remaining eight items on my bucket list and I could not agree more.

CARPE DIEM! SIEZE THE DAY!

MUSICAL theatre...learn how to act...meet new friends! A fantastic four-day musical workshop, now enrolling. Young people aged 7 to 18 will have a chance to act in Lion King, Mamma Mia or Hairspray, shouts an advertisement displayed by a music academy.
This hip workshop is one of the extensive options available for summer. After all, school is out for three months and restless teens are inundated with opportunities to choose their creative fields and hang out with others of like mind.

They can test out the fantasy of a glamorous Broadway musical career even.

Given a chance, everyone can be passionately creative. I am talking about indulging in performing arts. The performing arts are those forms of art where the artiste makes use of his own body, face, and presence as a medium. This includes dance, music, opera, drama, magic, spoken word and circus arts. The artistes are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, musicians, and singers. My first foray into the world of performing arts was when I was studying at Universiti Malaya and acted at the Experimental Theatre.
So, I was glad I was invited to see the outcome of the musical workshop for amateurs last Saturday. Looking at the young ones prance and sing on stage, anyone would think that they had practised all their lives and not just four days. I could see that their faces were beaming. Beaming with pride, joy and expectation. After the performance, I went backstage and I could hear squeals of excitement.

An actress in Hairspray said, "Our sweat could probably flood a whole house but it was definitely worth it. I so totally want to join this again next year. It was a non-stop run through and we all were just freaking out hoping not to forget any lines, lyrics or dance moves but thank God, it was a success! It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty awesome!"

I am glad I appreciate the arts.

Even at school we were always caught up in the battlefield of Science versus Arts. Everyone seemed to clamour to enter the best science class, never the Arts. I remember I was in Form Four Science One and after one semester I knew I was more inclined towards the Arts. Making the switch was unheard of at that time. Every well-meaning teacher discouraged me from doing so because unfortunately, the Arts classes were synonymous with poor teaching and classroom management and certainly students who were thick in the head. It was good that my parents were behind me and I have no regrets making that switch.

And now, I have just returned from watching Les Miserables at the Queens Theatre in London and a strange feeling starts to wash over me. It was the same kind of bliss that I experienced when I watched the amateurs on stage: seeing the actors, singing along with them as every song is as familiar as a nursery rhyme, my shoulders untangled and a feeling of appreciation was all around. I felt so relaxed I almost forgot to breathe. The performers had the same passion as the young amateurs. The only difference was these were professionals acting almost every day of their lives and they carried out the musical very well.

The performing arts remind me of the need to stop and smell the flowers. From the day we arrived on the planet, we have not stopped blinking, running and working. It is almost a crime to enjoy life. So like Tracy in Baltimore who notices that the rats on the street all dance around her feet shouting, "Tracy, it's up to you", it is really up to us to make a life for ourselves, to choose how we want to live it to the fullest.

Carpe Diem, seize the day. If not now, when?

LOOKING FOR LEFROY

I lingered outside a huge iron gate on 18 July 2010 hoping to catch someone friendly enough to answer my curiosity because I was informed that the house within was no ordinary house as the owner is a Lefroy. Just as the name Kennedy would bear associations to U.S. presidency, to an English literature enthusiast, the name Lefroy could be the Lefroy that Mr.Darcy was probably modelled after in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Let me explain.

Jane Austen died on 18 July 1817 and Mr. Darcy the novel’s hero, made famous by Colin Firth in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is the man that most ladies would die for. Word has it that one of the likely candidates of real life Mr. Darcy was Tom Lefroy, a 20 year old Irish who visited Jane at her Hampshire home of Steventon in mid December 1795 on her 20th birthday.

Unlike Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the novel who finally tied the knot with Mr.Darcy, Jane Austen remained single throughout her life, despite being called on by potential suitors. It was a question of being successful and risking it all. Tom Lefroy was expected to ‘rise into distinction and there haul up the rest’ but he could risk all of it if he married Jane who had no money. Tom who chose the former went on to build a massive Gothic mansion Carrigglas Manor for his family in County Longford. The grey turreted house has recently been renovated into a hotel with a rambling 660-acre golf course and housing estate. Interestingly enough, Tom called his first daughter Jane after marrying Mary Paul in 1799. This private segment of Austen’s life was portrayed in the 2007 biographical portrait ‘Becoming Jane, directed by Julian Jarrold with Anne Hathaway acting as Jane.

Jane Austen said, "A woman especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

When we compare the station of a young person then and now, we have indeed come a long way. The good and the bad. When before young girls could only dream of going to school and cash and status conscious parents kept women from the men of their dreams, now we have opportunities to succeed and the liberty to live. It was also not uncommon then for young men to leave school to fend for the family and take on more jobs than one. They were determined, focussed and industrious. They took pride in the toil of their labour, so to speak.

But now, we have survival guides on how to cheat the welfare state.

I have been here for a fortnight and I have met more than five young educated people who prefer to depend on the state for their daily sustenance and hang around pubs smoking, drinking and idlying. Psychologically, they are convinced that state benefits are not charity handouts but they are their rights. They still live with their parents and their parents still pick up after them. They take on part time rather take full time jobs. I even heard one grumbling that working from 3p.m. to 9 p.m. at a part time job had destroyed his social life.

I watched a cartoon once where a group of graduating students queued to receive their scrolls from the college president. After having received their scrolls and tossing their mortar boards into the air, they made a bee line to another queue, this time the dole queue. I was eight then and did not understand one bit what it was all about.

According to a Leicester Mercury report early this year, Leicestershire's dole queue has seen its biggest increase in 11 months after soaring by more than 1,000. The number of Jobseekers' Allowance claimants in the city and county rose by 4.3% to 24,607 in January. Northern Ireland has been hit harder by the economic crisis than any other UK region. New figures show that six towns in the province are in the top 10 UK dole blackspots based on regional increases in claimants.

I was brought up in a generation where living off the state would be a huge embarrassment and a disaster. We all had to try different types of work while deciding on a long-term career plan. In fact, while we were yet students we did part time jobs during the holidays. I knew someone who worked at his parents’ food stall after school and yet he rose to become a successful dentist. I knew of another who gave all the prize money he received from the university to his parents to help run the household.

As in every scenario there are genuine cases of hardworking people being laid off. But then again, there are plenty of loafers. It is every working class parent’s dream to see a child graduate and get a job, move out of the family home by 25, own a house by 30 with some savings on the side for marriage and set up a new home. It represents upward social and financial mobility. Now, we sincerely rejoice with the parents who have responsible grown up children and lament in silence if ours are not the same.

That brings me back to the industrious Lefroy who being the first son among 12 siblings probably gave up personal happiness to help better the status of his family. So as I reluctantly walked away from the huge iron gate, I told myself I must call another day just to confirm my suspicions that the real descendents of Tom Lefroy are in my neighbourhood. I live in hope still.