As I was reading about the bad rap that my former alma mater, UTM is going through, in the rain of this fine cool November night, I couldn't help but remember the days that has passed by.
By the way, I am not going to address the outrage that UTM's notice about "Foreign Culture" controversy has induced in some people - as far as I remember, UTM has always been like that - even as far back as 25 years it was the fining students like me for not wearing collar shirts to lecture, although other public university didn't have a problem with it- and I remember that a couple of course mates of mine even had their name pasted on the university's main board - simply for the crime of holding hands at the library. 😆
Culturally, I think UTM has always been tightly wound - even 25 years ago it was culturally tightly wound.
I think you are probably best suited for UTM if you are the sort to pray as soon as you bath and clean up after you wake up in the morning, and spend most of your waking hours seated in your desk poring over thick books after you are done with your lectures. In my experience these are the people who gained the most from their time in UTM, and judging from their cultural appropriateness notification recently, I suppose nothing much has changed.
UTM was never a place where you experience culture - it was a place where you experienced technology. 😆
I probably should have never ended up in UTM.
I was as suited for the engineering course I signed up for as how a fish is suited for climbing trees.
It was in UTM also that I first learned that talent and hard work can get you to the top amongst the general population, but amongst the cream of the crop, you have to have innate talent and inclination also to have any chance of succeeding.
I went from being the top of the class in school to barely making it to the middle in UTM, because I certainly did not have the talent or inclination for engineering - because of that, in the four and half years I was there, I perpetually felt like a donkey racing with thoroughbreds.
I was lucky that at least 50 percent of UTM, like me, was also made up people who should have never taken engineering or came to UTM too, because if that was not the case, I might have been scraping the bottom of the barrel in UTM.
But being in the company of the top 50 percent in UTM, who were there because that is where they wanted to be - because technology and engineering was in their blood - quickly made me realise that I was never going to amount to anything more than average in their company.
But in a way, I suppose there are benefits to being liberated by the desire or aim to be at the top - there are pains too, obviously, but as they say: “Some pains are good pain, it is a privilege to have it.”
It is a privilege, because in the the wee hours of this fine cool night, as I write this while thinking about a world that has passed, I find myself immensely enjoying myself listening to #41.
I don't think I have listened to #41 in the last 20 plus years, but I listened to it incessantly in UTM .
It is such a great song by the Dave Matthews band, I didn't get why the Dave Matthews Band couldn't give it a proper name - but then again , maybe that is why they never gave it a name, isn't it.
As Yeats observed : "Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process."
That is saying something isn't it.
If you ever saw a magnificent beast in the jungle, i think there is something wrong with you, if your first instinct is to desire to capture it.
I think the proper way to appreciate something that is truly great is to just let it be whatever it is - to try trap it, be it with a chain or a label - is an injustice to its greatness, and betrays your own baseness.
but yes, listening top Dave Matthews band, especially the bootleg version of Live at Luther's College, with Tim Reynolds, that one of my housemates in university downloaded in one of those P2P software, which was a revolutionary technology at the time, was one of the best things i remember about my time in UTM. university
Other than Dave Matthews, there was also Ryan Adams and Turin Brakes and Jeff Buckley and Goo Goo Dolls so much music and joy.
I know i had a special fondness for America's "sister golden hair" then. I sang it all the time.
Goo goo doll's Iris and that other one, which i can't remember at the moment, also comes to mind when I think of that time.
Oasis's don't look back in anger is a classic - that damn song is an anthem of a generation - i daresay it will live even after i die- it will live no matter how the AI revolution sweeps everything away.
And cigarettes and alcohol - god, i used to smoke so much then - drink a lot too - i used to smoke so much that i i would light a new one with the stub of the old one, and I drank like it was some sort of competition I was trying to win.
I also remember Michael, who was such a good friend - and he was so great on the guitar too - he, as well as Chunky, were definitely a better friend to me than i was to them. If I could turn back time, the one thing I would like to do is tell Michael just how great a guitar player I thought he was. That i never said that to him - ever - is why i never ever miss the past that much - I don't miss the old me - I prefer the present me.
And that nasi lemak stall at Kangkar Pulai that only opened at midnight, which had no name but everybody would call as nasi lemak k***kang, because of how it had a supernatural way of possessing everybody who ever tasted it to return to it again and again, even at an ungodly hour. I myself would ride to it although it was far away, and i would be freezing by the time i reach it. Me and my course mates gang used to love that place so much. Not just me and the course mates, every other night owl in UTM probably loved that nasi lemak too.
Ganapathy's and that other restaurant, whose name i can no longer remember, , that used to wrap a humungous take away with a newspaper cover. On a right day, when you finished eating all of it and laid down like a python that had swallowed a goat, i would daresay that you could probably label the experience as "happiness."
For some reason, I can now also remember Nicky playing with the stray cats she found at the stall where i took her too when she dropped by from KL, and remember not understanding what was her fascination with them. I didn't know it then, but boy do i know it now - I am very very very fond of cats today myself. As it is said: “No man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he will not be the same man.”
At this hour, I am also wondering what happened to Lim Kee - everybody said his babi hutan kari was the best, but for me, it was always his ayam sambal that was his best dish. He used to keep us waiting, sometimes for up to an an hour, even though he was a boss that owned three of four shops in the row of shop lots, because he insisted on cooking everything himself. He only had one worker, an Indonesian woman that worked as his cashier. There was something going on with him and the Indonesian cashier all of us were so sure, because though he was the boss and she was his worker, she looked like she was the boss and he was the worker. I wonder what happened to them. Lim kee was great at showing his heart through his wok, but it is doubtful if he could ever put his heart in his word. I wonder what happened to him.
Again, I am remembering all the smoking and drinking I did back then - certainly I think I drank and smoked too much back then - i didn't realise it then, but falling from being amongst the best in school to struggling to be average in UTM probably traumatised me more than I would like to admit - but I don't blame myself for it - being as I was, I imagine it is impossible that I would have done anything else than what I did.
But there was also music.
And friends.
And new things - like Idries Shah and Joseph Heller, camping trips and bonfires, and all the other foolish things that young people did, like falling from your motorcycle and in love. .
I think we pay too much attention to women in our youth- it seemed to have meant so much then - i think one of the signs that you are no longer a youth is that when you look back at how much a woman meant to you in the past, you would not be able to relate to it anymore, in the same way that you can't relate to just how much a toy meant to you when you were a kid.
But it did mean a lot to you at the time - I might not be able to relate to it now - but then was not now, and who you are is not who you were.
Anyway, this is what is coming to my mind when I asked it to go back to the past and reveal to me about my time in university.
In this wee hour of November, when the weather seems so perfect for recollections of a world that no longer exists, in a time that has passed, this is what i remembered.
And finally, about the cultural appropriateness outrage that UTM is currently embroiled in, all I will say that UTM has been like that even when I knew it 25 years ago - it is probably just problem today because the world has changed, while UTM has remained the same.
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