day 26, positive inspiration, positive thinking

Let’s see if you can guess what the colorful picture is about.

The black and white one is quite clear, so we talk about that first.

Since I haven’t got a reply from my publishers, I decided to escort the soft copy with  the old school style manuscript. Actually the idea crossed my mind as I was watching an episode of Judging Army a few weeks ago. When the writer guy, no wait that was something else. I was wondering why I’m confused. It was in the movie –In the Land of Women, the writer does a manuscript to give his grandmother to read. It’s bound and looks professional even though it is a fictional children’s story about a teddy bear.

 I thought, hey, I think I need something tangible. I will post this to the publishers tomorrow. I’m not sure; should I include a CD of the same or should I  refer them to my earlier e-mail? I am imagining there is a lazy editor somewhere who cannot be  bothered to check  the e-mail archive. But then again, I am a lady  writer who thinks I have made enough effort on this so far.   Tomorrow I will decide.

So the chocolate box. I recently wrote an article  titled- Massages and Spas in Bukit Bintang, the myth-  I came in second in the run and that was my consolation prize. It was a surprise actually, and I am  very happy with it even though I prefer potatoes to chocolates. It is the same fuzzy feeling I got  when BBC sent me baseball caps for my entries six years ago.

This kinda tells me, I have not lost my game.

 I still got half of the chocolates , if you want some just drop by.

25

The Swahili  translation sounds good. I was editing it today and I think it sounds better than the English  with the homely names and Swahili expressions.

I haven't done much toward my publishing efforts . I have a lot in my mind honestly,  I  even went to bed early last night but in the end I slept at the same time I sleep on normal days trying to figure out things. It's hard to connect with a lot of things running across the mind.

I know throwing myself into my stories can reduce the time I spend stressing  on things but somehow, until I am sure of what I must do, it's hard to see  clearly.

I signed up on docstoc.com  and  uploaded one of  my recent articles to see if I get an interested buyer. :)

24

I'm listening to Peggy Lee

"you give me fever

when you kiss me

fever when you hold me tight

Fever

In the morning

Fever all through the night"

I donno why I find it so hilarious. :)

I'm still not right but I have something to report. I received the Swahili translation for one of my children's story. I'm so grateful to Robert for his hard work. I hope this gets published so that I can have his name right there on the cover.

I did a review for the book I've been reading, this is how it goes:

If the song - Welcome to my Life by the rock band Simple Plan makes your back hair stand, reading this book will poke at your raw emotions just the same.

However, this is not the case until you reach the second last chapter. Most of it certainly feels like a –how- to- manual for women on how to treat their men.

A man reading it will nod his head, but for a woman, unless it is for comic relief, it will feel like a repetition of society’s popular rhetoric’s on interactions between men and women.

If you re looking for a general read, you might as well jump right into the last two chapters.

I liked the concept he calls ‘Displacement Love letter.’ This applies to everyone who wants to improve their lives by resolving pending feelings from their past. The advice is to imagine you could go back and deal with those feelings by writing a ‘love letter’ to those people involved, could be a parent or even yourself.

Other than that, I found the numerous subtitles and ‘clever’ quotes to be exhausting. It is repetitive, and the writer keeps referring to h is other books and videos. To me, it just sounds like cheap advertising.

In my opinion, an audio version of the book would be more in place since you could play it in the background as you do other thing.

I’ll give him one with his point that our culture doesn’t teach men what women want. As a woman, I nod to that.

John Gray has written many similarly themed books. As a certified therapists, he comes out knowledgeable on his subject. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, yes we got that clearly, once again.

23

Here’s the plan.  I admit that my plans hardly ever work out. So I am accepting help. I sent some pages for proof reading. I’ve been editing news articles, and I think I’m getting better at it. It will possibly help in future.

Otherwise, I will stick to writing. I had two major ideas last night.

1.       Collect  12 of my heavy poems and do something with them

2.       There’s a book idea I sketched a few weeks ago, I will start on it and send to a    publisher.

You know they way I brag that I have no sense of fear. Yes it’s true, I can walk right into things.  However; today I got intimidated, and I smelt fear, and it wasn’t just because of the bunch of Asians facing me, ready to pounce. 
So I broke down  when one implied I must be ‘in business’ to mean the hooking business, “otherwise how can you survive here”, and he wasn’t any bit a looker either.

As I was going home feeling raw and bruised, with my head DJ playing-Goo goo doll's it's not my time,  the bus passed by a roadside shrine, and they were burning their incense and sacrifices.

I thought to myself. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that.

Happy are the people whose God is Jehovah.

Day 22: Sudanese Cultural Night

The desire to stand and dance was strong.

I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the song through my ears.

Why do they say the caged bird never sings?

Of course it does, but no one hears its song.

But I was not sure a woman could or should, so I shook my  shoulders, snapped my fingers and tapped my feet. I scribbled notes and smiled, with a happiness I haven’t really felt in a long time.

The violin reached down into my core, patting, soothing and comforting every inch of me. The piano gave me rhythm and his voice, the sound of his voice took me back, back to places I’ve been and never been, nights by my grandfather’s date fields during the fortnightly festivals in Cush.  
Two men that moved the crowd more than anyone else. I’ll call them maestros for lack of more knowledge of these terms.  I gave them five stars.

My friend said to me-, 'come to the Sudanese cultural night, I’ll be the MC'. I wondered  how to get back, he encouraged, ‘get a few friends and take a cab back.’ So I tried a few but no one seemed to be free on weekday nights. But Bridget (http://bidgie.blogspot.com) said, 'you don’t have to miss it.'

I was ready to go back at the door when I didn’t feel very welcome. The tall black Arab said to me: ‘we have not started yet, and no drinks allowed, find a trash can’ and walked off. I was about to think –oh no you didn’t. But then I thought, he’s probably have had a terrible day planning all this, give him a chance.

The crowd was made up  of 90 percent Sudanese people , and the rest of us certainly felt like bystanders until the performances started. I really enjoyed the pantomime, and the guy that recited a funny poem, and the choral recital (‘Afihina mashuhuda’ not sure of the spelling) sent shivers of ecstasy down my spine. It reminded me of a cassette I borrowed from an Ethiopian in Eastleigh, Kenya, which I never returned. I should have, since those were memories of his country. I’ll track him down when I go back to Kenya.

When they mentioned political heroes, they didn’t mention  the guy most of us know- The late John Garang. But looking around I didn’t see a single ‘ Sudanese’ as we know them in Kenya. Tall, dark, with marks across their foreheads. No, everyone in that room was half this half that, and I bet all of them live in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait. That made me sad. Their ambassador was a turbaned fellow smiling from here to Khartoum, and after that all I could think of was how much he looked like the Kenyan vice president, Kalonzo. I also spotted a Tiger Woods look alike. 

There was a girl seated in  my row, screaming  'hey hey, yo!' She annoyed me because the ushers all looked like armed body guards and kept throwing dirty looks our direction, and she wasn’t Sudanese so  we might have been marshaled out without a second thought.

They finally(yes finally) mentioned John Garang, when they introduced  the southern tribe dance, which was funny but I felt like they were making fun of them. I need to look for a Southern Sudanese and ask them if they dance Lingala. 

I have some kind of solidarity with the Southern Sudanese. As much as I am a land of Cush wannabe, I feel protective over the Southern Sudanese since they are as much Kenyans as the Turkana people, so no one dare say anything against them.

There were side attractions too, like one (MC) who came out of  the crowd and started to rap, mentioning his name the way they do ‘call me, J, Just call me J, all my people,  hands to the DJ.’ Haha. That was funny, especially when some high wired teens jumped on stage and the guards had to escort them down.

There was a lot of standing and sitting and clapping too. But all in all, I went home on a high like you can see from my lead. It was a wonderful night, I’m glad I went. I also feel happy when I see children, and there were plenty of them to go around.

The MC, Ahmed Tag did an awesome job at it, he did the English, and his partner, a fast talking girl in a flowery costume complemented him in Arab perfectly.

DISCLAIMER: these are just a writer's opinions 

I copied some of my formerly published works to make a portfolio, and I will share with you a poem I wrote as I listened to the a fore mentioned maestros. My camera died   on me so I just snapped one picture.

 

songs to remind me of my lineage

I just came from a Sudanese cultural night. It was very intriguing. I will postpone day 22 a few hours because I'm spaced out and I don't think I'll do a good job making a blog entry.

Day 21

Hey,

I planned to proof read some more this evening but my friend said she can do  that for me so I’ll leave it  to her.  I spent last evening swimming and learning gymnastics from my friend’s 9 year old.  She was surprised that I could do a double over, said I was the first flexible adult she’s  met in a long time.

I ran away from  my life at the first suggestion by my friend to go over for the evening yesterday, and ended up reading 2 chapters of –spy dog- and 2 chapters of a self help book about getting rid of bad habits. It said that laziness is the closest you’ll ever get to near death experience, I thought that was absolutely hilarious but true.

The reminder to take at least one and a half liters/litres everyday was helpful, otherwise you can get irritable and stressed and your brain doesn’t work as proper as you’d like it to because you get ‘liverish’. That means your liver gets tired of running due to little water in your system. It also said that the quality of our thoughts can determine the quality of our lives. I thought, nice, I can see how much quality my life has .It was talking about positive and negative thoughts but this morning I made a promise to talk to someone mature for assistance with my life :D, in future.

And as I was reading another point about getting enough rest, my friend’s son, who was getting his hair cut, and got a bald spot when he moved and was complaining very loudly, said something interesting.

The world has evolved right? So why don’t we have 12 midday to 12 midnight days, since no one seams to sleep before twelve anyway?   8-5 might have worked when we didn’t have computers and the internet but it sure doesn’t do anyone  any good now. So he woke up at midday this morning, maybe to prove his point.

I’ve gotten over my shifting, and I will be shifting again tomorrow(true nomad blood).

I’ll type some more of the novel chapters since I have a willing proof reader and make a portfolio. of my life, I'll tell you my plan.

Btw. Someone asked me whether the novel was set in an African setting or modern ‘like Malaysia’ and I thought about it for as long as I thought about the taste of the water melon  I was going to buy  from the market yesterday, and the seller was surprised at my deep thoughts over a melon and left his son to deal with me as he unpacked the rest of his fruits, so I told her- you’ll have to read to find out.