Sounds of the Moment
I woke up that night feeling overwhelmed with a lot of sweet sounds around me. Looking at Park Street through my bedroom window, things seemed to be locked in an eerie, unfounded, once-upon-a-time fairyland. From a far distance, Melbourne’s city skyline was showing off its neon lights and Aussie charms. Then, I began to listen to everything around me: cockatoos singing on the swaying trees, leaves falling on the accepting earth, neighbours snoring on the comforting pillows. It was an exercise of the enthusiastic ears, learned easily by children and forgotten naturally by adults. I had previously communicated and received mysterious responses from these things, but something was telling me that tonight would be extra special.
The air suddenly felt chilly. I could clearly hear the wind hissing through the slight opening of my bedroom window, sending some cold winter air into my tiny apartment. Nights were getting longer and icier. But at least, I didn’t wake up feeling lonelier now. The panic button appeared to be missing somewhere that it was hard to recall how it used to look like. Mr Loneliness must be lonely out there.
Close to me now, the melodic sound of Nurul’s sleep warmed my heart. She was breathing peacefully in her faraway dream. She must be talking to Alice in the Wonderland, sharing the breaking news of her nasi lemak business in Melbourne. I hope Alice would send some miracles to our mortal world, but who would have thought that this could have actually happened? While I was still trying to comprehend this latest joke in my life, a few packs of nasi lemak were sold that day. And I could hear the voice of Mother Victory saying confidently to me: “Listen to your heart, my dear. Remember, fans who lack the faith can make a team lose a game it is already winning.”
I was not sure whether Mother Victory was talking about nasi lemak or about the Olympic Games in London. Before I could ask anything, she vanished into the air like fairy Godmother. I heard another tender voice coming from a corner of my bedroom. “Welcome to our happy world,” she said. Aha, it was Ms Joy from the Happy Universe. I looked at her and wondered how on earth she had arrived in my life. She must have beaten up Mr Loneliness with her sexy legs and wicked smiles.
I was still thinking of Ms Joy when my apartment was suddenly filled with a lot of strange figures. I couldn’t clearly see their faces since it was a bit dark, but it was getting noisier, as if there was some sort of a birthday party going on. They were all talking simultaneously to each other in what seemed to be an ancient language. I thought I was dreaming, but they sounded so real. The next thing I knew, I went into a kind of trance that frightened me, but I wanted to continue the game until I was tired of it.
“We are all gathered here tonight to wish you the best of lucks for your presentation soon in Shanghai,” said one of them with the loveliest voice I had ever heard. I thanked them for their cordial words and asked them where they came from. But they kept talking so excitedly like they had never talked before.
“Hey, Hilmi. Congratulations for submitting another paper to an international conference in Sydney!” said a middle-aged woman who sounded almost like my supervisor. I told her, while I appreciated her kind gestures, she seriously needed to leave since it was getting so late at night. The office hours had certainly ended and I was sure it was already past midnight. What would my neighbours think of me tomorrow?
Few minutes later, the party of sweet voices grew even louder and louder. I felt dizzy with imagination and fantasies. I tried to segregate the sounds, layer and by layer, and struggled to comprehend what they were really saying.
“I’m having a baby soon!” said a bubbly woman who sounded just like Pilah. I smiled and tried to imagine how Pilah must have looked like now – a six-month pregnant lady!
“Ayoh must be the happiest of all. He would be expecting three grandkids this year – what a productive year!” said a man in what looked like a white kopiah. Just when I wanted to ask who he was, I heard a girl said, “Congratulations on your graduation, Hisham Hamzah!” Oh, I remembered that my cute little brother had just graduated and joined the Wall of Graduation in our living room in Binjal. Way to go, Hamzah clans!
Suddenly, everyone was quiet. A slim-looking man with funny spiky hairstyle entered the room with elegance and style. He might be one of the famous members of One Direction. Beaming proudly, he said: “Hey, look at me. Ain’t I gorgeous? I’m 53 kilograms now!” Haha, that must be my own body talking. What a joke.
“You look happier now, Cekmi,” said a nice lady in tudung next to me. She came with her two naughty boys who had been running wildly around the apartment. She could be one of my dear blogsahabats. How I missed their good company and warmth.
“Thank you all for coming tonight,” I said. “I know I have been too occupied with my down-under world in Melbourne, but you guys are always within my circle of happiness and joy. My day has been good, so let night fall.”
I stayed awake for a long time and tried to entertain the unexpected guests that night. The dawn must be nearly breaking when the party was over. I went back to my bed, feeling thrilled with what I had just experienced. Mystical or not, I certainly had had one of the best nights in my life.
While I pressed my head on the pillow, I felt the slight puff in my ears. Someone was whispering and I could practically smell the familiar perfume of the distant past. She said: “Get some sleep, my dear. You have accomplished a lot of things tonight. Be good, okay?” It was my late mother.
I finally said my prayers and thanked all the sweet sounds for their surprise visit. They were the Sounds of the Moment, accumulated from my past and my future, reminding me of how wonderful life had been, and would always be.
The Strange Road to Shanghai
I was working as usual in the phonetics lab when I received that strange email. Reading the first line of the email, I felt a bit disoriented while my lab mates were making noises over some unfathomable subjects which further deteriorated my sanity I felt like screaming and slicing their tongues into tiny pieces. It was not easy working in this crowded lab when all I needed was a private world to concentrate on my own mind-slicing worries. My work space here had a huge window overlooking the Zoology Building’s glasshouse complex full of plant research facilities. From here, I could also see the beautiful Melbourne sky which at least made me feel at peace and forget all the unnecessary hassles in the lab right now. I tried to ignore the human conversations around me and pretended that I was busy when all I needed was run back to my cosy apartment and study at my own pace without worrying that someone would suddenly make an annoying remark about how tired he was. Goddamit.
I looked back into the computer screen in front of me which had been idle for the past few minutes. My right hand was stiff and still holding the big mouse. I read the email content and tried to make sense out of it. It sounded like my paper had been accepted for poster presentation at the sixth International Conference on Speech Prosody in Shanghai and also for publications in the conference proceedings. But why wasn’t I excited about it? I can still remember the blinking stars running across my vision; they nauseated me but my good judgement told me that there couldn’t possibly be a star in the middle of daylight in this confined space.
Several hours later, Janet came to the lab. She was accompanied by her wide smile which made me wonder whether she also earned a PhD in Smiles & Hospitality.
“You don’t look so good, Hilmi,” she told me.
“No, no,” I said. “I feel wonderful. In fact, I’m going to Shanghai soon!”
Janet was genuinely surprised. She congratulated me for having accomplished such a tremendous job and insisted that I quickly revise the paper according to review comments. Afterward, she asked me whether I could get some funding assistance from my employer.
“Too bad, they only sponsor an oral presentation,” I answered.
“What a shame! There shouldn’t be a discrimination between oral and poster presentation these days. It is just a mode of presentation,” she said, with an air of having found out the funny politics in Malaysia.
I was not really concerned about the conference funding from my own home country and all that complicated administration. They had been generous enough to provide me more than half-a-million worth of a scholarship for a three-year study in Melbourne. Besides, I knew that there had to be some monetary opportunities from the University of Melbourne as well. But why Shanghai? I kept asking myself. After a successful maiden presentation in Hong Kong, I always pictured myself to be talking elegantly in a state-of-the-art conference room somewhere in America or Europe. It turned out that, for now, I had to make do with my academic fates which were always intertwined with China and Asian cities. Heck, that’s not too bad.
Several weeks later, I was sitting again in the phonetics lab, still making sense of what had been happening to my less-than-normal life. The room was eerily quiet that day. It seemed like my colleagues had finally listened to my private plea and happily honored my secret wish by getting lost into the rotting hell. It also seemed like everything had perfectly fallen into place: an official invitation had been received from the conference committee; registration fees had been kindly and personally paid by Janet; a fund from Melbourne University had been secured; flights and accommodation had been booked; and I was ready to embark on a new battlefield.
Looking outside the window, I thought of the possible enemies waiting for me in Shanghai. Just like any other vicious enemies that I had fought before, they always represented my weaker side. As much as they had inflicted so much pain to my physical and spiritual well-beings which made feel like running away from any possible risks, they eventually turned out to be a premature sense of victory. Yes, I knew these enemies so well. I clearly remembered their faces now. They had asked me to join the battles because they knew how they could hurt me. They were there with a purpose – to test my will and strength. So, to escape from the next battle would be the worst thing that could happen. It would be worse than losing the fight, because I could always learn something from defeat. If I ran away now, all I did was declare that my enemy had already won.
Titanic
The temperature inside the IMAX Melbourne theater might not be icy enough to kill anyone who forgot to put on their jacket, but I could already imagine what it was like for the 1514 passengers who died that night in the middle of freezing waters in the North Atlantic Ocean. When Rose said “I’ll never let go, Jack… I promise” and kissed Jack’s hand and watched him sink, I said “I’ll never let go, God… I promise to finish my PhD this year” and thanked James Cameron who theatrically re-released Titanic in three-dimensional stereoscopic format and narrated that tragedy again after 100 years it took place.
It felt funny, though, sitting down in this packed cinema, watching one of the most famous shipwrecks in the history, sharing the old Rose Dawson Calvert’s melancholy over the Heart of the Ocean, listening to the same musical scores that had been playing in my mind for many years. When the movie was first released 15 years ago, I was one of the millions around the world who went nuts with the sinking of the unsinkable ship and, not to forget, with that most-photographed kiss at the bow of the ship. I remembered one of my university mates who watched this movie in the cinema for 21 times. When asked why he decided to stop, he said, “Oh, the last time I watched it, I fell asleep.” The other friend of mine even went the extra length by organizing his own Titanic-themed birthday party. It turned out to be one of the most memorable party events in my life, just like Titanic.
But how could anyone resist the Titanic’s therapeutic power? Right now, I could feel the spirit in me rising up beyond that massive seven-storey screen. I might not be one of the passengers who boarded that British passenger liner on 10 April 1912 from Southampton, England, but I could feel the taste of fear and survival, like I had been thrown off the ship and struggled among the chaos and pandemonium. I tried to recall the many Ships of Life that I had sailed through; the companies that I had worked for, the adventures that I had been involved with, and all the challenges that I had navigated throughout my seafaring life. While many of them had sailed successfully and reached the destination, many others had sunk and lost at the bottom of the sea. But how did get back to the surface and live on?
When I looked back, I realized that I was not a mere passenger with a third-class ticket – I was the Captain of the Ship! Yes, I had always been the Captain in my life who owned the steering power and authorized when or how to steer when an iceberg was getting in the way. The ship might hit the iceberg and I might sink together with it, but I could stay afloat like Rose and continue to dream. Life would go on and on, until there was no more ship to navigate, or the seawater had been sucked dry by a giant Godzilla. Or maybe I was just an over-imaginative moviegoer who got so emotionally and titanically involved watching the world’s most epic romantic disaster film at the world’s third largest screen that he refused to take off his 3D glasses at the end of the movie.
Extended Happiness
The autumnal leaves are showing off their early glory in Melbourne and saying bye-bye to summer lovers. Maple trees have already started to turn yellowish and fiery, reflecting my ever burning passion in my maddening studies. As many leaves are scattering through the streets and making life more miserable for winter’s anti-fans, my scary thoughts seem to be fluttering all over the sky. I see my dream is coming closer, but will I still make it?
Right now, Mr Time is looking at me with his mischievous eyes, as he always is. I have seen him for almost three years since I set my foot on this soil, and I can hear him say it again now: “Hey, Mr Perfect, still wanna play Catch Me If You Can?” Just so you know, Mr Time runs faster than DiCaprio in that funny movie and even faster than the comic superhero The Flash. Just when you think today is Monday, it’s already Friday. April 2012 already? How the hell did he do that?
But hey, not to worry. I can thank God for creating a great document called The Application for An Extension of Study Leave and Scholarship. You see, my kind sponsor in Malaysia has even anticipated the potential chaos created by Mr Time and so they are willing to conspire with me and cheat this naughty monster. Can we do that? They way I see it now, Mr Time is getting stronger and muscular these days, thanks to our tight schedules and busy lifestyles and hectic planning in making more money or following those silly dreams.
Again, what has happened to me? Not that I’m too lazy or haven’t made any progress in my research program, but things are just complicated and beyond my control. Some of my friends even claimed that it would be too weird or abnormal if I graduate in time. Are they kidding? They even told me not to freak out, that some people didn’t even complete their studies and could still smile and bring back some nice cars to their home country. Thank you, dear friends, but which model of the car did you mean?
Anyway, to quote what Janet said in her support letter: “Mr Hamzah is completing a highly complex and technical research thesis and requires a lot of technical support from the School. It is vital that he obtain an extension to his candidature which is the normal procedure in Australian PhD studies. His PhD will be groundbreaking and will establish him as a world expert on the Phonetics and Phonology of Kelantan Malay.”
Thanks, dear Janet. That’s very persuasive and flattering.
With that, I’m ready for the six-month interlude of Extended Happiness (read: Extended Madness).
When Julian Met Zahrah
“Wow, you’re a celebrity now!” I said excitedly when I saw them on the front cover of a magazine. There was something about the picture that was worth frowning upon. Maybe it’s the way they smiled or posed that made them look so divine and angelic. Such a perfect family portrait! Together, they looked like professional models who could easily pass for some family product advertisements on TV. But, hey, that’s not what it looked like when I first met Julian and Zahrah the year before. But, more importantly, that’s not what it was all about when Julian first met Zahrah on that Malayan soil. Things had indeed changed so drastically after they signed that holy matrimonial contract. Their story of determination had indeed captured the world. Their life’s miracles had developed into an even more interesting shape. To begin with, Julian looked bulky these days, thanks to his part-time profession as a truck driver. Zahrah looked even bulkier, thanks to her second pregnancy. Kayla, their only daughter, looked bulkiest with love and care, thanks to their famous parents.
“Yes, Hilmi. We are the poorest celebrity in the whole word!” Zahrah said jokingly. “Tell you what, I still can’t believe that we have made this far. We started with nothing, but see that furniture? It’s donated by our kind friend who thought we were homeless. See this table? It was given by someone who took pity of our “poor” life. Oh, yes, sorry that we have to make you wait before you came to our house this afternoon. I’m busy teaching some Islamic courses these days to kids and adults. It turns out that the muslim community in St Albans are really desperate for a great ustazah like me! Haha. Anyway, did you know that Julian was also an actor? Haha. Yes! Yes! He was part of the cast members for Dingin Lavenda. What? You don’t know that story? Aiyo, it’s on TV3 lah! Wait wait, we will also be featured in a documentary on Astro soon! I don’t know lah, Hilmi. These people have started coming into our life now that it’s impossible to resist. Not that we are enjoying it, but things are definitely getting better now. It’s amazing how things could turn when you truly believe in something. Right, Hilmi?”
Yes, you are right, Zahrah.
You see, when Adam met Eve, the world was merrier with kids. But when Julian met Zahrah, the world was merrier with stories (and kids, too, of course).
Just Kidding in Phonetics Laboratory
Oh, hi. I’m glad you’re still here. Er, can I ask you something? Honestly, why did you keep coming back? I don’t even have much time to visit my own blog. You see, I’m always stuck here at the phonetics lab, working my ass off all day on goddamit acoustic details and thesis writing. But, hey, I’m talking to you again now. Yes, that’s right. You! My beloved silent readers. How are you doing today, sweetheart? You’re looking more gorgeous these days. What’s the secret? Gee, don’t tell me it’s love.
Anyway, sorry for the crappy start. I’m just sneaking out of the lab and desperate to say something really stupid to break the monotony of my PhD work. Hold on, don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate this lab. I like it. No, no, no. I don’t like it. I idolize it! You know, I’m still a kid who is still kidding around doing so-called phonetics. So, it’s an honour to be part of this cool place. And right now, I’m feeling less and less intelligent as the due date of thesis submission is approaching. Grrgh.
But let’s not talk about my research today. Let’s talk about this lab. It’s part of the Babel Building at the University of Melbourne. If you visit its site here, you’ll see that it is the focus of phonetics teaching, speech science and laboratory phonology research. If you keep scrolling down, you’ll find my name listed among student research projects. I don’t know about you, but I feel like someone else is pretending to be me in this lab. Hey, I am Hilmi Hamzah, from the Phonetics Laboratory. Do I know you?
Anyway, there are around eight brainiacs working in this lab (me excluded of course). They work mostly on Australian languages, so I always wonder why the hell I am doing here. I’m a rare out-of-nowhere international student doing a research on a language that is hardly known by the world. I have a conspiracy theory for this. The university management might have a secret pact with my supervisor. The mission is to investigate the failure rate of an idiotic dreamer trying to get a PhD. I hope they don’t find any significant correlation.
But, fail or not, I’m still honoured to be part of the genius team here. Thanks to them, I’m always being reminded that I’m still a dirty, smelly kid. Most of my colleagues here are also tutors, so I could hear them talking so intelligently about cool stuff in the classroom. Whenever I try to interrupt, I feel like I’m talking rubbish in some ancient language. I’ll become more aware of my heavily accented English and, for some funny reasons, I’m afraid of making grammatical mistakes. So, I normally sit there in my comfortable chair, feeling stupid than ever, like I never exist, powerless and helpless.
Many times, I wish I could go back in times when I felt more powerful in the classroom, speaking English like I was born in England, punishing students who came late to class, or reducing some grades for some naughty reasons. Many times, I remember the times when I had the authority in the administration, changing examination schedules and controlling invigilators at my disposal. What has happened to me? I used to be the man of confidence and power. But right now, I’m just a mediocre student sitting silently in the lab while watching others conquer the world. You see, my intelligence and confidence are seriously challenged and hurt.
Still, I’m happy to be stupid and powerless. It reminds me of how wonderful it was to be so confident and powerful back then. It also reminds me of what’s coming next. Yes, before I know it, I’ll be back in my country and I’ll be doing exactly the same things that I did in the past, getting back the confidence and power that I lost in Melbourne. So, don’t you worry about my tarnished dignity. I’ll be fine.
Okay, guys. Enough ramblings for now. Thanks for listening. I’m going back to my work now. For now, let me just enjoy these blessed stupidity and cherished powerlessness while they still last. Chow!
Triple Consonants?
Some people say God’s miracles are to be found in the smallest details of the Creation. Not that I am a 21st century prophet or anything like that, but I think I found one of them.
It happened during my thesis writing. As I began to take this task more seriously and religiously, I became more preoccupied with so many colourful acoustic details that, at certain points, I felt like I was living in the Alice’s Wonderland. The box plot above, for example, is one of the many things that keeps puzzling me. It shows the contrast between singletons and geminates in Kelantan Malay in terms of the duration of consonant closures measured in milliseconds. As you can observe, there is a clear contrast between the two, with geminates produced three times longer than singletons. So, what’s the big deal?
Well, I remembered when I first found geminates in Kelantan Malay a few years earlier, I used to call them Double Consonants (as many native speakers of Kelantan Malay would have called them, too). These “doubling” events are evident in their gibberish written forms, like “kkabo” or “kkatok” (note the double consonants written at the beginning of these words). For many centuries (or perhaps throughout the course of human history), people go about doing their business and think that they simply double the word-initial consonants in their conversations to differentiate between “katok” (to hit) and “kkatok” (a frog). But, hey, let’s check the reality.
If we want to take the phonetic reality really seriously in its strictest sense, Double Consonants are no longer appropriate in this context. Note again that, in the box plot above, Double Consonants are not doubled. For God’s sake, they are tripled! (Should we start calling them Triple Consonants?). Come to think of it, there has been a clash between reality and perception here. Apparently, a lot of people have been cheated by the perception of their own speech. Sounds creepy, huh?
But, hold on, there is always something funny going on between the reality of the invisible world and human perception. There are millions of pixels in a digital picture, but do we really pay attention to each of them? A century-old painting in an art gallery has countless of brush strokes, but do we have to count each one of them to appreciate the beauty? Just like speech, we only take what really matters to us and what’s perceptually relevant so that we can go on with out lives talking about real stuff, not about some laboratory speech that might be fake after all. So, what the hell am I doing?
I don’t know yet. The phonologists might thank me later. But for now, bless those souls who are ignorant of the pain-in-the-ass truths, and may God save the PhD wannabes who go nuts digging into the mind-boggling details of the world (like me!). Still, it’s indeed amazing to discover God’s little secrets hiding and smiling knowingly behind those milliseconds of our everyday speech.
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