Art in the family

I believe there's an underlying creative streak in my family (in the wider sense of the word) that breaks out more overtly for some while for others, it remains something to dabble with. My late father loved to draw and his younger brother, my uncle Ibrahim Abdul Hamid, is adept with the drawing pencil and has a way with words as well. My cousin Kamaruddin Abdullah not only is great at drawing but he plays the piano by ear and was a member of The Grim Preachers in the 1970s.

My younger sister Zakiah Omar, or Noni as we call her at home, is an amazing example. She did her undergraduate studies in quantity surveying in Sydney, Australia (because she was a whizz at maths in school), but chucked that to become a journalist when she returned home. In 1990, she went to Berlin, Germany, on a Goethe Institute cultural exchange programme, little knowing that she would meet her future husband Hanno Baethe, a professor in videography, there. Together, they forged a partnership in producing interactive media. Noni's success in her field led her to be offered a professorship at Konrad Wolf, Germany's film and television university, where she lectured in German.

Zaid Omar, my youngest brother, knew from the start that he was going to be a graphic designer. So after university, a short stint in Berlin and some time with Freeform Design, he set up his own design firm, Milk Design, with his old-time friend, Wei Shein. Their design work is excellent and they are continually busy. On top of that, the two are behind techno group byaduoorgroup and have produced a CD.

In 2002, Zaid designed a very striking poster, Misconception, for an international exhibition overseas.

Sister Zawiyah Omar (Oyah), who opted for early retirement, got her hands into decorative painting, examples of which are now found around her home. She even painted a screen for our mum's new house. By the way, I think she takes orders.

Yours truly did spend some time painting away as well but, sad to say, my paints are somewhere in my store-room at the moment.

I have no doubt that my brother Zaidan (Idan), who lives in Kuching, and my half-siblings, Zaihan (who's in the architectural field) and Zurina, have a creative streak in them too. 

Beautiful books

I have posted earlier that I love books. I also appreciate books that are beautifully designed and well produced. For beautiful books, one of the best places to get them is The Folio Society. Their goal, since their first books in 1947, is "to furnish readers with beautiful and authoritative editions of great literary works. The Folio Society brings together a worldwide community of book-lovers who appreciate the quality and craftsmanship of fine editions."


I had been a collector of their books and, much as I'd like to continue doing so, I've had to refrain from adding more to my bookshelves, now that I'm eking out a living as a writer. From time to time, I lovingly touch, bring out and read books in the sets that I have. For details on the authors, please click on their names below the pictures.

John Steinbeck

William Faulkner

Henry James

E M Forster

Graham Greene

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Jane Austen

The pictures of the books speak for themselves, don't they? One blogger wrote that The Folio Society's "editorial standards are the envy of a great many other publishers. And its commitment to the tradition of finely illustrated fiction is without peer amongst most modern trade publishers."

"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It's like falling in love."

- Christopher Morley, author and journalist (1890-1957)

I Am a Cat

I like Japanese writing - it's sparse, sparing and stylish. When I was browsing through a bookshop one day in 2006, I came across a book I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume. Being a cat-lover, the title intrigued me. As I hadn't read any of Soseki's books, I flipped to the first page (I'd mentioned in an earlier post that, when deciding to buy a book or not, I'd read the first paragraph to see if I like the style).

This particular book began, "I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I've no idea where I was born. All I remember is that I was miaowing in a dampish dark place when, for the first time, I saw a human being." The book went home with me that day - a 638-page book of three volumes in one.

I Am a Cat is a satire of middle-class Japanese society. The wearisome and worrisome ways of humans are related through the eyes of a cat who has no name but who moves freely around and about his human family and the neighbourhood. He observes of the master of the house, "I hear he is a schoolteacher. As soon as he comes home from school, he shuts himself up in the study for the rest of the day; and he seldom emerges. The others in the house think that he is terribly hard-working. He himself pretends to be hard-working. But actually he works less hard than any of them think." He doesn't like the children of the family much, which is not surprising - "When the fancy takes them, they hang me upside-down, they stuff my face into a paper-bag, they fling me about, they ram me into the kitchen range." 

The book, written in 1905-1906, mocks the aping of Western culture and pretentiousness of Japanese during the Meiji period, a time when the country was going through modernisation and an industrial revolution. It started out as a short story, which grew to become the first chapter of a long tale. 

Soseki (1867-1916) was a teacher himself, teaching English after graduating from Tokyo University in 1893. He also wrote and gained early success with his novels, prompting him to leave his teaching work, which he was dissatisfied with, to become literary editor of the Asahi Shimbun in 1907.   

The book requires a high degree of concentration to go through. As such, it won't appeal to those who prefer light reading. But it's witty and humourous and does make you think about how foolish human beings must appear to other creatures. I wonder what our two cats must think about us...

Chomel

Belang

The story of a bank

I received a call from Joe Fernandez late this afternoon. I haven't seen him for ages and he called because he would like to buy a copy of Hajj - The Humbling Journey. God willing, we'll meet up next week. Who, you might ask, is Joe Fernandez? Well, without him, I wouldn't have written Of People and Principles - The Commerce Asset Story.

In the book, published in 2003, I acknowledged Joe as "my partner in this endeavour,... a conscientious researcher and effective project coordinator." Joe, who had worked at Commerce Asset and knew it intimately, was asked by its management to spearhead the publication of the Group's corporate history. He needed a writer and, through people he knew, principally Dato' Seri Abdul Azim Mohd Zabidi, he found me.

The book took about two years to see the light of day, during which time Joe and I worked closely together in conceptualising the book, interviewing key people, going over archival documents and photographs, revising and redrafting chapters. I truly enjoyed working on the book - the management was committed to it and went out of its way to ensure that resources and people were made available to us. But the best part of it was that a small team of three top management staff was assigned to approve various aspects of the project as we went along. There was no red tape, it was smooth going, and I could write the story as I saw it.

It was fantastic the way everyone whom I interviewed opened up, providing me with never-before-heard anecdotes, sharing private conversations, and giving behind-the-scene insights into how decisions were made in the boardroom and executive office. 

The result is a story that began with Bian Chiang Bank, a one-branch, family-owned bank in Kuching, Sarawak, which metamorphosed in 1978 into Bank of Commerce after its purchase by the Fleet Group. The book then traced the Bank's growth through the economic recession of the 1980s, the Asian financial crisis of the late-1990s and its merger with United Asian Bank in 1991 and then Bank Bumiputra Malaysia in 1999, to become Bumiputra-Commerce Bank. There is also a chapter on how Commerce Asset was able to fend off being a takeover target in 1998. A parallel story in the book is that of Commerce International Merchant Bankers (CIMB).

The Commerce Asset Group and Bumiputra-Commerce Bank are now no more. In their place is the CIMB Group, a regional universal bank. How that has come about would make another riveting story. 

Going with Graduan

Elia Talib is a woman to be admired. In 1995, she launched an annual publication called Aspirasi Graduan, now known as Graduan, aimed at helping fresh graduates prepare for the job market. She has remained focused on her target audience but has extended her product and brand into other related publications, a job website, web TV, as well as career fairs in Malaysia, Australia, England and the US. She has succeeded in doing this almost single-handed, with the help of a small staff and now her two recently-graduated children.

I was introduced to Elia by Ann Lee, whom I've written about in an earlier post. Ann was Graduan's consultant editor and she and Elia wanted to bring more writers on board. So it was that I became a regular contributor, and at times editor, of the publication. I also edited Xtracurriculah!, an activity resource guide for school-children, for two years and a recent Graduan offshoot, Careers in the Capital Market.

Over the past few years, due to my other writing commitments, my involvement with Graduan has lessened, limited to one or two Special Feature articles per issue of leaders in the corporate or political world as well as academia. Elia needs a senior writer for these articles because it's not easy sometimes to get such such people to talk freely; my corporate experience has helped me in this respect. 

Perhaps the most daunting person I've had to interview for Graduan was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Although I was accompanied by Elia and Ann to his imposing office at the Perdana Leadership Foundation building in Putrajaya, it didn't help to settle the butterflies in my tummy. I had heard that he doesn't suffer fools gladly and could send you out of the door before you could start. His personal assistant told us that we had 15 minutes to do the interview but I must have been asking him the right questions and making the appropriate remarks in return to his answers, because we stayed for more than an hour. He even agreed to be photographed with us and signed my copy of The Malay Dilemma that I had brought with me (Elia and Ann felt like kicking themselves for not bringing theirs).

There's a trick to meeting and interviewing personalities like Tun Mahathir. Of course, in the first place, you need to be well prepared - long pauses and 'aahs' won't impress such people. You need to be on your toes and respond appropriately, because they might not give the answers you expected. The main thing, however, is to remember that we are all creations of Allah and that we'll all stand equally before Him on the Day of Judgement.