Things happen.

He stays at his workplace this chap, because he don't have money to go back home, pretty depressing to say the least, but then again, I told him, you're awfully lucky to have a job.

"Berikanlah aku 10 pemuda maka akan kuguncang dunia"

When you sit down and think about it, Sukarno's bold, blood boiling statement is not that hard a thing to achieve, especially if you take it literally, to shake the world. Look around you, pick up a newspaper and read. The world has been shaken by less a number of men than that.

"Berikan aku 10 pemuda maka akan ku-ubah dunia"

Now that's something yet to be seen.

Three Quotes

1. Only enemies tell the truth, friends and lovers lie endlessly.

2. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.

3. Friends come and go, enemies accumulate.

It rained today. Thank God, it rained today.

He took a glance at the clock, hanging on the wall, that clock he very much despised. Why? Because it lies, it's not honest, it gives false hope and breaks bona vide ones. He despised it because it was 5 minutes early. How funny, he thought, to despise something yet having to rely on it day in and day out. Oh the beauty, oh the tragedy. The duality of men.

Yet today, as of that moment, neither if the clock was lying or if it is telling the truth, he knew that it was him who is late. The thing with being late it that from the moment you establish that you're late, your every action will speed up: you talk faster, you walk faster, you think faster. Faster, as if you've been cheated by time, who ran before the gun goes 'bang', in an Olympic dash with the weight of your nation's hope hung around your neck, waiting for the gold to lift it off. Faster, faster, faster.. until as always, you lose.

You lose, but your morality is unshaken. You lose, because the clock lied. You lose, because time cheated. You are never wrong.

By the time he arrived, the place was empty but for a lone figure in the distance, with a broom, sweeping the floor in slow mundane motion, left and right, left and right, left and right. If you play a soft string orchestral music to accompany this visual, you will get a beautiful movie scene, when the selfless janitor, who the night before saved the young girl from the school bullies, went back to his life as nothing happened yet little did he know, that the young girl he saved was actually his daughter, unknown to him because she was born while he was in the prison and she was running down the opposite corridor to thank him only to get there a few seconds too late because the bullies came back to gun him down in cold blooded revenge. Alas, today, is not going to be that day.

He walked over to the guy, waved over and said hi.

"It rained today", he said, gesturing out the window to the tiny droplets of water, racing down the window panes.

The man glanced outside and smiled. "Thank God, it rained today".

Rene Burri.

Oh, they are just doing that to get attention, you say but you don't know what they've been through.

Yeah, maybe they are doing it to get attention, because it's the only way they know how to. We don't know because we don't know what they've been through.

God hates people who take their own lives, they burn in hell for everafter but we don't know what they've been through.

It might be a small a matter to you, how stupid their problems and their grieves but you don't know what they've been through.

Instead of all the sneering why not we spend a time and think about what they've been through?

You know that guy in your class, on the same bus as you, in that corner of the restaurant every Tuesday afternoon, their long blank stares and their fingers lost in the mess that is their hair. Why don't you ask him what he's been through?

Or that girl alone on the bridge in a cold winter's night. What is she going through?

Why don't you trying giving them some attention before they demand it themselves? You have people you can talk to about your mom, your work, your friends, your dreams, your hopes, your fear, your pain, your joy, your love. Be that someone to people who aren't quite as lucky as you.

You don't know what they've been through.

You don't know what they've been through.

You don't know what they've been through.

Suicide is painless when it is not happening, though it's not as painful as living with no one listening.

You know how when you go to interviews and you'll be asked what do you want to be in 5 years time? A few times I answered 'Happy'.

I want to be happy.

Most times though, what I get in return is blank stares.

"Happy?"

Yeah, happy. I figured that what they wanted to hear is that I want to earn RM10,000, live in a house along Jalan Bukit Pantai, drive around in a Volkswagen Golf.. you know, that sorta stuffs. Being happy doesn't sound too ambitious I suppose, or perhaps, earning RM10,000, living in a house along Jalan Bukit Pantai and driving around in a Volkswagen Golf is their idea of happiness.

Sorry I'm not that guy. There's plenty of him around, you can have him. I can't be him.

I remember telling one interviewer, chit-chatting in an interview that is clearly lost, when he asked me what is it that I really wanted to do, that I want to be a photojournalist, a war correspondent perhaps, with my dusty camera, behind debrits of what was a house, somewhere on the frontline of some future war, covering every minutes of it.

He then asked me, aren't you scared you might get hurt? I told him, if I get to do that, I don't mind dying. But don't ask me to do things I don't want to do, because I know that I'll never going to do it.

This is Amir Hadi Azmi

To paraphrase Izham Ismail, 'Tak terror, tak handsome, tak kaya. Rock pun tak.'

March 2011.
Jalan Imbi.
Leica M6 + Summilux 50/1.4 + Kodak Ektar 100 + Hariry Ariffin's lasik eyes.

Ehsan and Sofia