Gong Xi ya Gong Xi! Xing Nien Kuai Ler!
Pehhh! It’s already the second day of February pun. My ma-in-law (who is 72, by the way) is so right. It takes a while to get to 30 when you are 20. But once you’re there, the next thing you know is people making fun of your birthday cake burried under too many candles!
You must we wondering…what am I talking ’roundabout’ nih kan? Tajuk this entry is Feb Buku. Feb as in this month, February. And Buku is buku lah. You thought I had a story on sabun Fab buku tu ke? Hee hee hee. No lah. I wanted to write about books sebenornyer. How I love books and how I fell in love with books. And about how…when nothing else can, books make me feel superpositive.
I love books. That, I am sorry, I can’t deny. Love is love, no explanation. I fell in love with books since I first saw one, I guess. I remember my first book which I shared with my elder sister. I told you I have an elder sister who was born in the same year and is only 10 months older, didn’t I? Nanti lah.
As goofy as it may sound, the title of my very first book was “Si Awang Labu”. Muah hahaha! And this is no acah-mat-labu joke, ya know. It was a hard-cover book dengan ejaan bahasa Melayu yang lama, siap dengan ‘e-tanda’, okay. Green in color, the cover bore a clean sketch of Awang Labu with a pencil on one of his huge ears.
It wasn’t a sad story, but I remember feeling sad reading it. (I could read when I was three years old, BTW.) Sebab the book describes Awang Labu in a very negative way.
Si Awang Labu kaki-nya pendek.
Si Awang Labu tĕlinga-nya bĕsar.
Ini kalam (old word for ‘pensil’) kĕpunyaan Si Awang Labu,
sayang-nya dia tidak pandai mĕmbaca dan mĕnulis.
Apa tu?
I guess it was the attitude of those older generations of writers, eh? The book went on and on pasal Si Awang Labu pegi skolah but he got so frustrated with how he wasn’t able to read and write in class. He ran away and tried to find his way home, came to a ‘Y’ intersection, but didn’t know which way to take because he could not read the road-sign. Duh!
The story ended with him crying at the junction waiting for somebody to take him home. Oh tedah! Mana tak meleleh my airmata mengenangkan nasib Si Awang Labu. But being a child who had been instilled with positive attitude right from day one, I dismissed all Awang Labu’s inabilities.
And now, writing about it makes me think…perhaps the writer WAS smart afterall. Pandai dia guna reverse psychology kan? He/She (can’t remember) probably told all the bad things about Awang Labu so that children wouldn’t want to be like him. The tak pandai membaca and menulis part, that is. If you were born with short legs and huge ears, what can you do about it lah kan.
Unless you wouldn’t mind going all the distance…for cosmetic surgeries. Iyewwww! Skin deep, beauty is.
Questa è Enida 
This was one of my first books too. I loved it, especially the illustrations. I think my parents got it to try to help me with my Malay. Not sure it worked but I love to read, so something good must have come out of it.