I've been confused about my life ambition my whole life. When I was 5 to 16 I wanted to be an architect. This was because my mother was an architect herself. When I was 17, I entered matriculation and had doubts about architecture but I assured myself that this hate-love relationship is just a phase.
After two years of studying architecture, I began to take up projects and convinced myself that business was what I'm good at. But then again, I sucked at rolling the dough and ended up exhausting the dough of its previous gusto.
Four years later, I still don't know what to do with my life.
It was at night. I looked outside.
It was raining. It was cold. I asked my wet shoes: What now?
It was at night. I looked inside.
"That's easy" a teenie weenie voice said "You want to tell stories"
Memories are time travellers. I instantly remembered how I was and still am infactuated with the art of storytelling. When I was too young to write stories, I drew dungeons, castles, space pods and had my cousins travelled through it with their imagination with the aid of drawings and narration.
I read a lot when I was small and my mother encouraged this habit. She would pack me a book or two wherever we go for outings. She wasn't much of a reader but she knew that I love to occupy my time reading fictions so she stocked a large cabinet with an assortments of books.
When I was in primary school, my hobby was to invent stories and wrote them all in a puppet-like folded paper. I asked my classmates to choose a number for them to embark in a future that I tailored. I also had an awful habit that got me canned and grounded. I loved to lie. I didn't lie because I was afraid of the consequences of my actions. I lied a lot because I secretly liked the idea of determinable outcomes. It was as if I was weaving my own life web. It was all very exciting. I also made my own puppet theatre that starred Dan the Cowboy!
The later part of my childhood was robbed by my parents' divorce.
After everything was in order, I made more advanced attempts to tell stories. My mother bought me a walkman for my birthday but I used the walkman to make audio ghost stories, jungle adventures and epic badminton matches? I made slideshow movies with powerpoint I showed it to all my family and friends. Looking back, I've no idea they were so impressed. Before graduating school at 16, I'd read exactly 127 novels that I traded with friends, borrowed from the library or bought at MPH.
When I entered Uni, my love for films flourished because for the first time, I was in charge of the movies I wanted to watch. I rented 5 movies every week and journeyed to the far end of Petaling Street to get my hands on rare foreign films. I made short videos and as one thing lead to another, I got better at making videos and began winning competitions.
So in a way, even though I wanted to become an architect and an entrepreneur, I was drawn into the world of storytelling since I was very very small. I just didn't realise this until recently.
A lot of people commented on my first short film personally and through the internet but when Yasmin Ahmad gave a positive comment, it was a god-sent validation.
So confirmed lah ni!
I know what I want to do with my life!
I want to make films!
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