It's quite an embarrassing story actually, there was this essay competition that was held in conjunction with Youth Ace 2014 ... and I sort of won.

The reason I wanted all that was to focus more on the message that I wanted to convey. I knew I wanted to talk about Umar al-Khattab's Tamannau. I wanted to talk about the fear of changing paths of pursuit, dwelling on the road not taken and putting age as an excuse, I wanted to include the green light analogy and how it represent the false pretense that our anxieties anticipate, and I just didn't want any of the characters to distract the reader from sinking in all that. I purposely didn't want to disclose the gender and relationships because I didn't want to compartmentalize this type of conversation to only a certain level of intimacy. What I did however emphasize was how dearly the protagonist care about the second character and I think that's the only thing that matters. 

One of my essay titles paid homage to the Beat Generation, specifically Allen Ginsberg. I was reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road during the period in which I was finishing those essays. A recurring theme that occurs in Beat centered stories revolves around Allen growing out of his naivety and being influenced by these people he admire (Eg: Lucien Carr, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, etc.) thus, 'Allen in Wonderland' has been in almost every autobiography book or movie iteration that I know of and I think it fits well with the theme of my essay. I mean, the whole world is a Wonderland, we'll always find things we never expect. Life always take us by surprise, and just because we've grown up, doesn't mean we should stop wondering.

I named the other essay 'Fragments of us' simply because I was looking for a title that would describe how disjointed we actually are and emphasize that change isn't really that hard because of that. I was also listening to Daft Punk's Fragments of Time while writing it, so there's that.

After the results were out and the essays were published on langitilahi's website, someone asked me what were my references for the essays, and that question really baffled me as much as I didn't quite understand what it meant and didn't exactly knew how to answer properly. I didn't cite anything— specifically there was nothing to cite. Everything was pretty much the kind of things I say to someone while we're having a cup of tea. I wasn't aiming for an academic report on the notions of human behaviour and its direct proportion towards personality change by age manipulation. I wouldn't be comfortable people referencing my writing as much as I'm not comfortable referencing others.

I assume what she really meant with the question is "Where did you learn all that?", and she expected the answer to be in the form of a book, which is why the question didn't make much sense to me because everything that I am today is an accumulation of everything that I've ever experienced first-hand in life or otherwise and books are merely a small portion of that.

I had a similar conversation with my sister quite recently. She was worrying about not reading enough books to be a well-rounded dae'i (something within those lines, I can't remember particularly what she said) and I was quite dumbfounded. If you don't like reading, then you don't have to force yourself to read anything. The point of learning is not to know where the knowledge is, but it is to absorb the knowledge well enough that you can explain to someone else about it.

I think the most important thing about learning is to be moved by it, to have a sense of curiosity and a passion to understand what is happening and why it did. Regardless if it's a book, a movie, a tv show, a random thing your lecturer said in class, the things your naqibah said in usrah. No matter how compartmentalized everything seem to be, from one angle or another everything can be related to anything, and the will to find that relation is the trigger to a critical thinking mind.

That being said, I cannot say that these thoughts are result of my solitude, but I also cannot say that all these information came from legit sources. The most accurate reference that I could say is life itself, and that makes me sound obnoxious as well as pretentious but my limited mind capacity could only come up with that, so that's my answer I guess.

This is probably one of my greatest achievement in writing, considering that the competition was open to anyone who signed up for the convention which not only includes Malaysians living in Malaysia, but also there were some who were studying in Jordan and Egypt etc who participated as well, and in all honesty, I feel embarrassed that those two essays represent this achievement because they're not even my best works.

I was finishing up these two essays and submitting them in the midst of Education Week chaos which was quite a gamble because I genuinely thought I couldn't win this. I've been drafting those essays for so long I just didn't want to see it anymore. There is such an emotional disengagement in the narrative like I'm just throwing random facts without relating them with one another and I just don't feel proud about it. I could do better, but I didn't and that bugs me a lot. Which also explains why it took me months just to write this post.

But when Aiman Azlan called out my name, it felt so surreal. I was sitting with Syakira, her sister and K.Ain at the back of the hall and so I walked all the way to the stage with adrenaline pumping in my veins and it's such a great feeling that even after I went back to my seat I couldn't stop shaking. Syakira and K.Ain were playing with the trophy and I was just sitting in my seat trying to calm down, trying to sink everything in, thanking God for His mercy and everything he has given me.

It was a great night, I met my neighbour Aifa, my other neighbour Farhana, my long lost primary school classmate Izzati, my ex-roomate's sister Raihana Rosdi (can't remember her sister's name but she calls her 'Yah'), my sister's long lost primary school classmate Safiyyah, and I dragged along my ex ungs groupmate Sumayyah, and I had such a wonderful time, the slots were amazing and I felt so pumped after the convention. I felt so grateful for the opportunity, and I pray that there are more opportunity that awaits, and I pray that I do more regardless of the opportunities.