Rainy afternoon

my poladroid cats

I found this tiny little program that let you convert your normal photo into a polaroid.

kitty and gatti

I just realise that I haven’t been posting my cats’ pictures recently. The old is getting older and the fat is getting fatter.

looking back

I can never understand why I like to take his picture. It looks so different from how I identify him, almost unrecognisable. Where is the realism we so often relate with photography?

Landscape #1

Angry lady from across the street

The brother sister pair of Koko and JJ paid a visit to my otherwise peaceful home and caused a stir.

Gatti big and small #3

56cm x 41 cm. This is Gatti, at the table’s edge. I’m still not exactly sure why I draw. Or what I can do with it. I certainly didn’t find it in books. I haven’t been drawing in pencil for awhile. Still the cheapest way to draw. What is that something that a photograph cannot capture? A photograph can show almost exactly what our eyes can see. Why do we want to create something unreal instead?

Gatti closeup

A comforting gaze.

Cat culture

Going through a series of my cat pictures, I realise that there is one commonality between them. They are mostly pictures of cats looking at something. Their eyes are such a prominent features on the faces that you can’t help wondering what it is outside of the picture that is so interesting. We’ll probably never be able to know how a cat sees. It is, however easier to understand how other human see. Seeing is something so natural to us that I think we seldom think about what we see. We’re selective of what we choose to see. What we see also depends on our knowledge of the world. The meaning of the world we can understand around us is represented by our own culture and history. We learn those meanings through our daily interaction with our social world. Mass media today helps us pick up meanings and representation from other culture especially from the western world. From there, we learn to stereotype the westerners just as how they would stereotype Asians. It may sound a bit like essentialism and can potentially lead to racism. Nevertheless, I am ready to accept stereotyping as part of our second nature. We are always forced to make decision based on limited information. Our statistical machine in our brain is not very effective but it is efficient enough to give us a preliminary result for us to make decision. A good example is that we stereotype cats in all cultures. It is very common because the study of animal behavior in science is very new. Zoology, ethology are all 20th century science. It also wasn’t very long ago that we get rid of many superstitions related to cats (some still survive). And we are all too familiar with the stories we read and heard as a child about cats and all the stereotyping of cats in popular culture that we simply belief that they are all true. One example is the idea that cat loves to eat fish. Cats are carnivores that eat meat just like any lions and tigers. In fact, a cat’s diet that is entirely consisted of fish is bad for the cat. But popular culture dies hard. Standing in front of the cat food section in a supermarket (in Malaysia as far as I know) will demonstrate that. You can hardly find any cat food that does not have fish as a main ingredient. But how do we overcome the side effect of stereotyping then? There is no way we can read and learn and absorb every kind of knowledge in every culture. It’s just impossible. But making a habit of making our own self discovery each day is a good beginning. Yup, especially when information now is so easily accessible.

Yawn…

My thoughts have been pretty hazy and fragmented for the last few days. Many things to write but the ideas just cannot converge and take shape into something coherent. Bits and pieces here and there. Hopefully my mind clears up in the next few days… critical weeks to come.