It’s Sunday morning. I had just finished a morning ride and I’m just sitting in the living room of my family home in Penang.
It occurred to me that it was time to blog again but I didn’t want to blog about anything too serious. Heck it’s Sunday. The day of rest for my mind so I’m gonna blog today about whatever comes to mind at this very second. I don’t know where this will lead and the title I’m gonna add to this entry will only be added at the very end of it. After seeing where my free writing has taken me.
Every time I come back to Penang I feel some level of nostalgia. Penang after all is the town I grew up in. The history of it is a little odd. My mom is from Ipoh and my dad from a small town in Johor called Kluang. How they both ended up in Penang? Well my mom’s Ipoh family had started some sort of a business in Penang so she moved to join the family business. And my dad with her.
Today both my parents call Penang home. Not Ipoh or not Kluang.
Today I too call Penang home. Looking back to the time when I was growing up in Penang I felt some level of bliss because of the ignorance that came with it. As a kid I always thought that Penang was the world. Or Penang was one of the biggest cities in the world simply because that’s all the world I knew. Yes my parents did bring me for some trips overseas but I never thought about the size or scale of the countries I visited. I was always thought they were the size of Penang. Of course I have heard of KL but I never went there much as a kid so I didn’t imagine much about it.
Our time was spent in malls that I grew too familiar with. Many of which are really old and run down today. There was KOMTAR, that we spent in our early days… and then came 1-Stop. Which was then the biggest mall in Penang at the time. I spent so much of my teenage years there because it was where all the cyber cafes were. Then came an even larger mall called Bukit Jambul Complex which was really far from where I was staying and then the malls we know today Gurney Plaza and Queensbay. All these old malls, even though they were arguably inferior to the ones in KL or Singapore…. we never felt that way perhaps because we never knew better. We never really knew what to compare it to. Yes we’ve been to some malls overseas but I’ve never really been long enough to fully experience or know it inside out to make a comparison. I was after all a kid.
Penang was the world for me because I didn’t know better. Today of course when I’ve seen more of the world I realize that while Penang is a fast growing and beautiful city, it’s far from the largest city in the world I once thought it to be.
It made me wonder… that maybe sometimes ignorance is bliss. Thinking that Penang was the world and not knowing the rest of the world where there is goodness but just as there is bad things too. People in the world who kill each other, people who cheat one another or people who do things to hurt one another motivated by jealousy or greed or… well the list goes on.
It makes me wonder… that if I had just continued living a normal life in Penang. An ignorant one… not knowing what goes on in the outside world. Not reading all the news I’m exposed to online or on TV, would I be in a happier place?
Is ignorance… then really bliss? And if we all strive to be happy in life… then shouldn’t we be pursuing ignorance in life instead of enlightenment ?
Haha I know. Really deep thoughts this morning. But I guess having a clear mind on a Sunday morning gives me these thoughts.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space