Teiresias, the blind Prophet

For this entry, I am going to write about Teiresias or also known as Tiresias. Teiresias is one of the characters that appear in the ancient play by Sophocles, “Oedipus Rex” or “Oedipus the King”. He was a blind prophet and seer of Thebes. He appeared in many Greek myths but here I am going to only focus on "Oedipus Rex".Basically, Dr. Edwin asked us to find out about Teiresias on the net because Teiresias was a unique person who had experienced what other men have not experienced. So, I surfed through the net and I found out some interesting info about him.

I think it’s best if I tell a little bit about the story of Oedipus Rex. Oedipus, the king of Thebes, called upon Teiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laios. At first, Teiresias refused to give a direct answer and instead hinted that the killer is someone Oedipus really did not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he had no foresight and then that Tiresias was involved in the murder, he revealed that it was Oedipus himself who had unwittingly committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus threw him out of the palace, but then afterwards he realized the truth.

So, basically Teiresias was blind. But the blindness was not in born. There are a lot of stories about the causes to his blindness. One of the famous one would be that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. The other one would be that Teiresias was blinded by Goddess Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. However, Teiresias was given a supernatural power which enabled him to understand birdsong, thus a gift of augury.

The most interesting part about Teiresias is that he was the only human being who had been a male and a female during his life. He was not a transvestite or transsexual or anything like that. But, there were myths behind his transformation. He was indeed born as a male. However, as the myth has it, as Teiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera, the goddess, was not pleased, and she punished Teiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. According to some versions of the tale, Lady Teiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Teiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time or trampled on them. As a result, Teiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity.

It is kind of interesting to actually know about how a human being can possibly have two genders during his life time. I am not promoting transsexual or transvestite in that sense. But can you just imagine how interesting for a person to experience both lives as a man and a woman. But I believe there’s always the bad side of it, right?

Writing script

This has to be my fourth entry in this blog. For this entry, I am going to write about my experience in writing my very own play scripts.
Basically, one of assignments for this course is to come out with a script for one act play for the language classroom which is meant for upper secondary classroom. Honestly, I haven’t had any experience in writing a script or anything like that before. But, as the course is “Teaching the Language of Drama” there’s no surprise that it requires us to write a script.
So, my group; Ziham, Bruno and I decided to come out with this one story about a boy, rather a teenage boy who wants an expensive football boot from his mother who obviously can’t afford to buy him. So, the mother worked hard by selling nasi lemak and kuih muih. Eventually she gets him the boots but unfortunately, the mother dies in an accident. We decided to come out with the story because we think that it is about young people and therefore, upper secondary students may relate to the story. However, after the first draft was submitted to Dr. Edwin, I was kind of surprised that Dr. Edwin found it very boring and melodrama. When I went through it once again, I admitted that it was very melodramatic. Just imagine could it be any more dramatic and melodramatic than the mother dies in an accident after getting her son the boots. Somehow, I think the story was pretty funny and very the typical boring Malay drama. Hahahaha. No offence to anyone but it was.
So, we created another story and the first draft was already given to Mr. Harold to evaluate and check. Basically, I have learnt a lot of things about writing a script. Among them is that the stage direction should be in a simple present tense. I know writing drama is somehow easy for some people but as for me, it is a difficult task to do. Why? Maybe because I am not creative enough. Yes, I am not one creative person and I find it so hard to think of a story for my drama script. Maybe, what I need is more reading of story books perhaps.
What I am hoping is that our second draft will be approved by Dr. Edwin because I cannot help writing and coming out with another drama story. How I wish I can be so creative, innovative and imaginative as my friends.

Zapin

In this particular blog, i am gonna write a review on a traditional dance that i have witnessed before. Obviously, it must be something that i have seen before, then only i can write a review on it,isnt it so?

Verily, i am not a person who is so into this traditional dance or anything like that. It's not like i am not being patriotic or what. It's just that i am not so crazy about it. I know it's important that we tresure this heritage for our future generation. So, i too feel obliged to play my tiny part in preserving this precious heritage. Hehehehe. It sound so corny and cheesy!!!

Speaking of traditional dance, i knew a couple of them such as Mak Yong, Lion Dance, Indian Dance, and many others. But the one i am quite familiar with is Zapin. That is only because I have tried it before and i honestly find it kind of interesting. Although it was only the basics moves that i have learned but at least i have some knowledge of it.

It was back in 2007 when i was at IPTI where almost all my classmates and i were sort of "forced" to take part in this Zapin dance. Let's not go deeper into why we were forced or what the zapin dance was held for. The main thing here is the zapin dance itself. Basically, i have not much knowledge of zpain dance but as i browsed thorugh the internet, sources have it that Zapin was introduced by Arab, Muslim missionaries from the Middle East in the fourteenth century. It is undeniably famous and popular in the state of Johor and there is no surprise why we were 'forced'to do the dance back at IPTI, JB. In the old days, only males were allowed to perform but nowadays, female dancers are included. It used to be performed solely for religious ceremonies but through the years it has become a form of traditional entertainment, so the participation of female dancers are allowed. The dancers usually perform in pairs and are accompanied by a traditional music instruments which i have no idea what the names are.

There are basically different types of Zapin but the famous and popular one has to be Zapin Melayu Johor. when we were asked to take part in the performance, I was kind of reluctant to go and perform the dance at first. But, as the process of learning, practising that took days went along, i found it fun and interesting.

Practising under the friggin' hot sun,bare footed on a muddy grass. can it get any worse than that?

This is so much better, practice in an air-conditioned hall

Showing some patriotisme there,hehehehe

Getting ready for the big show

It was time to show some moves. Can you spot me?

Imagine how awful it was dancing under the freakin' hot sun. I got tanned lines on my forehead and i definitely lost my street value for quite some times,haha.

Happy and proud faces after the show.

Basically, zapin is not so difficult to be learned. All you need is some willingness and passion to learn because steps in zapin dance are mostly repetitive with only some different styles. I remember how terrible the intensive practice for zapin dance i had but it all paid off. I enjoyed the whole journey of learning and performing zapin though there were some bad memories as well and i think my frieinds have the same feelings too. I like the cooperationa nd teamwork that we had during that time. However, what matter the most is the knowledge that i ahve gained about zapin. It is definitely gonna something that i will treasure in my life. At least, when someone were to ask me about traditional dance, i am more than proud to say that i have done one of it which is zapin.