This time, however, was for a good reason (aren't they all?). I went to KL for the weekend to volunteer for EnglishJer's HundredHundred exhibition at the Cooler Lumpur Festival in Kuala Lumpur (of course).
Technically, HundredHundred was a writing competition where people from ages 15-26 were asked to submit their written pieces for an exhibition at the Cooler Lumpur Festival. The catch was that each piece of writing needed to be exactly one hundred words long. Only the top one hundred pieces were displayed at the exhibition. Some examples pieces from the exhibition are provided for you below:
Like I said earlier, that's the technical explanation. The reality of HundredHundred is to provide the youth a platform to craft their own narrative and share it with the general public. People in general have a perception towards the youth (that they are petty, juvenile, don't think about stuff at all, hidup mau enjoy saja, etc.) and although they might be true to some extent, the HundredHundred aims to expose the passer-by to a wider array of stories that the youth have to share. Their concerns range everywhere from not having anything to write, to missing their mothers, to wanting to forget their experience of being raped. Heavy stuff.
Providing this platform and having people care about what young people have to say, because whether one likes it or not, older people are going to die and these young people are the ones that are going to take their place. They are the ones that are going to be the adults and make nation-changing (if not world-changing) decisions. They are the ones whose opinions will be reported about in the newspapers, and the ones that people will soon write about and read about and look up to or disagree with. It's worth taking a look and paying attention, because they're going to get there someday, and when they do, you'd be glad to know what kinds of thoughts put on paper became their stepping stones to bigger and greater things.
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