Shopping in Peace

Went shopping with my youngest daughter, Dilla, yesterday. Schools are re-opening after a week's holiday and she had a long shopping list. Her sister, Dana, stayed at home to pack but she too had her own long shopping list which she merrily stuffed in my pocket.

First stop: the toiletries section. Both of us walked in, each with a list in hand. Have I told you people before that I hate supermarket promoters? I hate them. I know they are just doing their jobs, earning a decent living and all, but I still I hate them.

I really get pissed off when they follow me around trying to convince me to buy the products they are representing instead of the one I have in mind. I would like to have the freedom of being swayed by their other advertisements -- printed, electronic, whatever -- and I prefer to read the labels myself and come to a buying conclusion on my own.

It would be understandable if they are introducing new products, but those shelves are filled with established and well-known brands!

Anyway, the evil side of me took charge of the situation yesterday and I had a great time giving them the snub. Everytime one of the girls approached me with their well-rehearsed sales talk, I just showed them the list and told them: "No thanks! I'm going by this list" and you'll be amazed at how quickly they went away.

Even when one of the older ladies was giving a lecture on skin care to a very attentive Dilla, I interupted by telling her: "You already know what causes pimples and blackheads; just stick to your list." So, bye bye Ma'am, no offence meant.

The rest of our shopping trip went on rather smoothly and I think even Dilla enjoyed choosing which variety of the things she set out to buy. Isn't that what shopping is all about?

The Taxi Driver

Missed the bus again last night. Ever since the bike was sent to the workshop, my whole life has gone awry. My time-table, schedules, work, play, meals, relationships; everything have been turned upside down, inside out. As if that wasn't bad enough punishment for not taking good care of the bike, the south-bound train chose to shuttle back and forth at the railway crossing at the precise moment that I needed to cross over to the other side of town where the bus terminal is. And that made me miss the last bus home, again.

As usual, I was not without my resources so I called a taxi to beat the bus at the next town across the Merbok river. After haggling at the exorbitant fare they usually charged desperate people trying to get home after dark, we were on our way through a shorter route to be ahead of the bus. As we moved out of town, I thought a little small talk would be quite appropriate.

"These buses can really fly at night, you know," the cab driver started. What a reassuring comment, I thought.

"Yeah! But they still need to stop a few times along the way to unload the passengers," I replied to conceal my own anxiety. I wished he would just step on the gas instead of trying to figure out who would get there first. This guy must have lost his fighting spirit, I thought. Or he was thinking of the double fare he would make if the bus were beat me instead.

"So where are you actually going, anyway?" he asked and I mentioned the name of the village where I live.

"Don't you know me? I went to the little Chinese school there when I was a kid!" he beamed, now getting rather close and personal. Ahh! I was, up to that point, trying to figure out whether he was Chinese or Malay. He had a sun-burnt complexion, wavy hair and a very fluent local Malay dialect. Sensing my hesistation, he continued, "Hey, I grew up with Mid and his brother, Mood! Of course, Mood has passed away now."

"Aha! Mid and his late brother Mood," I echoed. There were probably a dozen people in the village with similar last syllables in their names. "You're probably in the same league with Apoot and Pusan, too." I tried guessing by mentioning the corrupted local nicknames of Weng Ah-Fook and Lam Pu-Saw respectively.

His face brightened up as he laughed. "Those two are always trying to outdo one another. But I heard that Apoot has been kicked out of the house by his wife and kids, is that true?" he asked. That was news to me. But then again, anything would be news to me as I only went back to the village to sleep.

I told him the truth, "I haven't heard of that. But I do hear about him running after a certain Malay divorcee here in Sungai Petani. She must really be something, huh?"

"Yeah, I saw them a few times riding a motorbike together. Isn't that an offence? Won't he get arrested for that?" he asked with genuine concern.

"No!" I replied matter-of-factly. "They can't punish you for riding pillion on a motorbike! You need to do worse to get caught." After discussing at length on how Apoot got into the situation he was in, I motioned to him that we have arrived at the spot where I would wait for the runaway bus. As a parting shot, I asked him if he would drive straight home after that.

He replied with a wide grin, "Home? I don't have a woman right now. But I'm seeing Indian girls for one night stands!" With that, he drove off. Nice guy, didn't even get his name.

The bus that was supposed to be waiting for me at the terminal came after a few minutes' wait. As I sat in the bus making its way through the night, I chuckled at what had just transpired in the taxi cab. There was nothing like a little gossip and some dirty talking to make your day. And I would have something juicy to talk about in the coffee shop the following day.

On the other hand, whatever degree of moral decay they were talking about in the papers or on TV, it wasn't just happening on your side of the community. It was cutting right through the whole multi-racial society. It is just that we don't see or hear it happening within the other races because we don't speak to them enough!

The Muezzin and the Rock Singer

Received an SMS from my wandering son yesterday. It said, "I'll be singing at the Hard Rock next month! This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me since I took up singing." Hard Rock Cafe! I read the message with mixed feelings.

Reza is my only son, and big brother to my three daughters. He chose not to further his studies after secondary school and went to work instead. I have always taught him to be respectful of others and he's well liked wherever he goes. But he's always drawn to singing. He has this knack of finding a band without a singer and suddenly he's singing again for some unknown band somewhere. When he was still staying with us, he was always fighting for the mike with the village elderly muezzin. Hearing him on the loudspeakers of the village mosque reciting the Azan had a strange effect over us. His Grandma would stop everything she was doing just to absorb every word of his rendition of the Call for Prayer.

His career choice never received my approval knowing how superficial and unstable the local entertainment industry is. It's a make-believe world of assumed glamour and questionable moral and social practices. I have tried to steer him away from it by talking some sense and even fixing him up with a job at a friend's land reclamation project in Penang. I remember him coming back after a couple of months on the job to tell me that he found a band whose singer was leaving for a better offer. "It should be OK, Abah. The band boys are about your age!"

So he went back to Penang, renamed the band "Youngblood" started playing a few gigs until they were invited to play at a hotel in Langkawi. He was excited by the offer but half the band couldn't go due to family commitments. That ended his stint in Penang, too. My friend was selling the project out to another party and Reza didn't want to be stuck with a band that couldn't play out-of-town gigs, so he quit and returned to KL again where the happening was according to him. And things did happen for him as he was playing gigs in KL, Sabah and Sarawak using the stage name "Razor" as the leader of a band called "K-mist-3".

I have never encouraged him as I'm still the conservative Muslim father and I'm still convinced that there has to be a better way to find fame or earn a living. I never cease to remind him of my stand on his career choice, but I have never abandoned him for making a decision on his life. I was always there for him whenever he needed a father and I still am.

So when that SMS came in, I knew what he wanted from his father.
I replied, "Congratulations!"
Within seconds, his reply came in, "Thanks, Abah."
End of conversation. No further discussion on the subject was necessary.

Stranded!

By a strange twist of fate yesterday, I found myself stranded in the middle of nowhere at 7:30 pm without some workable plan to get my butt out of there. I just missed the last bus to civilisation by three precious minutes and there wasn't a single taxi in sight. So I called a couple of friends to come and rescue me but everyone was naturally tied up with something. So, you're on your own, Kri!

I lighted a cigarette to calm down the nerves and began to look at the problem right in the eye as rationally as I could. After a few seconds of deep contemplation, I concluded that I have only two options. One was to spend the night at that solitary bus stop deep in the rural interior and take the first bus or anything that moves out of there in the morning. The other option was to walk the hell out of there before it gets really dark.

I may be the outdoors type but the prospect of sleeping on the bench with only the village mosquitoes for company wasn't too appealing. Besides, I didn't bring my toothbrush along. The latter option appeared to be more practical and simple to carry out, you know, just put one foot in front of the other in a constant rythmic manner until the next town where I could get some form of motorised transport back to the office.

So, I decided to walk out of the place. Yes, the whole five over miles on my own two feet. I needed the exercise anyway as it has been quite a long while I gave this old heart a good workout. OK feet, start walking! I crossed over to the other side so that I could see oncoming traffic and they, me -- elementary Boy Scout stuff -- gritted my teeth and put my best foot forward.

I trudged on ignoring stupid motorists who honked and flashed their headlights at me. They probably thought I was on the wrong side of the road. The day turned into night as I walked through settlements, and past palm oil and rubber plantations relying very much on the lights of the occasional cars coming from behind me as those coming towards me practically blinded my eyes with their high beams. Whassamatter, haven't you morons seen a man walking on the roadside before?

At about 8:30 I arrived at the fringe of the Gurun indusrtrial area. Ah, civilisation at last. The place was well lighted so it was pretty much like an evening stroll from there on. People in town areas don't care even if you crawl on all fours across the street. So I dragged my weary feet past some fruit vendors near the North-South highway underpass, greeted them too and finally crossed the railway tracks into town at 8:55. I made it in one piece!

To celebrate my success, I walked into the first coffee shop I saw and ordered a tall glass of iced lemon tea and a piece of cake. The drink and that old mouldy cake never tasted so delicious before! Fauzi called just then to inquire if I still needed a lift. Told him not to bother as I was already in Gurun having a drink. Then he asked how did I get there. I told him that I walked, of course, to which he laughed in disbelief.

Damn you, Fauzi. I knew you were having a good time in some karaoke lounge in town. I could hear music in the background. I'd kick your ass if these feet weren't too tired!

Chai, Anyone?

Found this very entertaining blog yesterday titled Aziz in India. It is written by one Aziz Sunderji, a Canadian who's working for an NGO in India. Funny, yet informative. I especially like his description of one main preoccupation in that part of the world -- chai drinking -- because it reminds me of my visit to Pakistan many years ago.

Chai is tea mixed with freshly boiled milk. And you cannot find it anywhere else except in the Indo-Pak sub-continent, at least not the way they prepare and consume it. It was the only thing that I looked forward to every morning while I was there. I can still remember the mini-argument I had with a fellow traveller, Saiful, at the chai table.

Saiful is a Chinese (or Chini in Urdu) and he was very proud that the same word also meant sugar. He concluded that the Chinese people were as sweet as sugar in our chai, so we argued about that over a cup of piping hot chai. I was very close to giving up when the chai-wallah (with the help of an interpreter friend) told us the Urdu word for Malay was Malai which also meant the cream of the milk boiling in his pot. So that little storm in a chai cup ended in a truce and another round of chai!

If there's anything that could make me go back to Pakistan one day, it would definitely be the delicious chai.

Didn't Your Daddy Rock n Roll?

I was going through the source code of the Eliza program last night trying to make some sense out of the javascript when I felt asleep. When I woke up at about 4:00 am there was something weird on the radio. It was a programme where listeners can call in to talk about their encounters with the unseen.

On the air was a 46 year old caller complaining about the focus and purpose of the silly programme. He was rather pissed off with the DJ's futile attempt at unravelling things he didn't understand. And in his self-defence, the DJ said the programme was actually aimed at the younger listeners who enjoyed heavy rock music in between those ghost stories. Or something like that as I was not fully awake yet then.

The next caller was a 49 year old caller who actually wanted to share his spooky experience. I was wide awake by the time. Again the DJ went off key by saying, "49! I should be playing the joget (a form of Malay traditional music) after this!"

Those remarks were really uncalled for. It was very unprofessional of him to imply that people of certain age group should not be listening to his programme and worse still, participate by giving views different to his own! After failing to defend his stand on the purpose of this programme, he went on to display his ignorance of music history by assuming that people over 40 don't listen to rock music!

Hey, where was he when rock music started? Can he barely imagine what Woodstock was like?

Hug your Mother

Caught up with Cikgu Poi recently. I used to train in martial arts under him when I was (a lot) younger. Something he said hit me in the gut. Religion taught us that mankind came from the earth, and of course, to earth we shall return. That, he said, makes planet Earth our mother. And we refer to that mass of soil and everything in and on it as Mother Earth.

But, Poi continued, have we ever spared a kind thought to our Mother? Have we ever prayed for her? Have we ever treated her like good sons and daughters should? She gave forth a part of her when the first Man was created, and she keeps on giving and giving ever since to sustain us. And we in turn keep on taking everything we can from her -- causing alot of damage in the process.

Wow! I have never thought of it that way. I think I'll say a little prayer for Her tonight. I am going to meditate on Her and send her some some positive healing energy. Hopefully she'll know that there's still a son who still care.

Stretched Patience

Here's what the horoscope says today:
Just when you were sure you'd die of impatience, you've discovered you're going to live -- happily. The heavens have turned you into a veritable magnet for the attention of delightful new admirers. Oh, stop pretending you didn't know.

Here's what had happened so far:
I have been meaning to post some pictures of the recent mudflood at the village here on this blog. Since I wasn't there to record the damage on film when the disaster struck (I was in Sungai Petani the whole night waiting for the rain to stop so that I can ride my scooter home!) so I started to find someone who has the pictures. And my search led me to an NGO that has been very active in protesting against the setting up of the rock quarry.

But it has been a series of disappointments so far. The girl manning the phone said that nobody was in the office and her job there was, well, to answer the phone. So she gave me the number of the guy in charge who happened to be quite near my work place. I called this guy and he told me that all the pictures were in his computer at another place. Great! They were all in digitised form already so I don't have to scan them. I gave him my Yahoo address as Yahoo had increased the storage capacity recently and my mailbox should be able to take whatever they can send to me.
After a couple of days of waiting in anticipation, all my mailbox had were several spams in the Bulk folder and a couple of newsletters which I had subscribed. But, no pictures. So I sent out a polite SMS in case he had forgotten about the pictures, and I waited in frustration again.

A day later, someone from a sister organisation to the NGO called. Aha, things are moving a bit at last. Again, a confirmation that the elusive pictures were right there in their harddisk. Great, so can you send my some by email, I asked excitedly. There were so many pictures and he couldn't possibly send me all of them. No problem, I said, just send me five at a time as allowed by Yahoo. The guy from the sister NGO said that he was having some Internet connection problems in the area, so transmissin by email wouldn't be possible. Shucks, now they're telling me!

So how do I get my hands on those pictures? The guy suggested that I go to the website instead. Everyting I want would be there. Wow, they're on the 'Net too! So I surfed there hoping to be able to choase and download to my heart's content. Again, another disappointment. All I could find in the archives were three measly blurry pictures of the flood water! Nothing as spectacular as those printed on their protest literature.

I haven't given up hope. There must be a way of getting round this pathetic situation. Hope what the stars say will come true.

Old face, new attitude.

How is this for a make-over? Many of you think that the old profile picture was a little intimidating, so I'm swapping it with something more friendly, I hope. Like, dig that pair of shades, man.
p/s: All that hair and sunglasses courtesy of an old bolle ad appearing in the April 1997 issue of Waves.

Hitting the Books. Again.

I'm taking a few days off to hit the books. I still have one subject -- OOP -- to refer this Saturday. It is just round the corner and I'm still lingering about in Chapter III. If anybody's reading this posting, wish me luck!