If You Can't See Me.......

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Sofia loves riding her bicycle around the cul de sac in front of our house. Should I arrive home early from work, she’d cheer in anticipation of whizzing around the neighborhood. Sometimes I leave work early just for that reason.

“Going back early today?”, someone is bound to ask on the way out.

“Yup, I got a date – with the prettiest girl in the world…….”

But she only gets to do so if one of us is able to keep an eye on her. By late afternoon, Lina is pretty much exhausted from taking care of both of them the whole day and she does not really relish the idea of keeping an eye on Sofia while she plays at being Eddie Mercx or Bernard Hinault. If it was Nazzim, it would be a different story. Him being a boy and twelve years old, the risks are much much lesser, provided of course he stays far far away from the main road and keeps his eyes open. Plus I’d ask him to check in every fifteen minutes or so simply to reduce our anxiety to zero.

But in Sofia’s case, no no no no no no. One of us will have to be there when she’s outside of the gate. I could be washing the car, I could be sweeping the garage or I could be cleaning the drains but every minute or so I’d look up and check where she is. Tasks take three times as long as I keep looking out for her.

Sometimes she’d be behind a car or some trees around the cul de sac, stopping to talk to friends or for whatever reason. I’d usually have an anxious minute or so before she gets back into view. Then it would be a forced check in for her.

“You know very well that you have to be where I can see you all the time. So, if you can’t see me, that means I can’t see you. Make sure you can see me all the time okay?”

There would be a slight tightening of the mouth and her face becomes expressionless. The young lady is not too pleased with the rebuke.

“Ok, go on now. Not too fast, look where you are going and please don’t stand on the pedals”.

That slight smile reappears and she’d go back to her cycling with vigour, her cheeks already turning a bright pink.

"I hope she remembers, if you can’t see me, that means I can’t see you."

Stay in my line of sight, please dear.

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Hendrik and Wonderful Malaysia

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A few colleagues and me have been teaching a very willing Dutch colleague to speak Malay. So everyday it’s a few new Malay words for Hendrik, our geophysicist. He'd say words like "sekarhang", "nanti dulu", "mari makan", "baliklaaaaaa" and "benci tapi rindu" like he's one of us.

We tried learning Dutch from him but after a few sessions of throat-clearing attempts at the language we figure he’d be a better Malay-speaker that all of us combined would be at speaking Dutch. I’ll stick to the choice Dutch words that I learned from Willem and Jan when we watched the Brazil-Holland world cup match in 1994 and some other real simple words like meneer and mvrouw….. Now, if you remember well, Holland lost that particular match so you could imagine the kind of words that I learned that day from those two.

We have introduced him to mamak and Malay cuisines, some local fruits and teh tarik but we have yet to succeed to get him to taste, just to taste, sambal belacan and we have managed to stir up some interest in “dhurhian”, as he would say it. But seeing me eat tempoyak today dampened his enthusiasm for the fruit but I think we managed to convince him that “dhurhian” would not be as bad. It’s OK to lie to him, in the interest of him learning more about the wonderful taste of our food.

He finds many things in Malaysia amazing. The weather is wonderful, “Two seasons, hot and hotter”. The people more so. Friendly, easy to communicate with. Everyone is willing to help an orhang (not a typo) putih. He said most places are as safe as home, good old Holland that is, maybe even safer.

“But don’t tell my fellow Dutchmen that I told you that.”

“Oh, you are so kind, we believe you.”, we’d say.

He went up to Cameron Highlands recently and had nothing but praises for the place. Things are cheap. He’s got a wonderful boss, me!!!. Our answer to him was pure, simple and the truth :

“Well, Hendrik, that’s Malaysia. Wonderful ain’t it?”.

But then, there are the ways we put our lives at risk with our driving antics. And the lives of our children when they are seated with us in the front seats of our cars.

“Well, Hendrik, that’s Malaysia. Wonderful ain’t it?”.

He went drinking once and was amazed when one of his colleagues, who is absolutely plastered, decided to drive home. No one prevented him from doing so.

“That guy could hardly walk, much less drive!!!”

“Well, Hendrik, that’s Malaysia. Wonderful ain’t it?”.

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Happiness

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To Sofia, happiness is when I take the day off from work. It goes without saying that my off day will start by sending her to ugama school. She'd make me promise that I'd pick her up too. That usually means that she'd chuck her bag into the car, say something about going to the shop, runs off and comes back with junk food. The same thing with her sekolah kebangsaan. I'd have carry her heavy bag for her up the steps to her school and at the top, she'd kiss me goodbye before she heads for her class. And her standard instruction would be not to use the car when picking her up, she prefers to walk home. Which would also means she'd get to buy yogurt. She can't do that if we use the car, we don't pass by the spot where the yogurt is being sold.

It amazes me that I am able to make her day just by sending and picking her up from school. Lina sounds a bit jealous though, she has to do it most of the time but she too finds it incredible that I could just waltz in and make going to school fun. Papa the chaffeur is preferable over Mama. I'll take whatever I could get her now, before she becomes embarassed to be seen with her dad.

Ah well, life is so kind sometimes.

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Trip Back to the Old 'Hood (Part 2)

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I wonder what happened to Ah Chong. He was sent overseas when he was sixteen and I have never seen or heard from him since then. We used to strike the utility pole between our houses with a piece of rock whenever we wanted each other to come out of the house. Usually it's after dinner a few times a week and the darkness made it easy for us to hide once we have made the signal. The secret didn't last for long since pretty soon even my father would look at me over his reading glasses whenever Ah Chong whacked the metal pole. We'd either sat in one of his dad's buses listening to one of those 8-track cassettes, roam around the kampung or hitch a ride on the ladder at the back of the town bus from the Mamak's shop to the Apek's shop, a distance of about 300 metres. Once, the bus didn't stop at the Apek's shop and Ah Chong was carried all the way to the next stop in Kampung Kuantan, a distance of about 2 miles. But that was not the worse. On the way to Kampung Kuantan the bus had to go through this place called Segenting and all our lives we have heard of tales about all the ghosts and spirits that haunt or frequent that place. That night I chased after the bus right until the entrance to Segenting and not knowing what to do next, for the next 10 minutes or so I hollered out his name madly into the night. Fortunately, he appeared a few minutes later, exhausted and panting like a mad boxer and that was our last trip in that direction of the bus route. We stuck to going towards the Mamak's shop only on our bus hitching exploits. That way, should the bus didn't stop, we'd only end up 2 miles towards Jonsen (a corruption of Junction) and there are no ghosts or vampires in Jonsen, only mad dogs and drunkards, whom we could easily outrun or kick our way to freedom.

Mok, as we called his father, is a typical Malaysian Chinese rags to riches story. He started as a labourer and when he got his first car, a Datsun 120Y, Ah Chong's mother, would ferry children to school for a fee and later came a van, then a small bus, a medium bus and by the time Ah Chong left, they still had all of those plus six big buses. He later added a Mercedes, a night club and a bungalow to his properties.

No wonder Mok and pack grew rich. Almost every day they'd only be home by 1 or 2 a.m. and by 4.30 a.m. we could hear the growling of the buses' engines being warmed up again for another day's trips. Ah Chong's mother, whom all of us called Ah Chin, is Mok's second wife. Mok's children with her are Ah Chong, Su Yok, Su Kin and Ah Leong. Every boy has a little brother like Ah Leong, except of course, the Ah Leong's of the world. Ah Leong is a bratty little kid, rats on his brother and his brother's best friend.

Mok also had children by his first wife, whom I had never met, the wife, I mean, and with her he had Ah Chin (sounds like his second wife's name), Ah Moi, Ah Lei and another Ah Chin, whom we called Ah Chin Kecik, who had the misfortune of having one leg smaller than the other. To this day, I have this perpetual vision of Ah Chin (the eldest sister) chasing Ah Leong around, trying to feed him, Ah Moi would always be in the kitchen cooking, Ah Lei forever cleaning the house and Ah Chin Kecik would go about limping around the garage with a huge broom trying to sweep every single piece of dust before the stepmother comes home. Some of the other kids called her Ah Chin Tempang but my mother forbade us to do so. Once my younger brother forgot about it and his mouth got slapped faster than you could say limp. It goes without saying that Ah Chong, Su Kin, Su Yok and Ah Leong hardly do anything at all.

Ah Leong and my brother are of the same age but they could not stand each other, unlike Ah Chong and me. We were the best of friends. Once in a while, Ah Leong would misbehave and Mok would tie one of his feet to the sewing machine with a piece of rope and he could only scamper around as far as the rope would allow. Somehow he never untied himself except when he has to go to the toilet maybe, after which he would go about carefully retying the rope so that it would look to Mok that it has stayed as such since he left the house, let it be for a few hours or a day or two. Ah Chong told me that once Mok caught him not attached to the sewing machine and made minced meat out of him so I guess that's a good reason to stay hitched to a Singer. Besides, Mok in his baggy boxer shorts with his singlet raised and resting against his ample belly doesn't really paint a painless picture, especially coming at you with a belt. I can't recall Ah Chong being tied as such, if ever.

When we first moved there, my mother told me that Ah Chin would come over to our house a few times a week and asked my mom's help to look after Su Kin, who was still a baby then. At that time her step children have not joined them yet and they have no one to look after Su Kin. Ah Chong was about three years old at that time and was big enough to follow her around. She would show up at our house with Ah Chong, Su Kin and a bottle of milk and put Su Kin down on the pavement OUTSIDE of our house and told my mother that we don't have to bring her into her house, just let her lie there and feed her only if she cries. Other than that, we could just go on doing whatever we were doing. Of course we didn't do that. My mother would carry Su Kin into the house and my sister who was about eight at that time, if Ah Chong was three, I was five and she should eight then, ya, tried persuading my mother to adopt Su Kin.

"Alaaaah, mak, kita mandikan dia dengan air tanah mak, lepas tu kita bela lah dia.....", she'd plead with our mother.

I had troubling visions of Su Kin gasping for breath as we bathe her with air tanah. Well, you couldn't blame us then, she was eight, I was five and we were not too clear about this samak menyamak process.....

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Giving a Bit Back

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I have been a bit busy lately. You see, my mother was in the hospital the whole of last week, because of a lung infection, among other things, and I make it a point to see her daily, after work or take time off to sleep over at the hospital. Especially after a pal mentioned that we should visit our parents, especially when they are sick, whenever we can because if we are too busy or don’t make the effort, nothing could be done, even with all the money in the world, after they are gone. Trust me, he said, it came from personal experience.

Maaaan, the chairs in the hospital are not made for sleeping. Plus getting up about ten times during the night to help her, let it be getting her a drink or to the toilet takes a toll on me but no problemo, the least I could do for the person to whom I owe my existence to. Later in the day, hollering out loudly to the tune that was playing on the radio, a kretek and the previous day’s still warm coffee while driving home from Seremban to KL did help me reach home safely. But I slept through half an hour of the movie Robot later that day.

“Is your Papa sleeping?”, Lina asked.

“Ya, he is and he’s snoring a bit. But just a bit la….”, Nazzim would say.

She’s out as of Saturday, a lot better but still weak. Now, if we could just get her to stop worrying about the many many things that women her age worry about needlessly. Her favorite people are a main source of her worries. I try telling her that they are adults and she should not worry about them, whether they have money, whether they are healthy or whether they are alive or dead. Those people are much much younger than her, much much stronger and should be serving her and not the other way around.

It is hard to see my mother grow old. She took care of the seven of us, one grandson full time and later, till now, my sister’s four kids too, on the virtue that she stayed with my sister. She has this funny relationship with my sister – can’t live with you and can’t live without you kinda thing. Me, I am the youngest biologically but I am also known as Bongsu No. 2. My sister is Bongsu No. 1. My younger brother is Bongsu No. 3. But when we say Bongsu, we usually mean my brother.

“Mak, Bongsu mana?”

“Ada, dia pergi rumah Mak Itam kejap…..”

Ha ha, Bongsu. That brother of mine. I’m not her favorite, for that title belongs to someone else. I realized that a long time ago, shrugged my shoulders and went on. Surprisingly, it is not Bongsu No. 1 or Bongsu No 3 either.

I would probably go visit her again tonight and will do so until she says that I don’t have to do it daily and then I’ll do it every other day until she says I can stand down to Defcon 4 or 5. I guess I’ll go on visiting while it is still possible to do so.

For my friend’s words kept ringing in my ears.

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Of Kancils and Other Issues

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It is with great relief that I read that the government will pass laws to limit the number of passengers in small cars. They should also do it for motorbikes, har har har har. That’s a good one. I crack myself up sometimes. They should also pass laws requiring children on motorbikes to use helmets. I am sure there are no such laws as everyday thousands upon thousands of children travel on bikes without the benefit of helmets. I have written before on this but an interesting topic is fun to chew upon.

As with many Malaysian laws, folklores and tales, the law will be passed with much fanfare, the authorities make a big case out of implementing it for the first few days and then we are back to whatever we were doing before that. Why? Enforcement. The E word. Plus why should anyone be scared? In the upcoming small passenger car comedy (to be played soon) we can always hide three kids on the floor at the back of a Kancil. Many people don’t use seat-belts. There are thousands of kids not wearing helmets and many drivers use the phone while driving. In Singapore, talking on the phone while driving is a jailable offence. And they enforce it. You get caught, you go to jail. Period. Don’t mess with the Sing police….. Back home, we see people driving and talking on the phone everyday. If they get caught, it is only RM 300, I think, or maybe less as there are other ways out. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you usually I try to reason things out when I get stopped for any offence. More often than not I fail but then I just pay the compound and move on. But never for using a handphone. Got my handsfree kit lah.

The daily papers are full of comedy. The Bukit Cherakah debacle. Subang or Sepang. It makes life a lot more fun I guess. We Malaysians are what people call fire fighters. When it’s too late. When it is after the fact. After s_it happens. We try and find out if the engineer is qualified or otherwise after the building has toppled. After the bridge has fallen down. We place the close-circuit cameras after the murder has been committed. We are satisfied our football team came in fifth out of six teams. But then, this is our country. Love it or leave it. No prizes for guessing under which category most of us falls into.

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Dumped and Rejected

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Hey, I got dumped and rejected last week. Dumped on Tuesday and rejected a few times over the week. But never mind. In a way of saying only lah, those occurrences were ancient history actually. I think in life, I am like many others, of which being rejected or dumped happened to many of us. But since we are on the subject, why don't we go ahead...

I always thought that one of the biggest advantages guys have over gals is that we could go on trying to woo someone after a million rejections and no one will say "perigi cari timba". But then is it fair that the timba can cari all the perigi it wanted but not the other way around? Actually, not that it is wrong to do so. If the perigi has got good strong legs and wants to hunt a timba or two, more power to the perigis....

In the late 80's when I was working in Brunei, there was this one guy who wrote his name and phone number neatly and repeatedly over a whole page of A4 size paper, made maybe ten copies and then cut them out and presto, he had maybe 800 pieces of paper that has his name and phone number on it. And believe it or not, he then proceeded to give those out at every opportunity he has, even cutting in front of cars to stop drivers, lady drivers of course and dish out his "business paper". Not business card lorrr, those things didn't qualify as cards. I kid you not. That's when I decided to stay away from him because I rather think that his way is a bit too extreme for me. But thinking about it, he might have something going on there. I mean, at a success rate of 1%, he's got 8 leads. At a success rate of 2%, it is 16!!!!! You don't need better odds than that if you have 800 chances. But then some of us guys might need that number of chances, ha ha ha!!!

But one thing for sure, that guy is a good example of an excellent timba..... So, keep on mengurating.... rejections is part of life and being dumped is just another form of rejection, albeit later. Ouchh.......!!!

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Thoughts at 4.37 pm, 3 March 2005

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I have been quiet on the blog front these last few weeks. I am paying a steep price at work. Only within the last three years have I actually on some nights woke up from sleep, thinking about work. What have been done. Yet to be done. Ought to be done. Should have been done. I have thought of moving to another place. I have made the initial moves to move to another place. How does Morocco sounds to you? The casbah. Fez. Now try Casablanca. My favourite word in the whole wide world. Casablanca. And that is before the song. Casablanca. Casablanca. Casablanca. Try it.

Aaahhh, the song. The song always reminds me of someone. Oh oh, here we go again. Me and my memories. Is that bad? If we look in the rear view mirror too much, will we crack the grille? I don't care...... Imagine short hair, eyes that smile along each time she smiles. A butt so sexy that I can’t get my eyes off it, hahahahaha!!!!!. Simply not good for my heart. But at least I managed to wring a promise to have the shirt hang out whenever jeans are on the itinerary. But the sneakers can stay, even with a baju kurung. Because if you have to, you can really really run in sneakers. But sneakers with baju kurung? But you can’t run in a baju kurung? Yes, you can if you wear spandex. Nothing strange about that but who have heard of spandex twenty-three years ago? Somehow “Eyes” had spandex ten years before it became popular.

I have sidetracked quite a bit. Huh, Morocco. Casablanca. Butts. “Eyes”. I can dream, can’t I? I still do.

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