Car Undilemma

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We have decided that we will not buy another car now to replace Lina’s car. Simply because we don’t have the money. I thought that I’d be able to squeeze a few bucks or so from our current monthly expenses but that might be easier said than done. Let’s put it this way, the amount of money that I have left over each month barely covers the amount needed for the monthly payment for the car.

“Are you sure we have the money to pay for the car?”, Lina asked.

“If we don’t, it might not be a good idea to buy the car now. Remember, if we are short of money, there is no one for us to turn to. You can’t ask emak for money and neither could we ask mama and papa, those three people have enough problems of their own”, she added.

Uh, yeah sure, ask my mother for money. Haven’t done that in, ooohhh, 20 years or so and I don’t intend to start again now. She is on the wrong side of seventy and the last thing she needs is me asking for money. Tunggu tanduk kucing bertanduk dulu.

“But I get a raise this month and at the most it would be a painful one year before we could breathe easier. Besides, the bonus later this year could help alleviate things a bit”, I said.

“Yeah, sure, that would mean an anxious, no, like you said, a painful one year and the last thing I want to see is you worrying about our monthly expenses. I hate it when you worry about things that we should not have gotten ourselves into in the first place. The children hate it too. Look, we don’t need to replace my car this year. We think about it next year, OK?”, she continued.

“And don’t add your bonus into the equation, you know you are not supposed to do that?”.

Baik ma’am.

Ah well, she simply made sense. Thinking of it, I do have the insurance and road tax for one car to settle this month. Same thing in another six months for the insurance and the other car. Hari Raya later this year would mean more expenses. Tak kan nak scrimp on duit Raya orang, kan? Come December, Nazzim and Sofia would need a million things for the new school year and that would probably cost an arm and a leg and a few other limbs too. Before that, during the school holidays, they would want a short holiday somewhere and they are not asking for Vegas, Monaco or Rio but Pangkor or Melaka or Penang does cost a few bucks. Which might not be there if I have to pay for the car!!!

It could be worse. Instead of me wanting to do so, she herself could insist we buy a new car and to hell whether we could afford it or otherwise……..

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Another Friday Night of Keeping in and Out of touch

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Another weekend down the drain. I left the office early on Friday to baby sit Nazzim at his English class at the music school. Typical Friday, either I leave at 5 pm sharp or at 7 pm. As usual, the magazines, papers and chatting with James made the two hours went by very fast. Went home, had a quick shower and a quick bite and out I went again.

Aaaah, five of us turned up at Sunway for bowling that night. Which was good. And my thumb got swollen as usual, just nice to fit into the enlarged hole. A few more games before the digit gets used to the trauma. Some improvement in my game but the best thing is that both Rano and ex-Joe Sewel played much much better than me. So this year no more being the ayam tambatan (which I never really fulfilled). Somehow the lanes were not as packed as I thought it would be. Probably due to the fact that many people took the opportunity to take Friday off after the Maulud Nabi holiday on Thursday to balik kampung and the next day being a working Saturday for the government sector.

Ah well, bowling is causing so much havoc to my golf swing. Just like tennis players should never play badminton. But then my golf has always been lousy so it’s just a matter of turning worse. I’ll get it back to lousy in no time at all. Two more weeks before Nazzim is finished with his workshop and I can have my Saturday mornings back.

My ranting in my previous blog stays. This has been our dilemma, how to keep in touch with our friends. Chatting with Red while I bowled, we reached the consensus that there is absolutely nothing we could do to gather our friends except offer them free lodgings and food at a resort somewhere. Free meals don’t work no more. We agree to do that when we become filthy rich. We’ll take turns, me and him. Till then, we’ll just bitch about it and keep on seeing the same old but good to see faces.

Ah well, if they enjoy seeing me half as much as I enjoy seeing them, what me worry eh?

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To Beg Or Not To Beg.

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Last Saturday night (till Sunday morning), I was with Red, Wak and RAZ in Subang Jaya catching up on the news. We got on to the subject of our bowling team for this year’s tournament. How difficult it is to get people to play. Some have not been answering their phones. Some have done the disappearing act. Some are just plain jual mahal. And a swollen thumb from last Friday’s practise session didn’t help my mood either.

“Red, we just go with the ones we have. Me, ex-Joe Sewel, Rano and Wak. The rest, I don't know. I don’t want to beg. It’s against my religion to beg.”

“Recently I made the mistake of taking an interest in someone for a certain activity. This person macam jual mahal. Bukan macam jual mahal, memang jual mahal. Sell expensive. So I said f_ck it......”

“My heart can’t take it.”

Sometimes we chase after people who are not interested, who wants us to beg, to baby them.

“Don’t have the time la…..”

“If I put such effort in chasing a girl, at least I’d have a girlfriend by the end of the day.”

Hmmm…, a girlfriend by the end of the day. Shoot, with the amount of pursuings I have done on these guys and gals these last two decades for whatever activities that we wanted to do, that’s a lot of girlfriends.

Tonight, I have booked two lanes at Sunway Megalanes. I have told quite a few to come and practise. Let's see who shows up.

Hmmm..... if tonight's practise session fails, maybe I should put the effort in chasing girls.

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The Eternal Duckling, Lies and The Pits

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In a newspaper last Friday, Juventus fans had this banner aimed at their rivals from Liverpool, “You are more ugly than Camilla”. OK, the grammar was not perfect but I think there are two correct pieces of information in the statement. You figure it out.

Over the weekend, a paper in a neighboring country caused a minor furore when it said that a defense minister has apologized to a neighboring country’s defense attaché about some skirmish at sea. One, it would be inappropriate for a minister to apologize to a defense attaché. Two, the paper in mind has some 200 million simple minded citizens as its targets. In this case, news do not have to be accurate, just sensational.

When I had my haircut last week, I got my monthly dose of the local entertainment industry’s media. The barbershop has got a rather good selection of magazines featuring local artistes and gossips. Of course it would be full of denials of the things that the artistes did not do and the prominent men who are not pursuing them. Not to forget their photos in front in their “melentik” postures. How come jeans don't fit me like it fitted her?

When my turn came at the scissors, I had to tell the mamak to take a much deserved break, as that will give me a chance to finish off this juicy story about this ex-singer, now that she is divorced, is a singer again, who married a local race driver a few years ago and who are now divorced and is now dating this another singer or whatever. Then I realized, oh, that news is not so hot anymore. True enough, the magazine was about three months old.

"OK, Mr. Mamak, take it away….. Tepi saja…. Make me look like Cruise, Tom Cruise that is…."

And yesterday, in one of the daily papers, there was this news about this local ex-singer who married an American guy some years ago, it was in the papers, they were married in London, there was some controversy about them being married in a church (she claimed they were not), everything was so wonderful, she is so pretty and he is so handsome (mat salleh lagi tu!!!), they were going to continue staying in London too, she studying, him working, di canang over the whole goddamned country and less than two years later, it was the standard “manusia merancang, tuhan yang menentukan” crap. Aiyoyo, why like that one. When they got married it's like there will be no more weddings in the world, it was that good and now, divorced? So easy huh? I want to learn how to sing lah. Do la, like that No. 1 guy singer tu la, he was an item with this No. 2 (maybe No. 3, or even No. 4, or even No. 8) lady singer and quiet quiet, he married another lady. Tau tau dah kawin with someone else, his opposite number in a movie. Baru steady eh? Tak divorced pun, still steady singing and acting. More fofular lagi. Yes, fofular.

God, it’s obvious that I don’t have anything worthwhile to write about, today do I?

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New Siblings and Other Things

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Last night, Nazzim told me that his current best friend just had a new baby sister. The eleventh child in the family as of now. Then he dropped the bombshell.

“Why did you and Mama only have me and Adik? You don’t want many children?”

Now, how do you answer a question like that?

“Well, we do want more children but none were forthcoming after Adik.”

That was the best and most frequent answer both Lina and I offered was that our rezeki was just to have the two of them.

“But then if Mama and Papa have more children, we’d have to get an MPV, don’t we? You’d like that, don’t you?” He just smiled. We are thinking of getting a better car for Lina and both Sofia and Nazzim wants us to get an MPV.

“No, we are not getting an MPV. There are only two of you now and even with a car you get a window each. But yet you managed to find fault with each other wherever we go. So, no MPV.”

“Well, I’d like to have someone like Sarah around,” he’d say. Sarah is his two year-old cousin. Both Nazzim and Sofia loves having her around.

“And then you’d have a reason to buy an MPV”, one of them would pipe in.

Yeah, right, three children is not enough of a reason to buy an MPV, I thought. We don’t need an MPV. Three children would be nice, four would be fantastic and maybe five would be the outer limit but definitely not a soccer team. Then we’d need two MPV’s.

OK, we’ll get to see Sarah this weekend when we go to Mama Wan’s house. Not a bad deal. No younger brother, no younger sister, no MPV but we get to see Sarah. Not a bad deal.

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Speak Softly Love.....

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At the end of last week I was outstation, to one of our regional offices to gather some data. One of those fly in and next day fly out affairs. I hate those, you don’t even have enough time to be tired, you just move straight to being exhausted. But the flight was OK, the hotel was fine, not one of those cockroachy hotels that I wrote about a while back and I managed to get a flight back to be home by dusk, Friday.

Nothing out of the ordinary but I must tell about this episode during breakfast on Friday. There I was, at the hotel’s restaurant and I noticed, more like heard, that one of the guests having breakfast there is rather loud. There were three of them but this one guy was really yakking away like he’s gonna lose his voice by noon. I was about three tables away, with my back to him and I must say that I heard every single word he was saying. That was not the worse thing but you should hear the tales that he spun.

One had something to do with how a friend of his and being transferred somewhere and they did not touch his salary but just lived on his allowances etc. etc. etc. (hey, I sound like Yul Bryner in The King and I) and after a while, when he checked his account, there was RM 80,000 in it. Well, I’m not too sure about it but I think the point in his story was that he’s got a friend who goes around telling how much money he has stashed in his bank account. How come none of my friends, such as Wak, Red or ex-Joe Sewel never tell me how much money they have? I’m not choosy, whether it’s your allowance or your salary, as long as you tell me how much money you have. Well, this guy’s friend does……

Then he moved on by telling how his boss would not sign anything unless he brings it. Even the prettiest ladies in the office were powerless, they could not make the old man sign the anything at all.

“Si Peah yang lawa tu bawa masuk, suruh sain pun, dia tak layan!!! Aku bawak masuk baru jalan…!!”

Wow, some boss. Some guy. But when I went for the fruit platter, he was no where close to being a hunky corporate mover, you know, like the ones we see in the commercials. Young, tousled-haired, always celebrating something. What are they so happy about, jumping around for, my mother would usually ask.

“Hentahlah Mak, happy sebab air Harimau Bawah Pokok Kelapa tu agaknya…..”

Then came my favourite tale of the day, about an architect who went blind because the bridge that they were building nearby was so complicated. So so complicated, real tiny tiny small detailed drawings. Don’t know why la, but that was what he said. I say man, blow up the drawings, make it bigger, get a smaller guy so that the drawings will be bigger relatively, suck on it but don’t go blind, it’s not worth it!!!! Aiyo, the poor architect….

God, that was it, I can’t take any more Ripleysque stories. I went back to my room to pack and thanking the stars that my boss is very uncomplicated and be grateful that I am not an architect or otherwise I’d be blind by now.

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The Tie

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Last night, just after I completed my isyak prayers, Nazzim came into the room with his new school tie.

“Papa, could you teach me how to tie a tie?” (Is that the right word?)

“Sure”, I said, “let me get one of my ties.”

“Alright, let’s see, the long wide end should be on the right, hang it right down to just over your right knee.”

“It depends on thickness of tie, you might have to let it hang a bit lower if the tie is made of thicker material. Loop it to the back and bring it back on top. Then bring it back up, over and under from right to left…….”

Sounded like we were playing a game of rugby.

“Papa, you look like Fred Flintstone”, said Nazzim delightedly.

I sure do, in my sarong and with a tie. I looked into the mirror and both of us laughed at Mr. Flintstone.

“Well, you’re not so hot yourself, you look like Bamm-Bamm.”

As he went to bed, he asked me if could I help him again in the morning.

"Gladly", I said.

Come this morning, I asked him if he still needs my help, seeing how his tie looked screwy all of last night.

“No, I’m fine, I could do it now”.

And he actually could.

That would be a peek of what things will be in the future. He won’t need my help as much as he used to. Lesser and lesser and then one day, next to nothing except maybe an old man’s advice on a thing or two. Just to assure himself, nothing more. I was a bit sad. Last week, after I sent him into the motivational class that my employer offered to employees’ children, I hanged around a bit too long and he said, “You can go now, Papa.”

Lessons learned last night, never knot a tie over bare skin, melecet leher, hard on the skin. It’s hard to teach someone how to knot a tie, we take doing such things for granted.

And finally, ties are good news, it means that my son is growing up. I’ll miss the small boy that we had for such a short time.

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