Monday, August 18, 2008

Life and Times of Eddie A.


The bane of cyclists all over the world - punctures!!! I've had four so far!!! Fixing one in front of the mesjid yesterday.....


Two members of the cycling club at the roundabout near the airport, Friday 15 August 2008. It's about 8 km away from our homes. Pretty place, with the lights, fountains, lovers and all....
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Ignore the title of this blog, I can't think of one.
The rides have been going on well. More rides, more punctures, plus that one time when a tire literally blew up. That was fun. All three of us were chased by dogs yesterday, good thing again, the dogs are small mutts, eager to run back to their owners with that I thought them a lesson look on their doggy faces. Mutts.... Got sand thrown at us by some monkeys - local young monkeys, some kids asking us where we bought our bikes and some intellectually challenged people here who kept pointing at our expensive bikes/expensive wheels/nike shoes/adidas socks while shouting something and laughing histerically afterwards. The poor people, we know it is hard to live with no brains and lesser will to work. Don't say the W word here.
That was yesterday, now we go back a bit.
If I wrote about my nephew Farouk who got 10 A’s (8 A1’s) a few years ago, his sister Farah got 11 A1’s last year. Maaaaaannnnnnnn…….. what are these kids’ brain made of? I hope she gets to do what she wants to do, the last was medicine but then it could change at a moments’ notice sometimes.

I must be a pushover. I guess I am at times. The last time I was home, we went to buy a pair of sports shoes for Nazzim since his present pair is in a bad state. We could not get away with buying only a pair for Nazzim, even though Sofia’s are still usable. We ended up with a pair costing RM 179 for Nazzim, RM 199 for Sofia and RM 69 for me.

At work, Dr. Durli enrolled the help of others, in this case Nina, the head translator, to get me to buy medicine after the session at the hospital here recently.

“Mr. H, why aren’t you buying your medicine? I heard you did not want to buy your medicine as instructed?”

I opened my drawer took out the prescription and a wad of money that I have put aside for the medicines. With both hands, I offered it to her.

“I was going to buy it, see, I even have the money ready but I couldn’t find the time. I was going to buy it…..”

“Come with me, we find a driver who’ll buy it for you…..”

Great, now I have a bundle of pills and a tube of greenish paste that tastes like motor oil to take everyday.

On a more hilarious front, one of my colleagues related this anecdote to me. He has been out interviewing local candidates for some vacancies in our offices.

“What is your name?”
“My name is John Smith”
“How old are you?”
“I am twenty-two years old”
“Which school did you go to?”
“I went to Public School No. 14”
“Which University did you go to?”
“I went to the Polytechnic Institute.”
“Where is your hometown?”
“My hometown is Gorat.”

Anything strange about the dialogue above? Of course not, it looked like a typical question and answer session.

OK, here is what it really is. The above dialogue was narrated by the interviewee himself, both the questions and answers. Since their English is non-existent, I guess they have been doing some question spotting and practising but somehow someone forgot to tell this guy to spit out the answers only and not both the questions and answers.

Aisey man, I need a new drug.
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