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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Lessons in Life Part 1



Life has not been easy in the last one week. I’ve been forced to let go of someone I love dearly because we “have different expectations” and she just “wants to be friends”, whereas I want to marry the damn woman.

I called my friend Inspector Mike. “Mike, can I borrow your service revolver?” “Why” he asked, suspicion dripping heavily from that one word as only Policemen can do. “I wanna shoot myself in the head” I said. “Ah Ha!” he brightened up considerably and sounded unusually happy “Tell me the reason and if it’s good enough I’ll drop by your place and shoot you myself – Loan Shark problem? Family problem? Work problem?.”

“No lah, the woman I love…” the phone line went dead. “…doesn’t love me anymore” I said hollowly. The earpiece responded with an even hollower engaged tone. Beep.. beep.. beep.

Not finding any solace there I turned to another life-long friend, one that I knew would never let me down - Mr Regal. Yep, Chivas Regal has always been there to guide me high up to the tip of the Scottish Highlands to a cave where I meet my spiritual guru, His Inebriated Highness, Guruji Alcoholic Haze.(GAH)

Me: O great and wise Guruji, are you there?
GAH: Who wants to know? His voice floating out eerily from the cave
Me: Guruji, I thought you know everything It’s your chela (student) Dave Avran.
GAH: I know that you dimwit. The question is do you know who you are?
Me: I’m confused, Guruji. I brought our mutual friend Chivas along to guide me
GAH: Chivas? Why didn’t you say so earlier? Come in, my child, come in.

Gingerly I entered the musty cave and just as my pupils dilated and I could see in the darkness, Guruji lighted a log fire. “Come”, he said “Sit. Sit. Tell me your problem” I went and sat sat, and started to tell him my problem.

“Well you see Guruji, there’s this girl…” I started but GAH interrupted me “You said you brought Chivas?” I dug in my rucksack and gave him a brand new bottle of Scotland’s finest 12 year old whiskey. “Thank you” said GAH “are we drinking from mine or do you have another?”

“Oh, I have lots more” I said, producing another bottle and pouring into the grubby shot glasses GAH produced. For some reason, his mood seemed to have improved tremendously. He downed the Chivas in one gulp and said “Aaah! set ‘em up, son. Now tell me about this girl”

“Well you see Guruji, there’s this girl…” I started but GAH interrupted me again “You know that the cause of today’s social problems are actually the fact that we have too many choices. In the city, the sheer number of people affords cover for us to behave in a totally selfish way”

“English or Bahasa Malaysia? Western or Asian? Smoking or non-smoking? Latte or Grande? Filter or non-filtered? Myanmar or Phillipine? Leaded or unleaded? LRT or Monorail? PDA or hand phone?” he asked, sounding very Guru-ish

“yeah, yeah” I agreed “In my role as Editor of Smoovepinch.com I have to deal with the new generation of the young of today in hotels, clubs and other organizations. They are confident, aggressive and smart. They also can’t speak or write proper English, don’t answer the phone, don’t reply sms-es and don’t reply to enquiries and messages, unless they need your help with a promotion. Then honey won’t melt in their mouths as they “darling” you and “dear” you and “air kiss” you and kiss your ass to kingdom come.

Today’s attitude is “Fark you, you go and die, I go first”.

Don’t believe me? Just get in your car and drive. The unwritten rule is that you’re allowed to get away with anything as long as you avoid eye contact with the other driver, because eye contact means you have to acknowledge another human being. Too many cars on the road, too many drivers behaving badly. It’s easier to join them and be a bad driver than to maintain your identity, isn’t it?” I finished my rant, not realising that he had successfully side-tracked me.

GAH: When were you the happiest? Why were you happy then?
Me: I was happiest when I was staying with my Grandma in Batu Gajah, Perak from 1959 to 1963, from the time I was born till I was six years old. She lived in a wooden house with an attap roof and a large compound with Coconut and Mangosteen trees.

My Father was teaching in Raub, Pahang and Mother was a stewardess with British Airways. They would visit me twice a month, and there were always presents and maybe a trip to Ipoh for dinner at Canning Gardens.

We had a wooden JVC black and white TV with two channels, and watched programmes like Gilligan’s Island, The Thunderbirds (the first animated cartoon?) Astro Boy, Green Acres and I Love Lucy

The Phillips radio was a varnished wooden box with one speaker on the right hand side, and a clear plastic needle indicator with a red stripe down the middle. You twiddled a plastic knob dial backwards and forwards until you were satisfied with the sound quality. Ours was permanently set to BBC London.

Our telephone was the black Bakelite model with circular chrome finger inserts, and get this – our telephone number was 358. Only three digits. My Grandma’s “teegah leemah laapan” or “Mrs Sidhu speaking” (depending on her mood) still rings in my ears.

GAH: Did your Grandma drink?”
Me: “Nolah, she didn’t drink or smoke or man-nize, but she did play the numbers” I noticed the bottle had quickly reached halfway status as I poured another round for us, so I dug another one out on standby and continued.

“Our fridge was another Phillips product, a heavy creamy green coloured affair with a horizontal solid iron chromed handle. My Grandma cooked with firewood and charcoal on an earthenware stove and later upgraded to the metal kerosene stove with the square glass fuel container.

We normally had rice or chappati with a variety of vegetables for our meals and fish, chicken and other meats were reserved for when we had company as they were considered expensive.

Our bathroom was beside the kitchen and consisted of four corrugated iron walls. Inside, under a tap, was a huge ceramic pot that kept the water cool. Hot water had to be boiled in a huge pan over the stove and was a luxury reserved for only when I was sick.

Our toilet was located some distance behind the house and consisted of a wooden outhouse with three cement steps leading up to the door. Inside was a wooden platform with a hole in the middle. You squatted and did your business into the rubber bucket below. Yes, I’m talking about the bucket system!

There were few cars on the road as the ubiquitous Honda 50 and Raleigh bicycles were the main mode of transport and the words “traffic jam” were not invented yet. Car drivers were polite and actually waved to each other and gave way at junctions and roundabouts because everyone knew everyone else.

If there was a wedding or a death, a childbirth or a festival, everyone got involved irrespective of race and religion, gotong royong style. God bless any thief who got caught because the whole town would bushwhack him before handing him over to the Police, and drug addicts were not invented yet.

Every Sunday, my Grandma and I would walk the less than 1 mile to the wet market to buy our week’s supply of groceries and everyone along the way would chat with her and enquire about her health, her family, etc etc, making the journey painless and easy. On the way back we would take a trishaw for 30 sen.

There was a stall just down the road from Grandma’s house and on a hot day, nothing beat having an “ice kapal”, where the vendor would shave a block of ice by hand and form it into a ball with his bare hands (yes we were very hygienic then) and pour red sugar syrup over it, put it into a newspaper and hand it to you for the princely sum of 5 sen. For another 5 sen he would drown the ice kapal with condensed milk.


He also sold sweets, biscuits and savouries from China. I remember buying Haw Flakes (flat maroon rounds made of plum) and a kind of savoury packed in gold foil that had five tablets in it. These slowly melted in your mouth. Wrigley’s chewing gum, too..

I was friends with every child in my neighbourhood and we played Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, Hide and go Seek (A Chee Chop) and our favourites were marbles and spinning tops. I also studied martial arts and got my black belt at a very young age. Yes, I was happiest then” I finished my soliloquy, realising that I’d been rambling for a good twenty minutes.

GAH: “Do you realise why you were happy?”
Me: “I was carefree and had no worries, I guess.”
GAH: “you also had less or no choices to make, right?”
Me: “Yes, that’s true. Life was a lot simpler then”
GAH: “Why did you call Mike and ask to borrow his service revolver?”
Me: “Wow, how did you know that, Guruji?”
GAH: “I read it on your blog”
Me: “Oh!” feeling very sheepish. “Hang on a minute, I haven’t even written
the story yet, its still unfolding as we speak!”
GAH: “You did say Guruji knows all, didn’t you? What tool can you not live
without today?”
Me: “My PDA”
GAH: “Would you have missed your PDA when you were in your Grandma’s
house?”
Me: “Don’t be ridiculous! I was only six years old!”
GAH: “Answer my question”
Me: “No”
GAH: “Why not?”
Me: “Well, because…because… you don’t miss something you never had”
GAH: “I am so glad to hear those words from your mouth. There’s your answer –
the solution you came looking for.”
Me: “I don’t understand”
GAH: “You never had that woman, Dave”
Me: “Oh, but I did. She was bloody good too. She blew my mind. There was
this one time in the shower...”
GAH: “Stop! Firstly, I’m not talking about sex. Secondly, a gentleman never talks
about his own woman. Other women okay, but not his own. I meant you
never possessed her heart, you dimwit”.
Me: “Wow, you sure took the long way to get to the point when you knew that
all this time”
GAH: “Well, you brought a lot of whiskey”
Me “Truth be told, I still don’t understand. In fact I don’t understand women at all”
GAH: “Snort! Who does? Why do you think I’ve been sitting here for the last forty
years?”
Me: “Gasp! Are you for real?” Guruji reached behind him and scrabbled around
before producing a battered brown Samsonite briefcase. He blew the dust
off it, opened it, produced a dog-eared sepia photograph of a Chinawoman and tossed
it to me.
GAH: “Her name was Mei Mei, and she drove me nuts. A hunting night Tigress”
Me: “Good Lord! Not you too!”
GAH: “The Lord? The Lord doesn’t understand women at all. He told me so
during one of our chats.
Me: “Gasp! You chat with the Lord?”
GAH: “Of course. But I prefer msn. You can’t send pictures or files over GTalk
and Yahoo is too cluttered with music sites”
I looked at him suspiciously with one and a half eyes – I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg.
GAH: “Anyway, *hic* there’s your solution. Think about it” He downed another shot and promptly fell over backwards, his head making a dent in the briefcase. He was snoring in no time.

I put Mei Mei’s photo in his shirt pocket and pulled the tattered blanket I found near him over his thin body, deciding to leave the Samsonite as his pillow. Then I settled myself against the wall opposite him, threw another log on the fire and pulled out my wallet. I fished out her photo and stared at it for a long time.

Impulsively I threw the photo into the fire. It sat there for some time, not burning at all and spat and hissed and squealed at me, then it started bubbling. Finally a lick of flame erupted in the middle and it was gone in a flash, reduced to ashes.

I sat there and assessed my feelings. No, it didn’t have the cathartic effect of closure I had expected. I didn’t feel better – in fact I felt worse. How am I ever going to get over this woman? I poured myself another whisky *hic* and decided to ponder on the solution - you don’t miss what you never had. Cheers.
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