My Name Is...

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(More to come...)

Changes

W:

They are cooling off.
One for work, the other too.
But they are okay.


A:

The bonfire flared.
He got high, the other why?
Extinguished early.

A:

His hands are filled up.
Nevertheless, he's cool yet,
Others might not be.


M:

Looking cool, she tries.
But inside, choices await.
Easier when said.

Clappers

Some people rob for pleasure. Some rob because it’s there. I’m a cop and I was working on a theft case one day and I needed to interview the owner of a school bell store where the theft happened.

This is the interview.

Me:

So I hear there’s been a robbery.

Owner:

Yessir.

Me:

What was stolen?

Owner:

My clappers.

Me:

Your clappers?

Owner:

Yeah, you know, those things inside the bells which make them clang.

Me:

The clangers?

Owner:

Yessir. We call them clappers in the business.

Me:

*A clapper caper*

Owner:

Whazat?

Me:

Nothing sir. Now, can I have the facts? What kind of clappers was stolen on this clapper caper?

Owner:

They were copper clappers.

Me:

And where were they kept?

Owner:

In the closet.

Me:

Uh huh. You have any ideas who might have taken the copper clappers from the closet?

Owner:

Well, I just fired a man. He swore he’d get even.

Me:

What was his name?

Owner:

Claude Cooper.

Me:

*Nodding* You think he’d-

Owner:

That’s right. I think Claude Cooper copped my copper clappers kept in the closet.

Me:

You know where this Claude Cooper is from?

Owner:

Yeah. Cleveland.

Me:

*Nodding* That figures.

Owner:

What makes it worse, they were clean.

Me:

Clean copper clappers.

Owner:

That’s right.

Me:

Why do you think Cleveland’s Claude Cooper would cop your clean copper clappers kept in your closet?

Owner:

Only one reason.

Me:

What’s that?

Owner:

He’s a kleptomaniac.

Me:

Who first discovered that the copper clappers were copped.

Owner:

My cleaning woman, Clara Clifford.

Me:

*Nodding* That figures. Now, let me see if I got the facts straight here. Cleaning woman Clara Clifford discovered your clean copper clappers kept in a closet were copped by Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland. Now, is that about it?

Owner:

One other thing.

Me:

What’s that?

Owner:

If I ever catch Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland who copped my clean copper clappers kept in a closet.

Me:

Yes?

Owner:

I’ll clobber him.

Taebo

‘Nah… You try, you let me know,’ Ph said as she proffered the CD to me.

Um, was all I managed before she continued. ‘Sorry ah, it’s not a DVD. It’s a CD. The DVD’s with my sister bah.’

I was thinking that was the least of my worries at that point in time as I stood next to her desk, stupefied at the CD case I was holding in my hand.

‘Kau cuba saja,’ she insisted. Just try it.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay I will,’ I said.

In truth, I was personally responsible for getting myself into this. Because I was on my ‘exercise’ streak right now, she and I had been chatting quite a bit about fitness programmes that she’d been into before. The CD she’s just handed to me was the Basic edition of Taebo, founded and introduced by Billy Blanks, a 7-time US taekwondo champion. Taebo had been a major fitness trend in the late 90’s and she was one of its most enthusiastic practitioners, she said.

A side note: Ph’s husband was a real gym freak back in his twenties. This guy, as former personal fitness trainer at a large resort here in town, he had the works. The wash-board six-pack I wanted. The well-defined deltoids that you could scoop soup with if you could tear his arms off. The shoulders that were more like over-sized ball bearings. Those pecs that made fake boobs tremble. All in a well-sculptured Greek-godlike package that had the annoying habit of making men weep and women wet.

Ph’s husband, with all his well-formed fitness, had praised his wife’s body to me. He maintained she had looked like one of those superheroines you see in comic books when they were both into working out back then. Even though now they are both in their mid-thirties and had lost their energetic drives to workout in the gym, I could still see the telling shapes and shadows of their fitness. She was taller than the average girl in this town and had strong, long limbs that yet, moved with grace. She looks unassuming yet you knew she could suplex a guy and do her nails at the same time.

No, maybe not, but you get what I mean.

So, she said, to me. Give Taebo a try. Taebo had good exercises that would help me lose excess weight and ‘lean’ me down before any serious muscle building workouts.

On the other hand, I had no illusions about my own state of fitness and what she told about me next about her friend who tried the programme did not do much to reassure a first timer.

‘A***** tried it bah. Hehe… this programme is supposed to last twenty minutes kan…. The next day he came back to me, “what kind of workout IS this?! Oh my God!” Hah, after that, he could not move properly for one week.’

Oh. Good lah, I said to her. I also thought, Gee thanks, but I didn’t say it out loud.

It was only when I got home that it dawned on me that today’s the Mooncake Festival. My neighbour opposite me had a bunch of people over. My window was directly facing them and even now, I could see some of the guests sitting outside, chatting.

I had planned to do the Taebo thing in my room. I would not be able to perform many of the Taebo moves without also putting up a show.

So I pulled the curtains shut. No sense having one of them coming over later and asking, ‘you alright dude? We heard screaming up there.’

I popped the CD into my notebook PC and started the workout programme and laughed my ass off.

What got me was the 80’s style of leotards this Blanks guy and his ‘cohorts’ were wearing on the video. He had on a bright electric blue piece on that showcased his impressive pectoral muscles. The rest of them were wearing almost the same kinds of stuff. Funnily enough, one guy in the back wore one of them white uncle undershirts and a pair of real short shorts.

Anyway, I started to follow what they were doing on screen. Naturally, they stretched at first and that was easy enough. Then came the punching motions. It felt silly but hey, I was workin’ up a sweat.

I nearly knocked myself down on my butt when the sidekicks came. Shit, I couldn’t kick for shit.

The whole thing only lasted twenty minutes. In the end, I was winded but it was not too bad, I thought.

You know what TAEBO stands for? This Agonizing Exercise Blows, Okay?

Nah, I’m just kidding. The real name’s Total Awareness Excellence Body Obedience.

But I think my version’s better. Here’s another one they should have put on the CD cover: Take An Ecstasy Before Opening.

And I think I’m going to do Taebo again. But not with ecstasy, kids.

Across a Gap

24^th September 2007

I turned around and zipped myself up at the same time.

Walking towards the sinks I caught a glimpse of movement outside the men’s room large windows. These windows were of those that were tinted brown; you could look outside and from a far enough distance no one could see into the latrine.

The bathroom windows of my building faced the other tower. What caught my eye as I rinsed my hands was a guy climbing out of one of the opposite tower’s windows. He wore coveralls that indicated that he’s one of the maintenance crews for the complex.

Built underneath all of these windows were small ledges that would not fit a normal size fridge and this dude was climbing out and looking shaky as he did it. I saw him stretch out and set a leg on the ledge a few feet from the open window he’s climbing out of. I knew he had to do that as the glass pane closer to the ledge could not be opened; it was the same on our tower.

I was alarmed and a morbid part of me said, this guy might fall and I’d be the first person to witness it. The building I was standing in had no shortage of jumpers. While most had been suicides and (alleged) murders, this guy I was looking at was just a maintenance worker. If he fell, it would have been the mother of all bad days at work.

Now, the guy was grabbing his stuff from the first window and making his way to the other side of the ledge towards the ladies room. Same thing again, only in reverse. He put his pouch on an open part of the ladies room window and slowly climbed up again. Same as before, most of his body was hanging precariously from the ledge before he managed to clamber into the building.

God, I’d never have bothered to look at that if not for my glasses.

A Job

I’ve just accepted a free-lance job from one of my colleagues.

She’s right now in the process of acquiring an existing business that provides a full range of beauty treatments and she wants a new ‘look’ for it. So she asks me to do that for her.

‘I want to talk business with you,’ was how she started as she walked into my office.

She didn’t go a lot into the style that she wants. In fact, she didn’t say about it at all. But she did say she wants a new logo, a cool font for the business’ name and a signboard design.

‘You do what you want’, she said. Which is a lot, I thought to myself. I guess it’s for the better. Gives me a lot more leeway to explore what I think would be the right look for this beauty business of hers, an industry which I had absolutely ZERO experience with, personally and professionally.

And the punchline: ‘So later you tell me how you want to be paid, okay?’ she said as she started to go out the door. In a split second, she turns back and added, ‘But jangan terlampau mahal lah.’ Which is Malay for ‘But not too expensive lah.’

I like it when they are forward like that.

I didn’t need to think too long about it. I didn’t want monetary reward for this job.

I told her to come back, tore a scrap of paper from my notebook and scribbled:

EXERCISE MAT

PAIR OF 2.5 KG DUMBBELLS

PAIR OF 5 KG DUMBBELLS.

‘Cheh, so little?! That’s it? You can buy these things very cheap from sporting stores,’ she said after a glance at the list.

I wanted those things because I’d just started working out in my room. The dumbbells are pretty obvious but I needed the mat because I’ve been resorting to using bath towels to line the floor and that isn’t such a good idea.

I just grinned at her and told her to check the prices out first. Because if those things are as cheap as she said, I’d want to add on some items to bring the ‘remuneration’ up to a reasonable level.

Bah, boleh bah kalau kau, was what she said before going back to her desk. Loosely translated to ‘Can if you.’

I winked at her and went back to what I was doing on the computer.

Discipline

I’d begun to confront a typical aspect about myself that I have never quite examined closely.

No, rest assured this is not about some body part of mine.

I have never been a very disciplined person. I have started on projects that I have plain abandoned. I feel no need to list them here. I just try to remember what they were and try not to repeat my past mistakes or failings.

In the past couple of weeks, I have begun writing a story I feel strongly about. In the beginning, it was a rush. I had all these ideas that I needed to type out. Which I did.

I started on the story structure, fleshed out as much as I could about the characters I would talk about in the story and read and read and read up on writing techniques from websites. Right now, I am getting into the second chapter but details in the first still elude me.

But lately, as I begun to workout in my room and with my job, I’ve been distracted from this project of mine. It’s not a very good feeling. As I have only just started with the exercises I feel really winded after that and all I want to do then is unwind and ‘unplug’. Watch movies, watch TV, surf the Net, read webcomics and not write the story. I’d been going out lately as friends from out of town want to meet up. For the past two weeks, I have also been really busy at work, staying late to finish things up.

I am starting to feel a distance between myself and the story I am trying to write. Also, something else distracts me from the story I am writing. I felt that I needed to write more as a form of practice in order to better write my main project. So I have started to write more random pieces and to put some of these pieces on this blog. These ‘side’ writings, to me, are distractions as well, although they are a necessary distraction.

Talking about work I have also accepted a job from a colleague to design a ‘look’ for her new business. This too, will take up some of my night hours.

I realize in the end, these are just distractions and I’m making up excuses for myself.

This is a promise to myself. I gotta have more discipline if I want to see the book to its deserved end.

It’s hard going though.

Exerciser exercising his right to exercise

These days I find myself doing the strangest thing.

Exercising.

Yes, I have begun to exercise. On a regular basis. Not that it’s unheard of, me exercising. It’s just that these days it’s become a real goal for me. Namely, to have broader shoulders and to lose the flab that’s overstaying its welcome in my mid-section.

In the beginning – I think it started in June – I’d been doing walks from my home in Tanjung Aru facing the SM La Salle football field. I’d start by going past the field towards Tanjung Aru town itself and walking by the police station. Turning left towards the beach, I’d walk/run until Terminal 2 and then cutting across Horn Field towards First Beach Tanjung Aru.

Staying out of sight from my colleagues who work there, I would run into the adjacent Prince Philip Park until Medan Selera, a halal and very dirty eating spot. Further on past the Medan, you’d see an old Shell learning-traffic-laws for school children and I’d run straight past that too until I get to a section of Tanjung Aru beach with huge cement pilings that were driven into the ground where dirt meets sand. It must have been done many years ago. I wouldn’t know.

Inspired by parkour or free-running, I would climb onto the first of those pilings and try to walk as fast as I could without missing a step and falling down onto the sand five feet below. At the end of this make-shift obstacle course, I get to a large abandoned piece of cement slab which I’d vault over.

Running on the sand proper now, I’d go until I reached the runway of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport or Terminal 1 and go onto a road that would lead me back to the main road that leads out from the T2, which makes you think of either one or two things.

First: the whole airport complex must be really small. Yes, it is.

Second: must be a really long walk (or run if I felt like it).

Honestly, the whole thing for me would take only a little more than one hour by walking.

Well, now I haven’t been jogging or walking for more than a month now. Funny how life is really good at distracting you from doing things you care about. Or maybe it’s just me.

Yeah, I guess it’s just me.

So now, everyday when I reach home, I make sure that I do my exercises before dinner or shower.

First, I’d do sit-up which is the worse part. Actually they’re more like crunches. My colleague P******’s husband taught me this when I told him what I wanted to do. I knew I’d asked the right guy for advice because this guy has actually had a six-park before. He’s lost it for a long time now though. What he told me was to lie straight on my back with thighs at a 45 degree angle and lift my shoulders up as if I’m trying to touch my knees with him.

Not an easy thing to do. And I do feel the burn in my mid-section after that. I try to do three sets of ten to start and it’s a bitch, let me tell you.

Next, I take a 2.5 kilo dumbbell and do a set of exercises of my own design.

For the first one hundred reps, I just pass the dumbbell from one hand to the other and this feels great on the forearms. I could the tension on them.

For another 100 reps, with my back straight I’d stare upwards at a 45 degree angle and jab one of my arms holding the dumbbells and switch it to my other hand. Doing this, I would flex biceps and shoulders.

The last thing I do is take a chair with a back rest and lean forward slightly over it while keeping my back straight. Then I would do an alternate snatch-and-let-go between both hands. I don’t grip the dumbbell with the whole hand but with my fingers to work on my fine motor strength.

With all this, I hope to get a six-pack by Christmas.

I got to make sure I stick to it this time.

Complicated

A recent conversation with a dear friend. Heavily edited for brevity because I’m tired and just finished doing some free-lance work. So there.

G: You’re complicated.

Me: How am I complicated?

G: People who’re UNcomplicated will get born, go to school, go to college, go to university, get a job and get married. You’re not like that.

M: Is that wrong?

G: No, I’m also like that.

M: (Hmmmmm…)

Woman and Child

18^th September 2007, Tuesday:

Walking out of the Sabah State Library, I needed to get across the darkened car park of the Kota Kinabalu City Hall to get to my MyVi parked next to the curb. I’d been browsing for a while – maybe twenty minutes – in the library even though I didn’t have a library card on me.

I had just lit a cigarette and stood next to the entrance of the car park finishing it when someone came up to me. She’d been walking from the direction of the High Court, which was right next to the car park of the City Hall.

The girl was so short, I don’t think she was more than five feet tall. In her arms she carried a baby, very calm but I could see that the baby was awake. I was surprised when she walked hesitantly up to me. There was no reason to be wary of this small girl but I was apprehensive. I was pretty certain that she was an illegal. Probably a Filipina. I admit I was being somewhat racist and laying on stereotypes but it was also true that a young girl of her sort did not usually approach a Chinese guy like me without a compelling reason, even though I was standing all by myself smoking on a sidewalk near one of the seedier areas of the city.

Apparently, to her, she did have a compelling enough reason to approach me. With a smile, she uttered a few words which I did not comprehend. I might have if I could hear her soft voice above the noise of the traffic passing by. I looked at her with a face that signaled my lack of understanding at what she wanted. I only wanted to be polite to her and hoped that she’d just leave. I’d also thought that she might be a beggar about to ask for some loose change.

She was wearing a dark blue dress, a flowing one that had short sleeves and a hem that covered her below the knees. Appropriate enough for a girl at the age which I had assumed for her in my head. I thought she must have been only ten or eleven.

She continued speaking and kept the smile while she took out a satchel from a pocket. The satchel was a dark colour as well, nearly similar to her dress and it had white draw-strings. She offered the satchel up to me for a second but I just shook my head. I shook my head but I was still looking at it and that gave her a clear enough signal to open it. Wary still, I did not want to reach for it when she offered it to me for fear that it might lead to unwanted attention or that it might make me unwittingly give off the wrong signal.

She pulled open the strings and I peeked into the satchel. They were stones as far as I could tell. Smooth ones of a light colour. Size of half the length of a lighter. I did not know the significance of these stones to her but it did give me a positive feeling because it means she was trying to be enterprising instead of simply just going around begging.

And then she asked, ‘Uncle pandai cakap Dusun kah?’ - Does Uncle know how to speak Dusun?

No, I said to her, only BM – Bahasa Malaysia or Malay language.

‘Uncle dari mana?’ – Where is Uncle from?

‘Sia dari Tanjung Aru,’ I told her truthfully.

‘Oh, kamu Cina kah’ (Oh, are you Chinese?)

Yes, I said.

Then she asked me for two Ringgit. I declined her.

Not one to be let down, she thanked me with a polite terima kasih and walked on her way towards the State Library, the way I’d just walked from. Maybe her next destination was the nearby night market selling food stuff to Muslims who are going to break their fast.

I looked on for several seconds while sucking on the last of my cigarette. Dropping the butt into a puddle and feeling like I needed the loo, I got into my car and drove off for home.

Cold-Hearted?

17^th September 2007:

G said:

There’s a guy who was born into a poor family. To supplement himself in primary school, he turned to selling cigarettes.

When he started working, he managed to gain ownership of a locally based dot.com company which is a directory of some sort, something like the Malaysian Directory or the Online Yellow Pages. Eventually, he sold it for a very lucrative price and was able to start up an advertising firm. He became a very rich man. He owned three BMWs and got married at age twenty-eight to a very beautiful woman.

This woman was pretty, dressed well, highly educated and to some, was the epitome of glamour. He also had a very adorable child.

One day, desperate to be awarded the advertising account from Honda Malaysia, he needed to give some under-table money to a decision maker in the firm. He forked out three hundred thousand and on top of that, had to take a Honda Accord, the model which he hated the most.

Before the deal could fall through, Honda Japan bought over the local firm and he lost the account. As his wife is the accountant for his advertising agency, she found that the company’s accounts were missing a large sum which was equivalent to the amount of the bribe. She then promptly divorced him.

Unbeknownst to him, she had also been siphoning large amounts from the company accounts to her personal account. During the divorce proceedings, she had asked for every single cent that she has ever spent on him. She had kept every single piece of receipt from purchases she’d made. Even a belt that she had bought for him, she asked for the money. Everything. The angpow cash she’d given his side of the family. Even the money that he had given to purchase things with which she had used to buy things for him.

In the end, he estimated he must have given her about two hundred and fifty thousand. Now, monthly, as ‘ransom’ he needs to pay six thousand as allowance for the care-taking of their child.

To further add insult to injury, she has re-married, with his best friend.

Reality TV reaches new low

TV justs keeps getting better. As if the monstrosities of The Simple Life and Newlyweds weren't enough. Now they have the kids doing it. The brains of the parents who'd let their children be kept for 40 days in some New Mexico dessert must have been left in their knees.

I don't wanna say much. Just check it out:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2820812820070828

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/

Broke But Whole

Just after 7am this morning, I ended my relationship with my girlfriend.

It was surprisingly easy. I couldn't stand it any longer. I won't let her go on thinking she could just have her way all the time and that I would take it lying down. I got a stupid hypocritical SMS from her earlier when I was sleeping that finally did it for me:

"Thinkin of you. Wanna hear ur voice actually. I appreciate when you spend ur free time wit me babe. I hope you x mind that i always go out with frens. I cant be sittin at home all day n expect to meet men kan babe he he well life is such. have a nice day babe..."

C'mon, I thought, if you want to keep meeting other men, I'd be a fucking idiot to continue this bloody charade.

So I called her and ended it. Summarily. To the point.

It also was easy because we haven't been together long enough for me to build any real attachment on the relationship. But in the beginning, I thought that she could have been someone that I could love and build a future with. I should have known better than to jump at that stupid conclusion so soon.

She even mentioned to me that she wants to marry now. On our first date.

It's something which I have tried to understand. I know it's the woman's biological clock. She turning 26 this December. I'm trying not to say that that's so early to marry. If that's what she really wants, I have no right to say otherwise. It's just that I don't want to marry now. And she does. So it's better if we ended it now instead of dragging it on.

It's not only that I don't want to marry now. I want to be SURE about the one I'm going to marry. And I have to say, I'm certainly not sure about this Girl.

When I asked her why she'd mentioned on our first date to me that she wants to marry NOW, she said to me, "Because I thought you're a player." I think she still does.

I don't get it. Before I met her, I was single for more than a year. I had one sexual relationship which lasted 4 dates. And nothing else.

When I met this Girl, she was someone I could connect with. We can talk about many topics and I believe we spoke on the same wavelength.

It was barely a month ago.

And then the cracks started to show.

She'd miss-call me and expect me to call her back. All the time.

When I asked why, she looked at me and told me not to be so 'calculative'. She said, her pre-paid call rate was more expensive than my post-paid one and it made more sense for me to call her instead.

Please.

She has not worked for more than a year. Yet, she can really spend money. Buying clothes, eating expensive food. I'm not sure but I suspect her dad's supporting her still.

I did have a glimmer of hope that she find something to fill her time with a eatery business that she mentioned she starting with her dad. Let's hope that falls through.

Thing is, I do care for her. But looking at the situation before this break-up, I don't think I could grow to love her. Not now.

To top things off, once she said to me, "I get impatient and restless if things don't go my way."

Hope I'm not being judgmental but that sounded quite self-centred and self-indulgent to me.

You know what?

I'm relieved I got out of it now.

Restart. Reset.

I just started this blog on a whim. Well, not really on a whim. I wanna be a writer but not for any publication, just for myself. Cuz eventually, I want to be a novelist as well. So I guess I'm using this place as a sort of practice ground for my writing. I do have another blog which I have failed to update for more than a year. Why don't I use that blog for my writings? That's cuz I don't feel it's the 'write' platform for this.

I don't expect anyone to read these writings. I don't know how consistent I'll be in my postings. I don't mind any comments or criticisms from anyone but remember, I'm doing this for me. I'm not even going to tell me friends about this place. But if they find out, it's alright too.

Let's see where we go on from here.