Happy Belated Birthday, Sam

There is a vile myth going around that anything small has its great value. Cameras are getting smaller by the day, computers are going lighter, mobile phone are so small that it is, and I am not joking, rumoured the latest generation of 3.55G is wafer thin and measures approximately 1.1005 nano metre. I am not sure if I am the only people who have this mentality but I think nano-scale technologies totally suck. Why are we paying more for something smaller and lower in material cost? I am not complaining I am merely being grumpy as I aged.

If things are made and manufactured in nano-scale, the accompanying manual is likely to be even smaller. The last time I read a manual for my bed-side alarm clock, it was like trying to ‘count’ the number of legs a millipede has (and I can assure you that no known millipedes have more than 400 legs). I gave up roughly 2 sentences below the welcome line. It is impossible to read at my age, no matter how hard I tried to focus.

Nano-scale technologies are probably a living nightmare to people of my generation. The generation of people who, may be forgiven, if they fervently abhor the word ‘old’ but, is old enough to experience presbyopia. I don’t recollect my father having problems reading when he was in his forties! Prints then were as big as a bullock-cart and nothing smaller was acceptable.

My worse ire is reserved for the publishers who notoriously print small fonts for the sake of saving one or two trees, or so they claimed! I would stretch the newspaper at arm’s length and still unable to read the smaller prints of my favorite advertisements. You know, the buy one get two followed by the subscript * gimmicks. What is printed under *, you will never get to find out unless you beg others to read for you. And then you naturally went into a total disappointment after learning you need to spend a fortune to qualify……. Or you may be seen behaving like a perfect jerk in the supermarket adjusting the product to enable enough reflection to read those small fonts. Chances then are, you will find longer words that are likely to be beyond your comprehension or you simply cannot pronounce them. In which case it would be immaterial whether you are able read or read but unable to understand them.

People suffering from presbyopia often experience similar symptoms. You can’t differentiate s, z or 2. The number 5, 6, or 8 looks the same no matter how hard you adjust it. As a frequent traveler, I have trouble filling embarkation form whenever I enter a country.
A I have to balance the little sheet of carbon paper on my passport and write with my pen which is likely to run out of ink without fail.
B You are likely to erroneously fill ‘date of birth’ and ‘country of birth’ wrongly.
C The space allocated is always narrower that the words you fill in (subconsciously you hand-writing gets bigger with the degree of presbyopia).
D You hand-writing looks as though you just ran the marathon.

Plus, when you are in the hotel, you can never ever read:
A The shampoo or the bath gel. I have learned from experience to rely on colour coding so that I won’t end up using shampoo as bath gel.
B The instructions on how to use the security safe.
C The master console to control the room’s utilities.

And finally, you will find yourself buying extra extra number of spectacles. You may start with one, and then slowly but surely multiply the numbers. And then, unknowingly one day you will realize you have one spectacle in your car, toilet, briefcase, living room, bedroom and a host of endless unimaginable places.

Happy Belated Birthday, Sam. I have a perfect birthday present for you this year. How about another pair of spectacle from the pasar pagi costing a mere 15 ringgit?

Kulai

I have often wondered how much a change in my life would be had I not stepped out of my little home town. Looking back, I was young and stupid (okay, as opposed to old and stupid now), eager to see what lies beyond the stretch of road after the police station. My world then, ends at the junction of the police station which is situated at the other end of the town. I remember myself as an incessant dreamer as would be the case of most teenagers of my generation (or, was I the only exception?) from the rural of the rural Malaysian hinterlands. To be fair to all my peers, our only hobby then was to idle on the branches of the tree and count the number of cars passing by. I am not sure if I am able to count the sheer number of cars passing by today on top of the same of tree. I say that because my eyesight is failing and I can no longer remember the counts after 100. But the worst of all, I am not so sure if I can ever climb that old tree. It certainly looks smaller with ailing branches that gives you an impression that it may snap even under the weight of two little eggs.

Whilst at home recently, I had the pleasure of renewing an old acquaintance. I asked him what his main pre-occupations were these days. He answered me in a matter of speech manner……counting cars and climbing trees. I looked at him dearly and desperately seeking for a word to continue the conversation. I couldn’t find the word. He said, “I am old now, I don’t have much obligations towards my grown children anymore”. “I climb trees because it is fruit seasons now, and since I ‘sapu’ the orchard, I need to make sure every single fruit is harvested”. “I count cars because my normal job is a caretaker for the second hand car dealer”. I felt a sense of relief descending down my throat, but not until I took a sip of the kopi when he asked what my present pre-occupations were. I am waiting for the arrival of SOMEONE, I said. He looked at me with the same glare and astonishment I had a minute ago but unlike me, he took a sip of the kopi before administering his soiled feet. He……..took a deep rub and then unassumingly sniffed in the very similar manner as if you were using a snuff bottle.

Folks don’t care about mannerism in small town. If you cared about life’s little habitual involuntary actions, then you are not in a small town. You don’t have to wear your Sunday’s best to enjoy your dim-sum or nasi lemak. A simple attire of a t-shirt and shorts with a pair of the old faithful slipper will do. You won’t be the odd one out, that much I am pretty certain. You don’t whisper when you are gossiping, you talk as loud as you can. That way you will invite potential mongers’ attention and make the topic juicier. I can’t be sure if that elite group includes my brother for he is always the last soul in town to digest the various intricacies of the commonest gossip. But I can be sure, if I am around, I would be the first person to chip-in with my finest kopitiam hypothesis. I can it the “finesse lingua and directus demonstrandum” hypothesis in between mouthful of kopi and dunks. Loosely translated it is something like, “can’t say you are right but I know the answer” or something of that order. Then again, and I am beginning to regret this now, the hypothesis wouldn’t be as convincing as it claims unless it is accompanied with a loud and prolonged fart. Subconsciously I have forgotten the involuntary action, having been away from the small town for a dang long time.

I can’t describe the mixed feeling of quaintness and tranquility whenever I step foot onto my little hometown. No matter how much the world may change, for better or worse, this hometown of mine is forever there. The people, their culture (okay, our culture) and the ever busy kopitiam bustles are still, I am glad to add, our way of life. I have come a long way since the day I was introduced to Federal Readers' craps on "Here is Osman. He lives in this house. This is his house".

The passage of time may have given me the various opportunities but you simply cannot find the people and the place that amply describes you. You are always a stranger in a forever strangers' land except for that small place you called 'home'.

Thou Shall Wait

Wherever I go these days, I can't help but to think of the many hours being wasted waiting. I never fully understood why we have to wait, sometimes through the hours of agony and sometimes through the physical tortures……. In recent weeks, we in Hong Kong, witnessed a few fine examples of waits, we have the maids waiting in the queue to renew the contract and to save their livelihood at a mere $400 levy charge. The government of Hong Kong made a blunder by announcing the lifting of the levy and in doing so caused havoc among the people and the maids. Then we had this massive queue for anything related to the Olympics…….ranging from new prints to first day covers. I am beginning to think if we ever have an Olympics event on queuing; Hong Kong will probably win the gold medal.

To wait is the most boring thing to do, I don’t mind wasting my time being a couch potato but to sit down under the hot sun is ……..an absolute NO…..period. Can you imagine a family, three tiers, all waiting under a tiny umbrella, doing the usual waiting, talking, and some even cooking! When they could have made better use of the time wasted with their usual waiting, talking and even some cooking at home. But then again, it is either people love to queue or afraid of being losing out. Imagine the fuss about inflation and artificially inflated market price these days, but people will not have a second thought about queuing and buying stuff which is of no immediate use to them. I wonder……..I really wonder why people can behave in this manner.

Well I can only say ‘WAITING’ spares no one. Yes, not you, not me. We are all the subject of ‘WAIT’. I waited endlessly at the airport lounges in my normal routine of flying around little cities like Phnom Penh, Saigon, Bangkok and the likes. I see people breezing past me, some at the speed of lightning (usually associated with couples with baggage of three teenage aged offspring); some at the usual snail speed (usually associated with couples who are on their first dates); and the rest fellow travelers, like us, who would sit spread eagle, doing nothing but scornfully sneering at each other to get past the long WAIT.

Just when you thought the whole idea of WAIT is almost over, you are then faced with another grander surprise that a passenger or a group of passengers have gone missing…… “tok, tok …..Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. On behalf of Cathay Pacific, I would like to apologise for the delay. We should be taxiing out in a few minutes as we are still waiting for the last few passengers. So, if I may ask you to sit back and relax; and I should come back just before we descend” When he actually meant, “ladies and gentlemen, this is me speaking and I have been through this a zillion times by now. It is the freaking delays by the airport controllers and the damn securities that caused all these. Not forgetting the group of passengers who has gone missing and we are sending our SAS troopers to track them down. I hope they come back with hand-cuffed for causing this delay!”

And so, while the rest of the world is passing me, I am still here waiting…….yes, waiting for the arrival of SOMEONE.