I'm Not Asleep, My Eyes Are Just Closed

My neighbour scares me a little. I’ve been generally lucky with housemates but I’ve had my share of odd neighbours. There were those fellow university students who would regularly trash their flat and kick down doors during drinking binges. My flat’s front door somehow escaped destruction but doors left and to the right of mine would hang crazily on their hinges or disappear completely come Sunday morning. There was also the neighbour who jumped across from his window ledge onto mine (and we were three floors up) and banged on the window asking for marijuana at two o’clock in the morning. There was one that would turn up at our door asking for antiseptic cream. He looked like he had been in a fight and lost. On good days he would barely speak to us because as he later confessed, his girlfriend was a very jealous woman. When the girlfriend was away, he would try to hit on my friend, whose boyfriend lived in the same building as us. Then there was one who kept having fainting spells one ...

My dearest siblings, Greetings from your sister in the homeland of teh tarik and apolitical slackers. I hope you are all well in foreign lands. Thank you all for your e-mails expressing mirth at my having to face the Melaka Mob at a nuptial-filled weekend, while you all get off scot-free. (By the way, I hear summer in the British and Irish isles is pretty miserable right now, and I do believe it is bitterly cold in the Southern Hemisphere, is it not?) Truth be told, I rather enjoyed myself at the family gathering. Meeting the Melaka Mob doesn't seem to be as much of an ordeal as I remembered. I had two new baju kurung made, mainly because Mak U insisted on a theme of blue for An's wedding (and all relatives must comply) and because raya will be soon and I haven't had a new baju kurung in about five years. I must say I looked extremely adorable in my new outfits. I could almost pass for gadis Melayu ayu except for the fact that I hunch and stride like a man. Sadly nob...

The parents and I were in Kuantan for two days. Dad had a meeting there but didn't want to fly because of all the heavy documents he had to carry. He wasn't keen to drive either so he roped me in to do the driving duties by bribing me with a stay at the Hyatt. Okay, so it's not like he had to twist my arm in the first place. Mum and Dad kept reminiscing of the time they holidayed together in Kuantan. Dad kept trying to find the resthouse they stayed at in Teluk Chempedak but all we found was the resthouse annexe. I think they were nostalgic for the days when they weren't yet saddled with five kids. While Dad was at his meeting, Mum and I decided to drive from Teluk Chempedak towards Terengganu, mainly to hunt for keropok lekor. I love keropok lekor but the fish that a lot of makers of keropok lekor use makes me itch like crazy, so getting the right keropok lekor is a bit of a hit and miss job. We got as far as Chukai before we turned back to pick Dad up from work. I got...

Today, I let rip at a stranger and my mother went, “YEAH!! You tell him, Kere!” I was third in line at the traffic lights at that mass of intersections in front of Bank Negara, pointed towards Lake Gardens. A white, four wheel drive with a JKR emblem was at the front and when the lights turned green, the fricking idiot decided to do a U-turn there. Stupid bugger did not comprehend that you cannot do a U-turn there, mainly because TRAFFIC IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION WAS ALSO GREEN AND THERE WAS NO WAY HE COULD MOVE UNTIL THE LIGHTS TURNED RED AGAIN. Meanwhile, since everyone else behind him was stacked bumper to bumper, no one could manoeuvre sideways at all. I started honking at him, not little tiny honks but really long, ear-splitting horns with my hand jammed firmly against the steering wheel. Much to my delight, every one else started honking him as well. And did that stubborn bugger give up on his ill-conceived turn and moved straight ahead like everyone else before him? Like fuck ...

Just before midnight last night, my Dad calls me over from my semi-permanent habitat on the living room sofa to come and read his essay. It is only one page, he cajoles so I wander over to the dining table and plop myself in front of his laptop. The title of the essay, unsurprisingly enough, is about the environment but my eyes bugged out when I read the first line, "Coming of age at 26 and flipping to the centrefold of a Playboy magazine in the library of my university....." WHAT?!? I couldn't process the next few lines as I tried to twist my brain around the fact that MY DAD had read Playboy . Which was stocked by his university library. What kind of university is it anyway? Why the surprise, you say? He is a man after all. Yeah, but you don't know my dad. He is the biggest, straightest, most child-like nerd in the world. He gets a kick out of reading scientific journals not ogling over glossy pages of women's titties. Anyway, before you think my dad has decid...

Don't you find it ominous when you make to enter a restaurant and find that somebody's vomited what looks like the remains of a Coney Dog on the doorstep? ---------------------------------------- A lot of new housing developments are called Taman So-and-so. So-and-so is usually filled in with either one or a combination of these words below: a) Jaya b) Bahagia c) Perdana d) Indah d) Damansara e) Heights Or they try and make it sound like you live in a foreign (Western) country by calling things Berjaya Times Square, Central Park, The Troika or Presint (precinct). Oh and the Tour de Langkawi. (For God's sake, does anyone here even speak French? Did they even reach the borders of this country? How the French must be pissing themselves at some jumped up brown people trying to be what they think is sophisticated by giving something a French name). Not only do you have to live in badly planned over-hyped area with poor access, you get saddled with some stupid, inane name that so...

What other way for a newspaper to kiss the ass of the Prime Minister than to give his son-in-law, the non-elected politician, a column in its pages? Thank you, New Straits Times, for ruining my Sundays by having Khairy Jamaludin’s smug mug looking at me over breakfast. Honestly, that man has no shame. No wonder Dr. M is disappointed with Pak Lah. --------------------------------------------------------- I was pleasantly amused to see Cineleisure Damansara provide several parking spaces for Single Female Driver located near the escalators in its basement car park. Someone obviously gave some thought to the escalating number of violent crime in the Klang Valley and the horrendous rape and subsequent murder involving single females that have made the headlines in the past few years. What really amused me was that these spaces, which were painted bright pink, were mostly empty on a busy Sunday afternoon. When able drivers will blatantly park in spaces reserved for the handicapped, it’s a...

This is KL I've been hearing it from cousins and various relatives living in smaller towns and more rural areas - people in KL are a breed apart. I think they're being polite. What they mean to say is KL people are just up their own asses. When they say KL, they don't necessarily mean the city of Kuala Lumpur itself but also that amorphous sprawl of suburbia that extends past the city itself. Sometimes people just call this vast area of human colonisation the Klang Valley. Geographically, the Klang Valley is a huge place, extending from the Titiwangsa mountain range in the north and east from which the Klang river starts and ending where land meets water in the Straits of Melaka. PJ kids and KL kids might get indignant when you lump them in the same group but to anyone who lived outside the influence of the capital city, they are all one and the same. The growth of the middle classes since Independence 50 years ago mean middle class neighbourhoods have mushroomed as well, a...