Coffee So Sweet…

Like a grand steamship unloading its precious cargo onto the wharf, the warung’s proprietor, an elderly lady with a kindly face piled-up the roti jala onto a plate. She then ladled the steaming hot gulai into a bowl and brought me my mid-morning snack. But this was no snack. The serving was so generous that it made the portions I was used to in KL look like a joke. An average-sized man could easily go through the entire day on this meal alone. Then again, I am not an average sized guy: this will see me through nicely till lunch.

I smiled at the proprietor. She smiled back knowing that I was silently pleased with what she had brought me. As she disappeared to the back of the warung, I found myself thinking about what her life was like. Was she happy? Was she sad? Did she have any children? Did they take good care of her? What did her husband do for a living?

No too long ago, upon seeing her rough work-worn hands, her weathered complexion and her worn-out clothes, I would have easily concluded that hers was a life of misery. These days, I am not so sure anymore. Her life might have been a hard one, strewn with obstacles and heart-breaking challenges. But it was also quite possible – and even very likely – that she was happier than I could ever hope to be. KL had taught me that living in a full facility condominium and earning a five figure monthly income had nothing to do with happiness. It’s about being accepted for who you are – and having the freedom to live up to nobody else’s expectations except your own. In the end, its about accepting that life is under no obligation to comply with any of our plans.

My train of thought was broken when an angelic young lady – probably the proprietor’s grand daughter – brought me my kopi tarik. She had a complexion that glowed like the breaking of dawn and eyes so soft that they could melt the hearts of even the hardest of men. I was so taken aback by her beauty that I found it hard to not to just sit there and stare at her. Though she had the plain scent of Palmolive soap and Yardley’s talcum powder about her, she was even more intoxicating than any French perfume I had ever known.

“Abang, minta maaf lambat sikit, ya?”

My heart palpitated as I fought to offer a reply – any reply. After what seemed an eternity, I managed a smile and a whole-hearted, “Bukan ‘abang’ anak oi  – ‘Pakcik’!”

“Baik, Pakcik. Minta maaf lambat, ya… ” she offered

“Tak mengapa, nak. Pak Cik pun bukan ada nak kejar apa-apa. Terima kasih, ya, nak”

With that she, too, disappeared to the back of the warong.

I took a sip of my coffee and smiled at myself. What had just happened? Wouldn’t the old Mat Bangkai – the one I used to know – have turned on the Henry Fonda charm, pressed his well-honed interpersonal skills into service and walked away with at least her name and phone number? Instead I found myself pondering what it would be like to have her as a daughter-in-law. She was a fine woman. She’d make a good wife for one of my sons some day.

As I was paying for my meal, I stole a quick glance at the back of the warung and caught the beautiful young lady’s eyes. She gave me a sugary smile and said, “Kalau kopi tadi tak manis, lain kali Gayah buat lagi best, ya Pak Cik!”

“Kopi kau dah cukup manis, Gayah… ” was my reply, all the time thinking of how I would get my eldest son to have coffee with me here at Gayah’s warung.

Yes, the coffee is much sweeter here in Umbai.

Footballs, Beach Balls and the Laban Mento Fountain Pen

Yesterday I watched a talk show (The Springer Show) on Astro’s Granada channel. It featured a man who had broken-up with his girlfriend because she insisted on making her breasts bigger. Yes, you read it right: she wanted her beasts to be bigger, he didn’t. According to him, she wasn’t happy that her assets were already (literally) the size of footballs; she wanted them to be the size of beach balls.

I, Fisherman

It’s a typical weekday morning. The kids are at school (at least, I hope they are) and wifey is minding her tiny handicraft shop tucked somewhere in a little corner of Bandar Hilir. I’m all alone at home; alone, that is, except for Puteh. She is stretched out, napping on my son’s study table, a little more than contented after half a tin of Whiskas and maybe a centipede or two for dessert.

I can make out strains of Uji Rashid, M Daud Kilau and Sanisah Huri coming from the neighbouring houses. The tunes seem to colour the moment with the sweet sepia tones of an old photograph and I fight the urge to have a flashback moment to the times when I used to wear bell-bottoms and platform shoes. The only reminder that I am in this present decade is the laptop whirring away on my table.

Going Native

At about 6.35 a.m. every morning, an Ah Pek – his face leathery with age and wisened by experience – putters by my house on his 30-year old Yamaha cub. He shouts, “Selamat pagi!” and I shout back, “Selamat pagi, tuan!” He smiles and makes like he wants to stop for a chat. But at the last moment he always seems to change his mind. He gives me a friendly wave and turns off into the direction of the jetty.

Maybe tomorrow he’ll actually stop for that chat. Or maybe tomorrow I’ll wait for him by the road and stop him. I don’t know. But unless he dies in his sleep tonight, I reckon that at 6.35 a.m. tomorrow he’ll be around again, passing by my house, on his way to wherever he needs to be.

All Quiet on the Western Front

It’s been just over two weeks since I’ve uprooted myself from KL and relocated the remnants of my life to a place called Umbai (not Mumbai, OK?). A sleepy little fishing village on the coast of Melaka, Umbai is located somewhere between Melaka town and Muar. On weekends, however, this sleepy hollow morphs into a hive of activity as folks from as far as KL and Singapore descend on it to savour its famous ‘ikan bakar’. By the time they leave (usually in wee hours of Monday morning), the local economy is richer by thousands of  ringgit.

By my estimates, Umbai has got a total population of maybe 238 at any one time (if you include any transients in the poll). Yes, it’s a low-density, quaint little place. As such, it is naturally very quite; maybe too quiet, even. As I write this, birds are chirping away on the balcony of my kampong house. It is almost bedlam. But that’s OK. In a minute or two, my recently acquired pet cat, Puteh (a white-ish mongrel who came around one day and decided not to leave), will come around chase them all away. Not to worry, though; the birds will be back. And Puteh will chase them away again – and so goes the cycle.

Attention-seeking in Numbers

The word convoy conjures up romantic images of a column of dusty brown trucks, led by Gregory Peck, blazing through the desert in a desperate attempt to deliver much needed supplies to beleaguered Allied troops in Tobruk. They get strafed by the Luftwaffe, fight off numerous assaults by German storm-troopers and continually evade a Panzer division hell bent on causing them grievous hurt. But in the end, they arrive at their destination just in the nick of time to save the day (and David Niven’s ass).

Letting Go

At the conclusion of a training course I ran for a bunch of fresh graduates recently I said, “At some point soon, you’re all going to leave home to try to make a life of your own. And before you know it, you’ll find yourself as parents watching your own children leave home to try to make lives of their own.”

Then, without realizing it, I added, “When that day comes, I want all of you to look back to this day and know that this is how I feel watching you go.”

Too Many Damned Questions

“Don’t you just hate it when you have to spend 10 minutes explaining a 10-second phone call?” fumed Jamal as he slammed down his riding gloves on the table. We all looked at him knowingly as we pushed aside our teh tariks out of a shared sense of commiseration. Despite his strapping six-foot-two frame and Rambo-style demeanour, Jamal was no playboy and was as likely to cheat on his wife as Melaka would receive six inches of snow tomorrow night. Everyone knew this; everyone, of course, except his wife.

Maybe it’s his 200-mile-per-hour Suzuki Hayabusa that’s parked under a nearby tree. Maybe it’s his softer-than-marshmallows heart. Maybe it’s his disarmingly intense smile. Maybe these are the things that are driving his wife to believe (erroneously) in horror scenarios of him copulating with every female in sight if given half a chance.

But maybe it’s not anything to do with him at all.

Somebody Else’s Simple Pleasures

Here I am picking up on one of my favourite bloggers’ posts, Andrea Whatever, when she wrote about simple pleasures. No, I am not going to write about my simple pleasures. They are quite bland and excruciatingly dull. Just how interesting can boiling one’s guitar strings so that they will sound new be? Yeah, just about a notch or two higher than cataloguing the relative merits of blue-black inks from different manufacturers (which I thoroughly enjoy). Instead, I am going to write about the simple pleasures of a few people I know.

Carpet-bombed, Napalmed and Bayoneted

In an embarrassingly public row between a husband and a wife (what’s new?) I overheard the man – obviously battle-scarred and shell-shocked from years of hen-pecking – say (or was it plead?), “It’s not that I have no control over my money; it’s the unexpected things that come up and take it all away that I have no control over!”

Whoa! This guy probably summed-up my life’s story in one mad-scramble-for-the-life-raft of a sentence. My heart bled for him.

With high-energy death rays pouring out of her eyes, she shot out a gavel-pounding, “Then you should have been smart enough to plan for the unexpected!”