Questa è Enida

Tak rasa macam diri sendiri lately ni. Tak tau lah kenapa. Biasanya memang tak tau kenapa pun. Hard to explain, even to myself. Rasa macam nak mintak dipujuk, mintak dibelai. Tapi bila orang yang berkenaan pujuk dan belai, menyampah pulak. It must be really hard for Be to melayan me. It is hard enough for ME to melayan me, takkanlah ada yang tahan. I don’t want to feel guilty because it’s just going to make it more complicated. But I do feel guilty, and it is complicated sebab tak tau punca.

Banyak benda kot. Or maybe there’s nothing at all? One thing for sure, I know I am not motivated to do much these days sebab I don’t feel productive. I am out of work, and that makes me lazy. Too much time in my hand. When I am busy, the thing is, banyak pulak benda yang I can accomplish. The busier I get, the more I get done. Macam Raebok tu lah. When I have all five work days to myself, I would wait til Friday baru nak do what’s on my to-do list.

I feel fat-ter, too lately ni. But who’s to blame? Siapa yang malas exercise? Dah tu lagi nak depressed. Dah bertongkat rasanya perutku ini. And pipi pun rasa macam dah agak labuh dan lanjut sedikit! Tapi to get on the treadmill, adoi laaa liatnye. Sebelum classes ended aritu cik main lagi bersemangat Waja Gen2 semua rasa macam begitu teruja nak naik treadmill hari-hari. Siap beli bluetooth earphones to emboss the motivation plus the safety factor of it lah kan.

But now?

I have been thinking but not thinking about Be going to Sakhalin. Thinking and getting excited about the money – if it is really 43% increase. Memang half a million dollar chance in a lifetime lah if we can get the mortgage paid within the next three or four years. That will free us of our financial and location commitment. I have been so resentful renting this Hisham’s place because at the end of the day, the house will not be ours. Dah lah banyak nor benda are falling apart.

Tak nak fikir sangat pasal Sakhalin and get stressed out thinking about the time being away from him. And him being away from the kids. After chatting with Cik Nan the other day, memang it hit home lah that Kitreena and Edrick being the hardest hit. Kitreena has been really close to Daddy these last year and a half. Edrick pulak yang quite the opposite, will need the closeness if he were to bond with Daddy. Dah lah he’s known (to Dad) to be the ladies’ boy. Siap kena pelepap kat Cameron Highlands baru ni sebab tak nak kat Daddy!

I don’t know lah. Memang malas nak fikir, especially lepas bergebang dengan Cik Nan about how Adelaide’s lifestyle yang sangatlah sesuai for people like us. Me, yang tak cukup baja dan motivation nak mengurus pasal anak-anak dan rumahtangga sejak termanja dengan kehadiran Bibik. And Be, yang tak cukup 24 jam sehari when it comes to work – punya lah dedikasi. Sometimes I think when the world comes to its end, Be will be in his office, doing work.

Where will I be?

Saturday, Be jatuh pokok papaya!
Haiiii, I would like to say it was a “tiat not yet broken” [read: “tak patah tiat”]. But really, it was a tiat not even spoken. Tak sempat! Kisahnya, Be had been thinking and planning to petik the papaya on the tree belakang rumah for almost a week. Came Saturday, it had become too tempting for him. So, off he went in socks and runners, a ladder on one shoulder, ready to mempertahankan his papaya from the preying eyes of the squirrels sekelian!

I was watching from the kitchen door, with Kitreena busy melangau in my ears, Mommy this, Mommy that, Mommy Mommy this and that! As Be was going up to the highest point, about 10ft off the ground, he shook the ladder that was against the papaya bark (it’s an old old old papaya tree yang dah bercabang tiga already!) He did so to see if it was safer for him to go higher and to see if the strength of the bark would support the weight – his and the ladder’s.

I opened my mouth to warn Be not to stay up against the bark too long and to stop shaking it. “Babe, don’t shhh….!” And it was then that the brittle bark broke into three pieces! The ladder terjungkit like a see-saw – the base in our backyard, and the top in our neighbor’s. Be fell into the neighbor’s yard, luckily slowly. I held myself from saying anything to give him some time to realize that he just fell off the papaya tree, 10ft high! (In other words, I was speechlessly shocked and scared!)

There were so many fortunate things surrounding the drama, withal. It could very well have been a ‘sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga’ scene. Or Be could have fallen on the sharp rocks that were in the neighbor’s yard. Or even more seriau, there was a metal rod within an inch or two away from where Be had fallen, that could have poked through his chest! For God’s sake, excuse my ghoulish thoughts!

After rubbing his chest, neck, shoulders and arms…Be said, “Blasted papaya! But lucky me! Someone must have been watching over me.” Be escaped with only soreness on his left elbow and a bloody deep scratch on his right shin. Kitreena, being a drama queen, was crying in the background – as she got scared and overly worried to have seen Daddy fall.

I kicked myself for assuming that Be knew what he was doing. While he might have taken all the safety aspects under consideration, he admitted it later that he knew squat about papaya trees. They are not even trees, kalau ikutkan. Just an overgrown herb-type plant. Aren’t they? The ‘bark’ was not only brittle, it was hollow. So, the moral of the story is…bark all you want, but at the right tree, please.

Sunday was a Satay Kajang Day for us all.
Yummy the satay was. But a friend who joined us that day had a yummier story. And that is to be blogged about another day.

Twice now!
The first time was Tuesday last week. There was this man, wearing a yellow DBKL collared T-shirt and a yellow DBKL cap, ringing the doorbell and ‘scolding’ me nicely about the garbage in the box outside my gate. He claimed that his boss had asked him to take pictures of the garbage left not in plastice bags in my neighborhood and to warn us of dogs making a mess with the trash. He then, at the end told me that the previous tenant used to give him money and some drinks.

The first time, I kinda thanked him for ‘scolding’ me nicely. However, the garbage wasn’t garbage, and I told him that I knew a couple people who would pick the box up and get some use out of the stuff in it (the stuff, by the way, was some leftovers from our successful Garage Sale last month. Besides, no dogs would come close to water bottles, potpourri and salt & pepper dispensers, you think?)

Today, the same guy came again…later in the afternoon. Quarter after 6pm, to be exact. He must have the script memorized, or something. This time, I asked Be to be ‘scolded’. Sure enough, the guy played the same old record. But today, I got smart. I told him in the hey-I-know-you’re-a-spoof kinda tone that my neighborhood is not under DBKL lah mister! We are under MPAJ. And he immediately berbalas pantun with yours truly, that he knows some people at MPAJ and he now, today, was representing the Mosquito Spray department. So, it was his duty to remind us to put garbage in plastic bags.

What the…?
I gave him the ‘talk-to-the-hand’ gesture and walked away, letting Be deal with this DBKL guy. And just as I turned my back, Mr. DBKL asked Be for a cold drink! Be looked at me for a split-second decision, and I looked back in disbelief! I had told Be that he should have expected that line, and he should have known it was coming. Don’t look at me!

At that point, I wasn’t nice anymore. Well, I wasn’t all that nice from the very beginning anyway. That’s just the way I am. I am simply not nice when I know I am being lied to. I am not nice when I am dealing with shams, thank you very much. I saw it the other day, that Mr. DBKL had gone to my neighbor’s house (who just moved in three weeks earlier) and got a RM10 note from her! So, I wasn’t going to give him a chance!

I heard Be said no to his asking for a drink, and I said it was after 6pm Saturday. Mr. DBKL should not have been at our door doing overtime, anyway. And that he could wait for the ‘previous tenant’ to move back to the neighborhood if he so wanted handouts. He ain’t gonna get a drop of piss, nor a penny (poo) from me! Be gone now.

Be wasn’t overly impressed with my rudeness. I wasn’t either. I should have just called the police. Or maybe I should have just set his pants on fire.

I swear…that half of KL population was all lining up at TGV KLCC this afternoon! Semua orang nak tengok wayang hari ni of all the days. Kecik besor tua muda Cina India Melayu Omputeh Pak Arab (including Malay males, at Friday prayers time tu gagah je berdiri dengan tiada keuzuran! Hee hee.) I would have liked to get to see The Pursuit of Happyness, but it’s only playing at 11.20pm. I don’t understand why a family show like that doesn’t get a reasonable show time, say…8pm ke. Silly.

Nak dijadikan drama hari ini…Ka Cher, meself and Booty were just entering the zig-zag (U-shape) queue when a lady tetiber sudah menyusup masuk under the line and potong garisan! I made a noise about it to Ka Cher with the hope that the lady would hear me as well. And so she did. And perhaps so…she waited for Ka Cher and me to get to her who was already standing behind the last person in the queue and let us take the spot before her.

She even gave us an excuse that she didn’t cut the line to actually cut the line. She just didn’t want to have to walk in loops to get to where she was. As though that ‘explanation’ wasn’t enough, she expressed her botheration to my making noise about her cutting the line. I was just about to thank her and was even about to understand her at that point. But instead, I said…”Dah bagi tu dah lah, jangan bising-bising pulak!”

Because I honestly would rather her cutting the line and be uncivilized about it, than giving a stupid excuse and still be uncivilized about it. Plus, why should I thank her for the spot that was mine in the first place? What if I hadn’t made noise? Would she have given us the spot?

I really thought…
“Eh, eh? Time out ek, tolong sikit! Yang you nak explain that you menyusup bawah line-guide so that you did not have to jalan pusing-pusing AND then still nak bising-bising ni apahal plak? Dah lines tu memang kat situ, in U or S-shape, to prevent people from doing what you just did lah pun. Ni mesti kes dah termalu and don’t know what to say. Sebab tu lah nasty macam nak menggigit jer.”

This little incident really occupied my mind for a while after. I couldn’t understand it myself, initially. But I know Enida well enough to say that I don’t like this kind of human-contact. Miscommunication, if you will – even with a total stranger. On one hand, I hate the thought that an opportunity to make a friend was lost in that little friction. I wish I could rub a little ‘niceness’ on a person like her.

On the other hand, it made me wonder if that lady had never seen a line-guide like the one at TGV KLCC. You know…the kind you find at banks, airports or post-office counters. What if everybody makes the same excuse that they cut lines so that they don’t have to move with the queue – or if they feel stupid to just follow order. I guess TGV would have to make movie-goers take numbers to buy tickets next.

Next!

I was at Istana Budaya again tonight, watching a theatre show – ‘Perkahwinan’ – by Kelab Teater Rimba, UKM. It was, I must say, one of the best yet I have seen. A simple story with simple chronology made interesting and engaging by excellent acting. I have not seen many comedies without covering either my face or my ears. But this one…I wanted to see and hear it all. Yeah, that good! (Mind you, while we are still on the subject, I think the Raja Lawak show on TV is not funny at all, because it is the joke – and nobody’s laughing!)

Not even halfway through the show, I stopped wondering why ‘Perkahwinan’ has had 12 invitations so far – including a couple from Indonesia. Though I had my reservation when I got to know the show succeeded to get only Lambang Sari as the venue at Istana Budaya, I could see right away that it can even go farther. Bravo to ‘Perkahwinan’ team! The acting talent of each and every player was tremendous.

Seeing the director, Diani Kasian (known as Abang Kancil to us Kelab Teater Rimba alumni) and Yuhana Yusoff (as Mak Su) tonight brought back loads of memories of the those-were-the-days. Yuhana was the best actress at Pekan Teater Kebangsaan 1992 through our case “Abyss”. She still gave and showed her talent tonight abyss-abyssan! We said hello, had a typical TESL hyena squeal and a little where-are-you-now chat (the telling but not telling) session for about 2 minutes before saying goodbye again. That was it. An abyss between then and tonight, and an abyss between tonight and then.

Whenever then will be.

A picture of yours truly and a dear friend from the back-then era,
just to show that we were in KTR.