My father; the kampung boy

So I’ve been in Jeli for almost a month now. The place is alright, if a bit too quiet for my liking. Now if you know Jeli, until a few years back it was one of the poorest and most rural places in Malaysia. Things are alright now, my house has TNB electricity, although the water in my house is supplied by a well which is situated right in my house (there’s an electric pump, of course). But I find it amusing when one of the office people who are from KB (I stayed in KB for almost two months initially) said; “you Klang Valley people are not gonna mind having to live Jeli that much, since you already find KB boring and quiet, the difference between KB and Jeli will not be too prominent. It’s us KB people who are gonna have a tough time relocating there”. Errr, thanks?

My parents decided to come visit me unexpectedly last week since it was the school holiday and stayed with me for a night in Jeli. Hey, no problem. I had the house all to myself (suck on that, you Klang Valley residents with your expensive rents!) and there was a lot of space to spare. But I told them to not expect the Shangri La, not even the Sri Malaysia treatment. I’d just moved in, didn’t have enough money for furniture and didn’t even have my own bed yet. I also mentioned the well, naturally. They told me it wouldn’t be a problem, they would make do and bring their own comforters. So when they flew in from KLIA to the Pengkalan Chepa airport, I went all the way (~110km) from Jeli to fetch them and to take them to my house (total distance: ~220km). We even stopped by Rantau Panjang which borders Golok to do some shopping. Protip: go shopping there between 6 – 7 pm. That’s near the shops’ closing time and by that time, the traders will be more eager to lower the prices when you haggle, just so you get the hell out of their faces and they get to close shop and go home quickly. But I digress. Heading to Jeli from Rantau Panjang was when the fun started.

Now to give you a bit of background, my father is the typical oh-you-kids-nowadays-have-it-easy-I-had-to-cycle-10km-from-school-when-I-grew-up kind of father who took pride growing up in the rural area of Rembau (back then). It was starting to get dark from Rantau Panjang when my father started asking questions like; “so, is it hard for you to get your meals there? Are there any diners?” “How far is your house from the nearest neighbor?”. I get it, he’s my father, he was just trying to show that he’s concerned about my well-being. But my car running a bit low on petrol at the time as there were few petrol stations along the way. He started panicking a little. “You sure we can make it to the next petrol station?”, and seeing the darknened roadside, he started fidgeting a little. Making things worse, I developed a toothache that day (a different story. Not fun). The trip took a little while, and coupled with having to tail behind slow-travelling vehicles, it took some time and my father was beginning to get restless. The last straw (his) was when he asked me:

“Are we taking this road again to go to KB tomorrow?”

I answered in the affirmative.

What he said next was so out of character for the supposed kampong-boy.

“Hak-alaaaaaahhhhhh”

I’m laughing again just typing this. It sounded like something an impatient 10 year old boy would say. My mother agreed, we laughed at his outburst and I had to ask; “Abah aren’t you a kampong boy who’s used to this kind of places?” He sat sulking in complete silence, not unlike a 10 year old. And he seemed like he was almost panicking when we got to my neighbourhood later (the streetlights chose a perfect time to not work that night).

So there it is. I find it amusing that in a way I’ve bested my father in something. Me, the pampered Klang Valley boy actually doing ok living in a rural area, while my father the hardworking, kampung-bred man was complaining about the place throughout the journey. No so tough now, eh? But I am able to end this entry on a brighter mood because when we went out the next morning, he saw that my neighbourhood was not actually in the middle of nowhere. It was just that the streetlights had not been working the previous night, and there are grocery stores, a school and a police station just nearby, and that made him feel better; relieved even.