Rumah seram

I'm not really superstitious. I mean I enjoy a good ghost story now and then, but at the end of the day, they are ultimately just stories, fictitious ones at that. And I do get scared of things that go bump in the middle of the night, but I've always managed to keep my more irrational fears in check. Why am I telling you this? This is why:

Daylight makes everything look safer and nicer. Come visit me during the night!

That happens to be a house that is neighbouring mine, although the actual neighbour had long departed. You can see on the left that a wall had rotted away, and one end of a mattress peeking out from behind. Keep these in mind as they are going to come into prominence later in the story. Looks just like another run-of-the-mill abandoned house, doesn't it? Nothing to shout about. My mother's childhood house also looks somewhat like this. (Weirdly, hers IS creepy. It's right next to a cemetery, and the cemetery sits opposite another cemetery right across the narrow kampung lane) When I first moved to Jeli, I asked my landlord about it.

"Pakcik, what's the deal with that house?"

"Oh, the owner passed and he has no one around to look after the house" he answered breezily.

What do you know? It's even similar to what happened to my grandparents' house. They died and their children are either too busy with their own lives and families or live too far away to bother with the maintenance of a wooden house that was already decrepit to begin with. So I didn't think too much about it and carried on adjusting to my new life in Jeli.

That is until around a month ago. My roommate (yup I have a roommate. I know, I know. I'm lousy with expositions) ; an ustaz one day came home and without any encouragement nor provocation whatsoever, told me something. Now I am not the chattiest person around, neither is he so we rarely speak to one another expect for the customary greetings, pleasantries and the occasional conversations on practical matters. So the eagerness in his eyes with which he told me the following story, I found to be odd and slightly unnerving.

"The neighbours told me something about the abandoned house next door"
"What about it?" I enquired uneasily.

"It is now abandoned after its previous occupant died in it last year. He was an elderly man with no kin, so when he died the neighbours only found out about it after a few days, and that was only because he started to smell"

Fuck. Just my luck. I'm not superstitious, but I'm only human, so learning this definitely upped my fear-o-meter readings. You might ask "what's the deal, you poofter? So a guy died in the house. Big deal, big pussy" The deal is, it is unnerving to me because my kitchen windows face the missing wall of the house, and the mattress I mentioned earlier, which I suspect to have been the elderly man's deathbed. I need to pass through the kitchen every time I go to the toilet, and doing this in the middle of the night is not in anyway fun. 

"Can I come use your toilet? I won't haunt you, promise"

Luckily, all my house windows are of the glazed type, instead of the transparent ones. Whatever on earth or beyond it that appears outside my windows are going to have a tough time making itself apparent to me. Also luckily for me, if anything weird happens in that house, it is nevertheless happening outside of my house. Until the Ju-on inside my in-house well tag-teams up with it and let it in, that is. I'll be royally screwed, then.

Revelation

(This chronologically sits after the toothache entry and the mother entry)

As much as my relationship with my parents are strained when I live with them, one silver lining that I had always cherished when I was home was when my younger brother was around at home too. Most of my siblings would get to a certain age when they would want to fly the nest to go to a boarding school, and he was no exception. He did well in his PMR and he duly left for a boarding school in Penang, so I didn’t get to see him as much as I would have liked. After his SPM he went for his foundation, thankfully that time he only had to do it in Puncak Alam, but he was still not home much. I left for Jeli around the time he finished his foundation and was about to come home. Yep, FML. He is eight years younger than I am, but we are really close, a lot better than how my parents are with me. We share the same physical characteristics, slim, dark skinned and we are spectacled, and we also share the same morbid sense of humour (all thanks to me of course), although we are slightly different in our temperament. He is more religious, chatty (boy can’t stop yakking in the car) and my parents are closer to him than they are to me because he is more obedient. Far from being jealous at him, I am relieved that he is who he is as we the children undeniably need someone who is traditionally considered a bearer of the family name after my parents and take over my father’s business and he fits the bill better than I do. Whereas I prefer to start my own clan, complete with my own coat of arms, motto, and all that jazz.

That’s why when he volunteered to come with me when he heard that I was moving to Kelantan at the end of 2011, I accepted his offer right away. He was at the tail end of his foundation studies, and had a few days to spare. Plus my mother was insisting that she came with me. It was not that I was ashamed to be seen with my parents, but come on, I am in my mid 20’s and if I couldn’t move without my parents’ help, I might as well cut off my own penis and start wearing dresses to work. When he came with me, he only stayed for two days in Kota Bharu because I spent my first two months in Kota Bharu, and he never got to see Jeli when I was eventually assigned to this place.

Fast forward five months later, I asked him to come visit me because he was sitting at home doing nothing (the gap between his finals and university intake is really, really long). He said yes, lured by the prospect of playing my Playstation non-stop. So when I returned to Jeli from my monthly balik kampung session (I find it queer that for me; my ‘kampung’ is more urbanised than my place of permanent residence, whereas for many Malaysians it is quite the opposite), I brought him with me, along with my mother’s extra cooking utensils, pots and pans and the likes. I included the cooking utensils in my last sentence because 1) my brother is quite handy in the kitchen and he was planning to cook for the both of us in Jeli and 2) to show that my mother can be a real sweetheart when she is not constantly breathing down my neck.

I was glad to have company. I would do the bare minimum required from me at the office so I could go home, hang out with him and watch that CBS show ‘The Big Bang Theory’. And getting home to a hot meal is so awesome, it was like having your mom around, minus the nagging. Apart from that, I took him to KB again when I had to attend a meeting there, and also to Pantai Irama in Bachok. He wanted to swim at the beach, so I swam with him although Pantai Irama is not exactly the nicest beach to swim at. But guess how I felt upon getting back in the car and hearing on the radio that an earthquake had just occurred off the coast of Indonesia, the same earthquake that also shook the island of Pulau Pinang a few months ago and triggered a tsunami warning. We laughed nervously to ourselves before quickly leaving the beach.

But nothing bad ever comes without the good and vice versa. One day while at work, I went out for lunch with a friend. It’s the same friend who informed me of the job opportunity here and I have a feeling that I’ll be mentioning her quite a few more times in my writing since she’s about the only person here I talk to relatively often so let’s upgrade her with a designation; let’s call her F. But hold the confetti. While having lunch, she told me “You know what? Since your brother was around, you’ve been looking a lot happier”. I duly thanked her for her compliment. But my mind did a double take on that remark, for you see, I’ve learnt that most compliments that we receive carry in them a subtle disparaging insinuation regarding our previous condition. What does your boyfriend mean with “you look great today”? Did you look like shit yesterday? “Great presentation just now”? So your previous presentations were bad? Ah, the bane of my existence; over-thinking. But the mind cannot unthink what it had already thought of.

“What do you mean I look happier now?”

“You know, you really looked miserable being in Jeli before he got here”

“How could you tell?”

“It was plain as day on your face”

It dawned on me. I wasn’t doing okay in Jeli; being away from my family and the things that I used to be able to do was starting to take its toll on me; and I was affected after all. And to learn about it from someone else. She had unintentionally incepted an apprehension in my mind. I started worrying. Was I really miserable? And am I going to be more despondent when I am alone again after my brother returns home? 

Towards the end of my brother’s stay, I became more anxious. I was listless. If I couldn’t take being alone in Jeli for almost half a year, what is going to happen when it is time for me to go do what I came here to do; to further my studies? And even after that, I will have to come back here for seven more years as I’ll be bound to a contract with my employee who is going to foot my study bills. Eventually, my brother returned home. To his credit, my brother didn’t leave because he was bored or restless in Jeli, but because my father wanted him to help around the office. To my credit, I tried not making it obvious that I was upset at having to be by my own again by joking with him on the way to the bus station. But since I had just learned that I am not as good at hiding my feelings, who knows whether he bought my ruse or not?

The thing is, what F told me might not be true at all. Maybe she was just making a coincidental connection between two unrelated things; my countenance and my brother’s visit. Maybe if she had not told me about it, I might now be able to go on with my life blissfully unaware of my own state of mind, no worse than before my brother came to visit me in Jeli. But it had enough sense behind it for me to consider it, be aware of it and eventually be affected by it. Whether she was at fault or not, I have to admit that I’ve come to the realisation that my current life in Jeli, this self-imposed isolation, is not as peachy as I had expected it to be.

Or maybe I’m just exaggerating, that in the act of writing about an experience, I have unnecessarily influenced and altered my own feelings regarding said experience, instead of just describing it.

Mother's suffocating embrace

I’ve never really told you about the circumstances and cause of me leaving my hometown to work and live in Jeli. Yes, my current employer had offered me a chance to continue my studies abroad (hence the title). But what drove me to find a job out of state in the first place? Now, pull up a chair and huddle up. Yours truly is going to tell you all the details.

Now I’ve mentioned my parents in an earlier post and we now get along fine. But it’s only because we’re not living under the same roof. Before I became a resident of Jeli, I worked near my hometown and lived with them. Ever since I was a little boy, they’ve been a bit overbearing. Probably not my father, but he is the type who nods along to what my mother wants. She likes things to go her way, and sometimes at the expense of her children’s balanced growth. She has always been one of those mothers who do not really care about the importance of growing up socially and recreationally. When I was in primary school, I hated her. So when it was time for secondary school, I applied to get into a boarding school, got accepted, and duly left home for five years and learnt to keep a safe distance from my parents and then came university for six years.  (in addition to this, my siblings also followed suit by leaving home for boarding school when it was their time) Then came the time for me to be chucked into the real world of adults, I started working near my hometown, and came to live with them. That’s when the problems started and our relationship deteriorated even more.

My parents started questioning about me coming home late. I was involved with some ‘charity’ work which required me to attend meetings at night. They also questioned my lack of piousness, of course I couldn’t tell them the truth. But I still wanted to be left alone.

There was this time she woke me up at 7am to scold me for coming home late the night before; “how would it look like to the RELA security guys, when you come home late?!” 1) I am in my middle 20’s. I can come home late when I need to 2) if I were to take into consideration every single stranger’s opinion of myself, I might as bloody well stop learning for fear of offending the stupid and the uneducated. I got up, closed the door and got back to bed in annoyance at how both upsetting and amusing her remark was.

Another thing that infuriated me was how very little they appreciated what I had done at that point, academically and personally. Sure it wasn’t like I had cured cancer, but I was surely doing better than those sons who are Mat Rempits and drug addicts, and I had a lot planned for my future yet. No acknowledgement? No problem. But cut me some slack, will you? At one point I got exasperated, and I responded to her: “Mak, even if I were the Prime Minister or a Quran hafiz, you would still find something wrong with which to criticise me”

The funny thing is, when I was a teenager I successfully developed a way to get them off my back. I simply ignored them. No response, no reaction, not even a small acknowledgement that I was listening to them. There was this time that my mother was tearfully scolding me about my exam results. When I was watching a semi final World Cup match on the television. Great timing. Needless to say, the match won the competition for my undivided attention. And for a few years the tactic worked. I was left alone, life was great, the stock exchange was doing well, petrol price didn’t get increased falalala. But perhaps it was due to the fact that I never stayed home for long periods of time when in school and university. Ultimately, that tactic stopped working when I moved in with them after university, and they would not get off my back and nerves.

So we kept on clashing, and I thought that maybe the problem was caused by me staying under the same roof with them. I decided then to move out. I found a friend who was staying by himself in a neighbouring town, and gradually moved out. The thing is, I couldn’t tell my parents that I wanted to move out. They would be enraged if I did so. But after awhile of not coming home, they figured that something was up with me and confronted me. The jig was up. They brought up the issue of needing my help around the house. Fair point, but I countered that they only needed to let me know and I would be there. I had rarely refused to help them with anything before. But they were having none of that. I were to move back in. My father also insinuated that I wasn’t religious because I’ve become a Shiite. Yeah right, trade one lie for another. That’s my MO alright. And that he wouldn’t count on me on taking care of them when they are dying and old. Hey, thanks for that vote of confidence, Pop!

That was the breaking point. Even not staying in the same house didn’t work. There was only one option left; to move out of state. I immediately shot a Facebook status update asking my friends about any out-of-state job opportunities. Now some of you may ask, “why so drastic? Why must it be out of state? Couldn’t you just find a job in another town or district?” The answer is that because I’ve done it before. Sometime after graduation, I started working in a town near Subang and stayed for awhile with a few friends near Subang. When I moved out, my parents were really upset. I still remember what she said upon finding out that I had moved out; “One day when you have your own children, you will realise how hard it is” Dramatic much? So it wasn’t sufficient to simply abscond to a different town. For the chord (or leash) to be severed, a different state must I venture to.

Fortunately a friend of mine responded with a job offer in Kelantan with a better pay, and the chance to do what I want to do; continue my studies (hence the title of this blog). And it seemed that they really wanted me. So after deliberating for awhile, I decided to accept the offer, to make my own fortune and also to be on my own. After receiving the offer letter, I informed my parents of my decision. They didn’t look to eager, but then again they were never the type to discourage me when work and studies are involved. But if I were thinking that I was going to get away scot-free, boy was I wrong!

Exactly during my last day home, my mother found out that I hadn’t gone for my Friday prayers (I’m not religious, sue me). She confronted me about it, one thing led to another, and she ended up tearfully demanding that I showed my Facebook account to her to see what I’ve been hiding from her. Yup, WTF. I said no, and that she was being ridiculous, went to take a shower. That was the end of it, and the next day I left for Kota Bharu and a new life.

That was how and why I am now working and living in Jeli. True to what I had surmised, after being away from them and not being on each other’s throat for a few months, our relationship has improved significantly. We talk on the phone once in awhile, I go back home once a month or so, and they have even visited me once in Jeli.

Before you accuse me of being nasty and harsh with my own parents, let me just say for the record that I love them very much. I would do anything in my power to make them happy, will move back in to look after them in the future (and to sarcastically tell my father “you’re wrong about me”) and I fully acknowledge the fact that I am where I am today because of their hard work and upbringing. But there are some things that no adult should put up with and I’ve left my order-following days a long time ago. I see me moving out not as an act of disobedience, but an action I had to take to maintain my identity, to save our relationship and save myself from having to respond to them in a harsh manner, much like how married couples who don’t get along anymore would get a divorce. What other options were I left with? To defy them directly and openly? To scold back when I was scolded? I may not be religious, but I’m not ungrateful and I will never be harsh to them in this life. Not because of the threat of eternal doom and hellfire, but simply because no child should ever abandon and hurt their parents. When two identities clash, one has got to lose, so I would rather relent than lord over them in a false win that will eventually ruin me in the long run.

The sad thing is, now that we are apart, my mother is really nice again. She often asks me why the need to go all the way to Kelantan, and I time and time again would explain that the place I’m working for is the only institution that I know of which offers a guaranteed chance for me to continue my studies abroad. I once told her that theoretically if there’s another place that offers the same pay and opportunity, and that institution is closer to home, I would definitely apply for a job there (Hey, Jeli is a bit boring. Don’t judge me). One morning I woke up and she had texted me about a job offer in Negeri Sembilan with an offer that is supposedly similar to what I am receiving here. I applied for it, but since it was very close to the application closing date, we decided that it was quicker for her to fill the forms for me and mail it herself. But she didn’t mail it. She drove all the way to the place herself instead to send the application by hand. How can I ever openly defy this woman, a woman who single-mindedly tries to keep her children close, to the point of being overbearing, despite our differences? And more importantly, what do I do when a job offer comes, but I am not satisfied with the terms? If I reject it, won’t I break her heart by putting to waste all her tenacious efforts (even if indirectly) to get me out of Kelantan and closer to home? 

At the moment, I am racked by guilt for moving away and the possibility of having to reject the offer, even when my mind is telling me that it is no one’s fault and my mother is fully aware that my acceptance depends on the terms offered.

Kalau sakit itu membasmi dosa, no wonder my toothache hurt like a bitch

I am now in my mid 20’s. The last time I went to see the dentist for anything major was when I was in primary school. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but since that, I only go to the dentist for the small stuff such as for scaling, or those dentist check ups in secondary school that everybody has to go through. I haven’t had a toothache for almost two decades I guess and I intend to keep the number of my visit to the dentist at lower than one. Moreso when you take into account the fact that my visits to the dentist as a child always ended in blood (a little) and tears (a lot), and that I’ve always been scared of pointy and sharp objects. So, having a guy in a surgical mask poke around the inside of my mouth with sharp utensils is not very high on the list of ways I want to spend my weekend, even as an adult.

However, fate of course has a sneaky way of creeping up on you to screw you when you’re least expecting it to. I woke up that particular Thursday (last working day of the week in Kelantan, by the way) with a sore feeling at the right lower back of my mouth and my throat. No biggie, I’ve always had sensitive teeth near that area. The only problem was that my family was visiting that weekend and I was supposed to pick them up from the PC airport that day (for more info read this entry). “Hey, maybe a two-hour drive will take my mind off this definitely temporary pain” I thought to myself. How naive of me. If a two-hour drive cures anything, doctors would have prescribed it to patients, healthcare cost would be cheaper and petrol price in Malaysia would now be RM10 per litre.

So I got to the airport, picked up my family and drove straight back to Jeli. However it was Thursday evening (last working day, you city folks with your fancy normal working days) and the traffic going out of town was a bit heavy. Stopping the car made the pain obvious, and lord knows how hard I tried to stop myself from audibly cursing with my mother seated next to me in the car; I should probably get a medal or something. And to make it worse, my father was unusually inquisitive that day; asking questions about the places we were passing by; which I admittedly knew very little of, and asking me questions that I found to be annoying. Annoying questions X toothache = murderous rage. Enjoyable slasher movies have been made on lesser premises. However, my mother’s question was one that suited my predicament better; “Why don’t you go get that looked at?” I mumbled that I could still handle the pain and that was that for the day. We got to my house, I chatted a little with them before turning in for the night. I thought maybe the pain would have subsided when I woke up the next morning. But honestly, I didn’t want to get it looked at because it was still a week to pay day (I had to spend a lot of money on the house), and that I did not want to disrupt my family’s plan by having to rest and recuperate.

But of course, of mice and men and all that nonsense. On our way back to KB the next morning, the pain got really unbearable. Only then I found out that my employer’s healthcare benefit does not cover dentalcare (WTF? Don’t I work for the government?), and I decided to stop at the first private dentist that we came upon in Kok Lanas. The doctor, a guy who looked to be around my age, told me that a wisdom tooth had chosen the most unsuitable time to try to grow out of my gum. And in the most violent manner too. Since it had not come out of my gum, he had to cut my gum open and extract it because I did not have any space for an extra tooth to grow and flourish on; and afterwards sew the gum back together. It was in essence a minor operation. I said yes, do what you have to do (at that point I would have said yes to him removing my penis and reattaching it to my forehead if it meant alleviating the pain). Fastforward two hours later, the surgery was over. I asked him; “No MC? My work involves a lot of speaking and there’s no way I'm speaking with four stitches in my mouth”. He pooh-pooh-ed it and said it would be fine within “one day”. Guy skimped on the meds and painkillers, too. Motherfucker, you’re billing me RM400 (my mother footed the bill) for the surgery and you’re shoving me back into the world with just a few measly pills and no MC?

No bother, I had a family that wanted to visit KB and Pasar Siti Khadijah and I was dead set on getting them to the Pasar; sick or dead. God knows how I got to the place, but in my grogginess and pain, the first thing I did was get myself an A&W float while my family was at the Pasar; happily shopping. I didn’t feel like going into the Pasar; so I shuffled aimlessly around it, almost circling it even. What a sight I must’ve been that day. Feverish, gaping mouth (couldn’t close it shut), slurred speech, feet dragging, and eyes staring into the distance. I must’ve looked like a drug addict. Afterwards we checked into a hotel and rested which made feel a lot better that I could even take them to check out Pantai Cinta Berahi (screw political and religious correctness) and to this great Thai restaurant Keng Som for dinner. I even risked eating seafood, their food is that good.

I woke up the next day realising what a big mistake it had been giving in to the temptation, as I woke up with a swelling of the century on my right cheek; and the bleeding had not stopped at all. After sending off my family at the airport, I drove straight back to the dentist to ask his opinion; whether he still thought that it would heal in a day. Guy duly cleaned the blood, gave me some more shots and a three day medical leave (FOC this time). I went home, curled up in a ball, and sobbed like a little bitch. (Don’t judge me, okay? Falling sick does weird things to my emotions, I honestly don’t know why.)

Around two days later, I had to go out to have lunch. The thing is, I live in Jeli. It’s not like there are many diners or stalls you can choose from, so whether you like it or not, you will run into someone you know whenever you eat out. Not good for me, as I didn’t feel much like walking around town while looking like the Elephant Man of Jeli. I got to the place, got my food, and as I was starting to struggle with chewing (might as well be Olympics gymnastics at that time), some people I work with arrived for their lunch at the table across from where I was sitting, and they immediately saw me. 

“How are you feeling?” A girl asked. (Really? That’s the most suitable question you can think of?)

I gesticulated “Meh”

“Oh my, you do look terrible!” Chirped another girl. (Ring-a-ding-ding! Winner!)

Wanting to stop receiving anymore obvious remarks, I lobbed my own small talk their way. “Why are you guys here? Don’t you always eat closer to the office?”

“We’re celebrating you not being at work of course” (Ooooohhhh, a comedian.)

“Should I die instead? That should make it more convenient for you” (My joke’s better)

The coming punchline however wasn’t verbal. Immediately after our not-so-friendly banter, they changed tables to one where they didn’t directly face me. It might be due to the fact that with my chewing difficulty, I look like a paralysed-person trying to eat (no offense); dribbling and drooling. In short, worst lunch partner ever. But it did make me wonder whether I really looked bad eating while nursing a toothache. They won, although I think unintentionally. I would have gone straight home and cried like a baby for the second time in a week for the probably unintentional dissing, if not for the fact that I wasn’t feeling as poorly and I really wanted that lunch.

So I’ve learnt a few things from this experience. Firstly, always make sure your employment health benefits cover your dental care. My current employer doesn’t and when signing up I thought “Meh, whatever” and now I’m paying for it through the teeth, just two months after signing up. Secondly, save up your money for emergencies. There’s nothing as uncool as being a full-fledged adult who can’t pay your own hospital bills, and having to ask your parents to do it, especially if you have a father who’s perpetually disappointed at your life choices as mine is. Finally, if you have an operation/illness/condition, don’t go around explaining it in full detail to everybody and their mother. You’ll look like an attention-seeking, whiny bitch. Oh, and if you have to go see a dentist, try and get older-looking dentists to attend to you (yeah whatever, I'm bad at coming up with lists). They are more experienced. And by the way, I'm completely healed already, just went to get the stitches removed this morning. Snip snip, and off I went on my merry way. Hospital Jeli; the doctor was experienced, the treatment brief, although the wait was a bit long. Will go there (when sick) again 9/10.

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.

The asylum

I’ve been in Kelantan for a little over three months today. A city boy (okay, suburban boy) uprooting his life to ply his trade in a state whose original residents migrate for the trappings of Klang Valley and all that comes with it. The way I see it, I’m just evening things out. Hey, if there are many of them in my state, I might as well go to their state and pick up some slack for them.

Anyway, I find it odd that while driving in the city centre of Kota Bharu during my visits, I see a lot of people who appear to be mentally off by the roadside. Around every other day. There’s this guy in his baju melayu without the sampin shuffling back and forth between the exact two points near Wakaf Che Yeh, a scruffy middle aged man in shirts and slacks meandering at the Jalan Pengkalan Chepa heading into Jalan Dusun Raja traffic light, and just a few days ago I saw a clean looking mid-30’s man performing a dikir barat at the CIMB – Maybank – Bank Islam traffic light; to the amusement of the motorists stopping at red. And it is not just in the city area, since I live around 8km from my workplace in Jeli, sometimes I see these mentally challenged people by the roadside going god knows where. Maybe they are not out and out crazy as the people I described above, but you can see that the sparks you see in the eyes of mentally healthy, ordinary people that show their awareness of the surroundings and of other people, the drive to go do everyday activities such as grocery shopping, sending your children to school, and thinking of what to have for lunch, are gone and they are just shuffling along listlessly, without any purpose nor anywhere to go to.

And that is just those that I have seen in Kota Bharu and Jeli. I haven’t been in other jajahans yet, and if the law of probability can be trusted, what you see is usually the tip of iceberg; so there should be more of them.

Now to be fair, I haven’t lived in any other states that much, and one tends to drive in Klang Valley at a faster speed due to the many highways; thus eliminating the possibility of casually observing the goings on by the roadside, but it has sufficiently piqued my curiosity to warrant writing about it. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been to other places that much, I don’t know. But I’ll definitely make a point to learn more about this and expand this entry some more. What is the cause of the seemingly numerous number of these mentally unsound people in Kelantan, and why does it seem like there is a bigger ratio of crazy people to normal people in this state as there is in other states.

Finally, needless to say, I’m not writing this to insult or make fun of these people and the residents of Kelantan. I’m not doing this to judge them. I write as I see. You draw your own conclusion. If you are offended or insulted by this, regardless of whether you are a Kelantanese or not, maybe it’s you who should re-evaluate your own prejudices and of course, your own reading comprehension skills.