Kaki Lima

I feel like a rotten piece of humanity.

I wasn't supposed to go, I told myself no, but I did anyway.

Passion corrodes, so does debt.

Outside the Maybank, willing my bank balance to suddenly morph into a couple hundred dollars, I dug my huge cavernous, banana yellow bag for my ATM card. And I saw her coming.

I always see her coming.

If you've lived in KL for some time now, you've seen her too. I first met her in college. The Subang campus. She looked emaciated. I always want to give her a bath and feed her. I don't know how she manages to carry those bags of kerepek by herself. I've given her a lift before, and I put the windows down, she smelt like sweat, dirt and onions.

I am cruel aren't I?

She's old. Could be in her seventies, but she's been ravaged by Time and Fate. Bastards. I wonder where her children are, or if she has any. She smokes, you know. I gave her my Sampoerna once. And she laughed. Said I was "menggoda makcik ye?" Live and let live, man that's what I say.

I don't think she recognises me. I haven't seen her in some time now, and she hasn't been to the PJ campus. With our wire mesh dolphins and fake Balinese sculptures. I did see her two months ago though, and I gave her some money, but I didn't take the kerepek. I was on a diet.

What futile missions we all undertake.

She was sitting down in front of the Masjid Jamek LRT, where people passed by without so much as a glance. It's a high traffic area, not just for passengers like you and me, but for beggars, urchins, vagrants and the usual junkie bumming a cigarette.

"Kerepek ni hah, belilah dik! Tolong makcik sikit. Nah, ambik ni hah..."

And they ignored her. I, handed her a five and walked off.

I avoided her again. When she was talking to someone, I found my ATM card and ran into the bank. A mat salleh boy, about 18 I think, he bent down and gave her a ten as I walked in. And she thanked him profusely.

I thanked him profusely (silently), in my heart.

My bank balance. A measly 7.15. Sometimes I hate my father, and the fact that he never keeps his promises. My mother forced Navin and I to send him a Father's Day message, because we refused to call him. This morning at 7.55, he sent me a message. The usual. Horrible daughter, ingrate, unappreciative, disobedient... never thought there were so many ways of describing me. He really does take the cake, no boyfriend/lover can ever come close. And his English beats the Queen's.

I had to say something to her, I couldn't just walk by without saying nothing, right? I had a spare 5 ringgit note, and I wanted so badly to give it to her. Because I knew despite everything, she needed it more than I.

So there I am fumbling again with the stupid bag. And she stood up, all 4 feet of her and faced my 5 feet 6 inches and a half, and slipped me my favorite, banana chips.

I wanted to refuse. But I didn't. I handed her the five and she shook her head, and smiled a toothless grin.

*
Life with him was unfettered. He had none of the trappings of discordant intellectuals that I seem to meet more often these days. We who want to change the world, often cannot change ourselves...
- meesh's Work In Progress, as with everything I am now :D

I need a hug. Please do not hesistate to hug. Really.

Fast and the Furious: TOKYO DRIFT

I never really paid much attention during the first two installments of Fast and the Furious, despite the fact that I am massively a car bitch (I was ahem, doing other things, ahem). I don't like bikes (yeah, yeah Alphaque), never did.

It's all in a car baybeh.

I think it started in my teens when the guy I was into at the time spent more time on his cars than on me, so to prove that I could be just as good, I started getting into them as well. It's been awhile since I've gone over any of the older car magazines and trade fairs I used to frequent, but Navin had told me this was a movie to watch.

And so did Sarah, who is not really a car person either. And it had something called drifting in it.

Initial D, drifting.

Hot cars, drifting.

Hot men in hot cars, drifting.

Why the hell not?!

And it was money well spent. And in Tokyo some more, I love those repressed bastards man. Albeit romanticised, it was a good movie. Plot was "paper-thin" to quote Sarah, it was just a fantastic excuse to drool over hot cars and hot women, and one hot man.

Sung Kang who plays Han (my lovely california roll), check him out, he's going to be my bamboo obsession for awhile now. And for some reason, those of you familiar with the indie music scene here, he looks like Kevin Broken Scar! Hehe.

The Skyline. Mmmmmmmmmmm. American Muscle cars, not so mmm, but OK. Some parts in the movie that were awesome:

1. When they are in a drift chase with baddie, Takeshi, and Han (delicious rice cake) and Sean part the traffic in Tokyo city. Like Moses parting the Red Sea man.

2. In the mountains, every scene shot in the mountains. Especially the one where Neela is driving, massively Industrial Light-ised, but who cares?!

3. And the BEST: When Sean asks Han (my hottt goodness) why he drifts and he takes him to a traffic light where two uber hot babes are waiting for a red light in an equally souped up car and goes in drift circles around them, and there's like "Come Fuck Me" (CFM) eye contact and she gives him her number. And he grins like a little boy in a candy store.


So unbelievable UnF.



Oh. Jizz-tastic. I immediately needed a cigarrette after the movie. Watch it. Really. For the cars. And the hot-my-skirt-is-a-figment-of-your-imagination girls.

One More Time

It's Monday again.

I don't even know how to verbalize what I have to say. But, I would have to say at this point, REM's Losing My Religion comes close.

The air-conditioning in the car, is another thing that doesn't seem to be working well this time around, among other things. It blows cool, then warm. Heh, like what I'm feeling right now, like what you do to me. A series of failures in judging where I stand with the people I surround myself with, is begging for attention.

And I cannot bring myself to say what I have to. I feel like I am watching my life being lived out by someone else, someone who's lost a huge chunk of herself somewhere along the way. And getting it back, is proving to be a labor-intensive struggle. Something I don't have the strength to approach right now.

Work takes my mind off it, in good and bad ways. Now, I cannot imagine doing anything else, like going back to college. Which I started, and I have to finish, unfortunately.

God.

I haven't written anything in so long, trying to write these days (and blog entries don't count) comes out too verbose and barely legible. I cannot find it in myself to be better than this. Feelings of insecurity and failure are seeping in and at this point, I need a miracle.

I am not being melodramatic, this really does affect me. On the contrary, I think I am taking it too lightly. I've talked so much about wanting to write, wanting to be read, and now the time has come and I have nothing to show for it.

GAH!


Layers.

And I want to go dancing,
will you dance with me and be totally
and blissfully unaware just for one night?

*You unaware, that I am hopelessly
in love with
the idea of you.

*me, unaware that I am nothing
to your everything.

Then, we'll just say it was a dream.
Me in my armor of gossamer silk
You will tell me
everything
and I will pin you up
in my Book of Dreams
and we wont tell anyone
because i have been drawing lines
lines in the sand
for you.


Just a dream.


-21/5/04, 2.35 AM, while the rest of the world slept, unaware.

Taste the Night

Today:

The sun was shining, the skies were a brilliant turquoise, and it just seemed so wrong to be in the office. I should have been at a beach somewhere, with a magnificent member of the male species, drinking a cocktail, smoking a spliff and having lazy afternoon sex.

Realiti dunia: Still stuck in KL, and can't write for jack shit, pining away in cubicle, worrying about confidence issues, wondering if I have "flair."


*

I'm drawing lines in the sand baby, and I'm drawing them for you.


*
If only this were about me:

Mungkin kau takkan pernah tahu
Betapa mudahnya kau untuk dikagumi
Mungkin kau takkan pernah sadar
Betapa mudahnya kau untuk dicintai
-Pemuja Rahsia, Sheila On 7

*

Good morning Malaysia.