End of Day 10.
I’ve just started cycling again. My shiny blue & white Polygon, complete with blue gloves and helmet, blue digital chronograph watch and fake Oakleys from Batu Ferringghi (blue as well) makes me look like a smurf when I roll out on my lazy Saturday morning.
Every day as I pass by my parked shiny blue bike in my front porch, it felt like it was calling out to me. “Ride me, you Viking” it would whisper. It was like an elegant wench, always in a ready and bent position. It was also my Excalibur, a weapon of mass destruction. And by mass I’m referring to the mid-section, specifically.
I even created an alter-ego of myself. The Blue Boroi. A mythical cycling God that can only be seen by the lucky few on alternate Saturdays of the month (best I can do for now). The Blue Boroi rolls out of its cave, awakened by its weeks of slumber, motivated by the nasi lemak stall by the bus stop that always ‘habis stok’ by 830am.
Geriatric joggers tremble in fear. Stray cats in danger of spitting pebbles. Wild dogs stunned into submission. A whizzing mass of blue and white may seem pretty unnerving to the neighbourhood folks of Taman Melawati.
Whilst I was childishly playing trigger finger on my gears last weekend, pretending I was Luke, on the last run deep in the steel canals of the Death Star, with R2 in the back. I chanced upon a pack of multi-colored spandex wearing, co-ed middle aged tribe of cyclists. No, not middle aged. Close to retirement. They looked amazingly bright and flashy, yet mind bending when you try to imagine all the folds of old people skin trying desperately to breathe through the scientifically designed cycle suits. They moved in unison, silent and focused. I on the other hand, was a lone and solitary bulbous blob that winces at even the slightest undulating incline on the road.
Yet they were composed. Looked fit. And oblivious that their chaotic color coding frightens little children and squirrels.
I decided to pace my attention back on my burn session, veered in the opposite direction and continued my self-torture.
After about 16 kilometres of pain (verified by Endomondo on my HTC Desire S) and crushed ball sacks, I glided to the local kedai runcit for a bottle of Tangy Tangerine 100 Plus (because I truly believe I outdid myself) I sat next to the Reverse Osmosis water dispensing machine, flanked by the kelapa parut machine, on the steps of the kedai. Time for a fag (which coincidentally is also a pack of blue Lights).
Suddenly they appeared. Like a scattered pack of Skittles, they descended upon exactly where I was, and decided to park, hang out and grab some drinks. I paid no attention to their chatter, or the fact that I had sweaty, wrinkly legs in ball-hugging spandex around me. In various shades of crazy.
Then I also noticed that at the mamak stall opposite, there were other packs of two-wheelers, equally gay in colors and shiny materials, but different age groups and demographics. There were the husbands and wives club (which I suspect is actually a swinger group by night), the yuppie brigades (since I saw their Touaregs and CRVs nearby with roof and rear rails attached. And they also called each other Bro a lot) and also the hardcore, lean machines that were obviously serious cyclists. They were all in packs, and I was all alone.
Was this a cultural phenomenon that I’ve missed out on, having just initiated into a world of cycling without knowing the do’s and dont’s of the two-wheelers’ code? Will I be a social pariah in the world of cycling, alone and amateurish? Should I step up and say hello to one of the groups and make friends? Find strength in numbers? Modify my wife’s old swim suits and fashion myself a belly hugging jersey?
And then, as I was still deep in thought, 2 little boys walked past and into the store. As they came out, they were giggling something about ‘Telur’ and ‘Geli’.
And I felt good about myself again.
And so I dedicate my unwavering insistence to ride solo for the rest of my days, in normal man sport shorts and plain ‘ol rugby jersey, to a dear friend named Robert Frost, who wrote :
Two roads diverged in a wood and I –
I took the one less travelled by.
And that has made all the difference.
Thank you Rob. Thank you.
Now, time for that ice pack. Someone down there needs some TLC.
Self realisation can be an awful thing. I stood in front of the mirror one day and took a good, long look at myself. I realised there and then that though I’ve tried every conceivable hairstyle known to Esquire magazine, the problem actually lies on my f*ckin thick, triple-chinned neck, and portly belly.
Am I merely shifting blame to another sad excuse to why I’m not as good looking as Colin Farell? Maybe, but call it what you want, it’s one of those self realisation moments that hits you and hits you hard, and forces you to accept it one way or another.
To my wife’s annoyance, this has led me to one of my man-pondering moments this whole week. There was much more to discover. I felt like putting on a single white glove and shrieking out Man In The Mirror fiercely in front of her dressing table just to keep me in the zone.
Looking through the looking glass, a world of paralleled yet opposed dimensions started opening up to my consciousness. I viciously jotted everything that popped into my head, like when Sam Witwicky started getting bizarre visions from the Allspark that was trying to communicate with him, projecting bizzare symbols only know to the Ancients of Cybertron. Or more like a blind man trying to fill out a deposit slip at Maybank.
Did I save on that 20% discount, or did I lose by spending that 80% unnecessarily?
Did all the pants makers in this world sneakily manufactured size 34 and labelled them 36?
Have all my clients banded together and adjusted their clocks 15 minutes faster?
Did they purposely make all karaoke minus one versions 2 keys higher than my kontrol macho voice?
Did the earth’s rotation slow down to stretch every second by 15 times whenever I’m in bed, leading to my mere 33% achievement rate according to a global survey?
Did I really do what I did or did the whole club hallucinate me taking off my clothes on the table at Chinois?
I took a good long look at my list. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. Summing up the answers to those questions led me to the self realisation that I was gullible, fat, always late, a bad singer, bad in bed and a lightweight at the bar.
Have I always thought that I was pleasingly analytical, with an OK bod, more or less punctual, with the voice of an angel, the stamina of Ron Jeremy and the drinking capacity of 6 vikings?
Apparently I have, and perhaps, just like all of us do, never really looked at the real crux of why our girlfriends, wives, bosses, clients, strangers at the bar - nag, bitch, complain, gossip about us whether we like it or not.
So here’s to you, MJ, cause from now on, I’m gonna turn up the collar on my favourite winter coat, and let the wind blow my mind. Cause no message, could’ve been any clearer, if I wanna make the world a better place, I’ll take a look at myself and make that change.
Shamone!
Guess what people, I don’t know if you know it yet, but we’ll be celebrating ‘Malaysia Day’ this 16th of September. What’s it all about, you ask? It’s about commemorating the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia which consisted of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore back in 1963. But get this, we only started celebrating this in 2010.
It’s like someone woke up 47 years later and said “Hey you know what, that was actually an important day, Dude. Hey Sabah & Sarawak, sorry we didn’t throw a welcoming party back then and treated you just as a major natural resource all these years with no regards to your indigenous tribes and holding back on a lot of citizenship issues. And hey Singapore, you’re not invited to this par-tay any more coz you left, suckaaa!”
Aside from that, there’s really nothing much to look forward to this month. Raya has passed for the Malays and we’ve had enough of rendangs and ketupats and lemangs. We would’ve been too traumatised by that last 18 hour traffic jam crawl from Butterworth to Gombak to do anything else. The Indians have to wait until the end of next month to get their groove on for Deepavali. It’s business as usual. And boy, do Malaysians hate business as usual.
Technically in Malaysia we’re celebrating something every month. Work is what happens in between bursts of desperate escapisms. We constantly need to get away, go somewhere, make the most of what little time that we have, or have been given.
It doesn’t matter if that upcoming 3 day weekend was to celebrate a day of remembrance for fallen heroes. As long as Hard Rock Hotel doesn’t charge school holiday rates, you should be fine with whatever.
It doesn’t matter if that mid week break was to pay homage to the King’s birthday, to you it would mean finally going head on, on a ladies’ night and not having to worry about a hangover the next day.
Have we lost the sense of meaning, or the ability to appreciate something for what it is, rather than what it allows us to do. Sort of like immortalising the bong rather than the chronic itself. Like keeping trophies of empty exotic beer bottles when you’ve pissed out the good stuff on the floor next to the urinal instead of in it. Like watching Vanessa Hudgens going ape shit on a 50 calibre wearing tight spandex and ghetto hair, in fishnets and ripping bullets through a chasing dragon. Okay, that last bit was out of topic, but Thank God For Sucker Punch.
Case in point Malaysia, it doesn’t take too much to stop for a moment and listen to the sounds of the past. Trust me you’ll feel a lot more wholesome and patriotic while you lounge about near the pool bar on your next mini break.
In the meantime, I feel like a reminiscing some scenes from Sucker Punch myself….
It is August. Three quarters of the way into 2011, fast approaching 2012. Super ark-like submarines are near completion somewhere in Africa, and John Cusack will soon be thankful that his ex-wife hooked up with someone that knows how to fly a plane.
But more excitingly, in true Malaysian fashion, were headed to yet another double whammy of a celebration this year with Raya and Merdeka set for a collision course with each other come this 31st. But what’s even cooler is that both celebrations mark the significance of the same message.
Freedom.
For Hari Raya, it’s a day of celebrating triumph of the soul after 30 days of fasting from food, drinks and sin. (All the 3 elements that makes up a bloke’s DNA, of course. So that’s why us Muslim boys whine like bitches for 30 days, OK)
For Merdeka, well, obviously it’s about celebrating the country’s independence. What? You mean you didn’t know? Hell yeah, we’ve been independent and free to lead our way of life for the past 54 years. What? Doesn’t feel like it? Then put that yellow PicBadge on your FB profile pic, Sir. And join the war of the primary colors of yellow, blue and red (you probably know which is which). It’s like watching sports day at your local SRK I tell ya.
But no thanks, Sir, thank you very much, not for me. At least not for this month. Screw y’all and all your grand agendas, both of you! This month I’ll be reflecting on Me. Moi. Gua. Aku. To quietly meditate internally and find out who I really am, and who I really ought to be. To free my soul, instead of my superego. To tell everyone else that if they’re cooler than me, that means I’m hotter than them. To realise that I shouldn’t harbour any more intentions to kill Justin Bieber, or any superficially hot persons in this world. I would kill the hottest person in the world if I could, but suicide is illegal in this country.
The explosion of celebration of freedom will be internal for me this time. Like a woman’s orgasm. On the outside I will portray self control. Instead of jumping around waving flags, I’ll say a silent prayer for the fallen ones. Then probably do something meaningful like get my CRV tyres rotated.
But damn, it’s Raya season so I guess the workshops will be packed with people desperately trying to get back to where they think they came from.
Well I don’t know about you guys, with the way shit’s going down all around us today, I’d probably be mapping out a route to Africa right about now, and join my good ol’ buddy Mr. Cusack before we hit the new year.
Because instead of being so fixated about where we came from, to the point of national insanity every year, let’s try a little to focus on where we want to be in the future ey? Who knows, it could be the key to solving a lot of shit in this country.
To all my Muslim friends, salam Ramadhan! Fast, don’t be Furious, haha.
