Author: Mr Miyagi

Ginseng tea
It’s 4.38am and I’m sitting in my thinking chair, thinking.

I’m actually very tired, but made the mistake of drinking a bottle of shop-brewed (as opposed to home brewed and canned) ginseng tea. Works better than coffee. So potent you get a headache, and you can’t help but concentrate on work. Good for work, bad for me.

Life’s actually treating me alright, and I am still thankful for small mercies. Great mercies really, considering I could be starving in the middle of the Sudan or some other god forsaken hungry country with no internet so that I couldn’t even complain online about not having food.

I am determined not to let any time go to waste. I am resolved to make sure I use every ounce of whatever creative energy I have. And do everything without regret. And it’s not even the New Year yet. See? The ginseng really works.

Thinking chair is getting uncomfortable.

I was awakened at about 4am by the sound of an explosion on the TV which I had left on when I fell asleep. It was a repeat newscast of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. I was a little disturbed by the story of how the UN special envoy had died a few hours after being trapped in the rubble. And so I went to the dining room to cut myself a slice of mooncake.

Bastard driver nearly kill me
Earlier this evening, viagra decease I went out to the village to buy cigarettes and drinks.

As I walked back along the pavement to the car park, decease a black Honda driven by a provisional license holder carrying a bunch of idiots shot up the street from behind me at speed, stuff momentarily lost traction and mounted the pavement, hurtling along it with two wheels remaining on the road, and brushed past my right so close to me, I swear it touched the hairs on my leg.

It then screeched to a halt about twenty metres ahead of me and the occupants did a quick check – of how badly their car was damaged, while I stood rooted to the pavement!

Uncle Eddie Lim Seng Huat passed away this afternoon at a nursing home in Seremban. I don’t know exactly how old he was, medicine I think around 55. He was moved there from my grandmother’s house last week, for sale and according to my cousin, was quite unhappy about it. According to another aunt, he had refused food for the past few days. He couldn’t vent his frustrations by doing anything else except refusing to eat, because he’s been paralyzed since suffering a stroke last year.

Uncle Ah Huat was the most cruelly ridiculed person in my mother’s family because of his intellectual impairment. In my mother’s family of 14 siblings, there were people with adequate compassion, but that could hardly have negated the horrible treatment he received from the others who didn’t.

He used to roam the streets of Seremban. And I remember from the time I was four years old, on frequent visits to Seremban, that I would be half terrified of him because he would grab my hand and walk really quickly down the streets, shouting and raving at anyone he recognized, and also at some that he didn’t.

He had a transistor radio he would carry with him all the time, listening to BBC World Service, and then later repeating everything he heard on the world news. I remember buying him a replacement many years ago when he was so listless because his old one had broke.

He had a collection of badges, pins and stickers from the Democratic Action Party (DAP), for whom he ran errands during election campaigns, distributing flyers and banners. He used to show off his collection of “Rocket” badges, which he called them, because of the DAP emblem. I remember calling him Rocketman because of that.

I saw him a few years ago while stopping by Seremban on a drive to KL, and he was his usual effusive self after several minutes of quiet distrust, owing to the number of years between my visits. It was back to grabbing my hand and running through Seremban shouting at people after he had taken the time to warm up to me. I had free parking that day because he snatched my parking ticket, ran two blocks to my father’s family confectionery, asked for a handful of biscuits, ran to the parking warden’s station, and with a big silly grin, asked very loudly to pay by biscuit.

Uncle Ah Huat, Rocketman. R.I.P.

My Army buddy Tat Kai (the one who slapped his own balls trying to kill a mosquito) called today to say the on again off again reunion of mates could be on again if he could get hold of Foong and Ho Yeo.

Foong had to have dinner at his in-laws and Ho Yeo wasn’t answering his phone till about 7pm, try but Tat Kai managed to arrange for all of us to meet at Ho Yeo’s office at 8pm.

Foong, Ho Yeo, Tat Kai and I were bunkmates and crewmates at 46th. Ho Yeo was the big bully that initiated everyone transferred into the platoon by beating them up. Foong was the most unlikely looking combat trooper. Looked like a 9 year old when he was 19, but won all the awards there were to win in the Army. Tat Kai, well, he slapped his own balls trying to kill a mosquito.

I got to Marina South at about 8.15pm, and couldn’t figure out where exactly we were to meet, as I had never been to Ho Yeo’s office, and only know vaguely that he works for his father’s company, which owns the Superbowl and Super Funworld chain of entertainment outlets (bowling and video games).

Tat Kai and Foong were standing at the bus stop outside Super Funworld, and the food outlets outside there were packed to the brim full of Sunday night diners taking advantage of the Sunday night steamboat and barbecue special for $12 per person. It was so bustling I thought it was the Festival of the Gas Canisters or something.

Ho Yeo met us outside Super Funworld and brought us into his office. Unlike most of my former Army mates, he looked trim and fit, prompting Tat Kai to comment that we could no longer call him Tua Bui (Big Fat) Yeo Yeo, his nickname then, but San Por (Skinny) Yeo Yeo.

Ho Yeo’s office at the back of the video games arcade was much like the gangster back office you see in movies. Glass windows to watch over the arcade, and desks and shelves stacked high with magazines and tapes and an ancient VCR and TV for which to play them on. Ho Yeo himself was still very much the thug, and it was strangely nice to hear him put so many swear words into every sentence. I kept being half afraid everything I said would be taken badly and I’d get my head smashed into a video game machine, but thankfully, he’s become more conciliatory these days.

The gist of the catch up session was the usual amongst my peers these days: Married? Kids? House? And as usual, for me, no, your honour, none of the above, not even close.

“You have a lot to do to catch up to where we are, but take your time”, is what Tat Kai and Foong said. And I feel like I’ve been left out of the race, still using the old marker flags from ten years ago as guides.