The Lost Codger

“My friend went to Denmark and all she got me was this.”

With my impending vacation only days away, I’ve been clearing and tidying up my flat so that it would be pleasant to come home to later, rather be in shock to see a pigsty. My dining table is now a dining table again with all my computer tools and packing materials from my eBay business put away. All I need to do left is get rid of some rubbish and some hoovering and that will be it. Property hunters take note: if you’re planning to live alone in a 3-bedroom house/apartment, do you yourself a favour; hire a cleaner.

I’ve brought down my suitcase from the loft days ago. It’s still bare open right next to my bed. Dust have started to accumulate in it. I confess, I absolutely hate packing.

The last time I went home (or did any travelling for that matter) was back in 2003, when I was still in the possession of my passport. It was only for two weeks and I hardly went out. To be honest, I can’t remember what I did back then. I may have attended a friend’s wedding reception but I don’t recall anything else. I do know the main reason was to celebrate Hari Raya with my family.

One thing that I do remember is how much the roads have changed and how many new buildings have appeared. I had to rely completely on my sister to show me around and drive me to places. It was kind of depressing to not be able to know how to get around in the city that you were born in. However, that was only for two weeks; there was hardly enough time for me to adjust and get familiar with the roads. This time, I’ll be home a lot longer.

Do they have satnav back home?

Of course, there will be a few things to look forward to:
1) the abundance of food
2) old friends, family and loved ones
3) plenty of photographic opportunities
4) Low Yat

Although, I’m a bit concerned about the following:
1) the unbearable heatwave
2) the B-I-G question from my mum
3) the possibility of reverse culture shock
4) never being able to find Low Yat

So now, what do I need to pack?

__________

I came across this trailer of Good Luck Chuck, about a guy named Chuck who all girls believe possesses the ability to find them true love. The only thing they have to do is have sex with him (lucky bastard). The problem arises when he comes across a girl who he thinks is the girl of his dreams. He fears that if he has sex with her, she’ll find true love with somebody else, just like all the other girls.

Testosterones everywhere will be pleased to know that Jessica Alba plays the girl whom Chuck falls for.

Can’t wait for it come out. I’ve never been more exited to see a penguin.

Don’t believe me? Check out the clip and wait for the timer to go down to 0:11.

One thing that I realised whilst having a nostalgic conversation with The Elitist* and The Sheepwoman** earlier today was how much higher their level of English is compared to mine. I mean, I know their written work is superb, but I had no idea they would talk very similar to how they write, apart from the random inserts in Malay. I guess you ought to when you have a doctorate. And I guess it doesn’t help much when my regular reading comes from FHM and PC Pro, and the fact that I’m far too lazy to read. I know it’s something I shouldn’t be proud of, and I’m working on it. Norwegian Wood has been sitting on my shelf for over a year now, untouched. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll pick it up this year. I remember when I first came to this country when I was barely 18. My spoken English was still very poor. I wasn’t expecting to study abroad so had no reason to take the English 1119 paper back in high school. So on top of my A-Levels, I had to do IELTS, which is a requirement for university enrollment. I had a very experienced English teacher by the name of Miss Kline. In one of her earlier classes, she made me aware of my habit of translating word-for-word when I speak i.e. I would come up with a sentence in Bahasa and translate that to English and vice-versa. That wouldn’t be good enough for an engineering degree and the only way to properly converse in English on-the-fly was to actually ‘think’ in English. That certainly took a while to adjust. The funny thing is, it’s now quite difficult to come up with formal sentences in Bahasa.

“Mana diaorang ni?”

_____

Oh, and this came late in the post today…

“Ekonomi je?”

* Copyright Kudo’s Stomach of Chaos
** Ditto

“Is this 9/11?”

I was startled by a voice which came from behind me. I looked over my left shoulder and saw a man, average build, receding hairline, wearing a grey bomber jacket, blue jeans and trainers. He was probably in his early fourties. Although I haven’t travelled around much, the vast ethnic diversity in London gave me enough experience to know that he was Turkish.

“Yes, I think so. I just got here myself”, was my reply.

He was referring to the queue that we just joined. There were probably about twenty others ahead of us. The queue was so long, we had to stand by the road outside of the building. It was freezing cold and the queue was moving very slowly, but definitely moving.

We had to be there between the hours of 9am to 11am. Nothing to do with September 11, although being there felt like it.

I was scared. Scared shitless. James promised to be here. He was nowhere in sight.

Soon, I was at the main entrance. There stood a tall caucasian man, big built, tight-cropped hair and plenty of crow’s feet at his eyes. He was much taller than me alright, I’m looking straight up his nose. Those standard issue boots he had on must have gained him a further three inches. His shoulders were as broad as two of me standing side-by-side. He was definitely a big man. A huge man. The only thing that differentiates him from a club bouncer, is that shiny official badge he had on his arm, glaring back me.

“Papers please.”

I opened my bag and showed him my papers.

Shitless, I tell you.

“Ok. You can come in.”

There were a couple of ladies standing by the entrance. Although it wasn’t clear what they were doing there initially, a big sign above their heads soon revealed my curiousity.

It read: “FRIENDS OR FAMILY MEMBERS ARE NOT ALLOWED”.

I guessed it wouldn’t have mattered if James were here. It would have been nice if he was though.

I went in and was stopped by another man. This one looked slightly younger, probably in his mid-thirties.

“Please empty all your pockets, unzip your bag and put everything in this tray. If you have a mobile phone, please turn it off.”

I did as I was told. I didn’t want to make a fuss.

“Step this way please, sir”, a new voice drew my attention.

Another man approached. This one looked much older and he was bald. He had a dark blunt object in his hand. At first I thought it was a ping-pong bat, but it seemed to be entirely made from plastic.

“Stretch out your arms to the sides for me please.”

It turned out to be a metal detector. He started to hover it across my chest and then both my arms.

“Turn around please, sir.”

I rotated 180 degrees and let him scan me again.

“Thank you, sir. Here’s your ticket. Please take back your belongings and proceed to the waiting area.”

I grabbed a small piece of paper from him. It had the number “153″ printed on it, followed by some instructions in smaller text; “Please wait for your number to be called”.

I got back all my stuff. My bag had been opened and searched.

I could already see the waiting area from where I was standing. It was no bigger than a high-school classroom. As I entered, the first thing that I noticed were the thick and tinted glass screens protecting the staff behind the counters. Most of them were occupied, with some counters being noisier than others, most likely due to communication breakdown that is very much expected at this place.

There was a single row of seats, probably ten or twelve chairs, filled with people, waiting anxiously for their turn. Those who were unlucky to arrive a bit later had to stand at the back, where I reluctantly joined them. There were roughly thirty of us at the time.

The two men to my right were Turkish, which I deduced from overhearing their conversation. The three on my left who just entered were Russians. I could hear another conversation in a strong Jamaican accent nearby. In one far corner I saw a single oriental lady standing on her own with one hand on a baby pram and the other holding a piece of paper. From the way she dressed, she was probably from mainland China.

All these people from different parts of the world, and not one single smile. I could probably sum up everybody’s expressions as similar to those attending a funeral, as if somebody just died.

It was only moments later that my number was called out by the automated announcer,

“Ticket number 153 to counter number 3 please.”

It would have probably made my day if the voice of the announcer was similar to the starship onboard computers in the Star Trek Generation tv series, alas, it sounded more like a elderly British lady, with a really bad cold.

I walked over to my pre-destined counter. Through the thick glass screen, I saw a very young lady, probably of Pakistani descent, typing away on her computer. She didn’t even bother to look away from the screen.

“Good morning”, I greeted with a smile.

“Your ticket please”, she replied.

“Oh sorry”, I quickly slipped my ticket through the small gap beneath the glass screen.

She took my ticket and put it aside.

“And your papers?”

I quickly slipped my papers through the gap again. She took it and started entering something on her computer while referring to it. A short pause later she handed it back to me.

“Is that it?”, I asked.

“Yes. See you next week.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I knew it was going to be a weekly thing. I took back my papers and quickly walked out of what seemed like a low-security prison. Yes, a prison for asylum-seekers, disguised as an ordinary office building, right smack in the middle of London. The building, the security cameras, the thick glass screens, the cold treatment from the staff, the whole ordeal was very intimidating. It was meant to be like that.

That was the first time I went there many months ago. I have been going to that miserable place on Thursdays for far too many times for too long. I was tired of going there, going through the whole ordeal every week. I wished Thursdays never come, but it did. There was no indication of when it would end. This is all part of their way, their method if you may, to slowly tire you into leaving voluntarily. I must admit, it was definitely working.

Today however, was not like any other Thursdays. Today I brought something along with me, which I haven’t seen in over two years. It was returned to me recently from the Home Office, not without some help from my solicitors.

Today, I brought along my passport. And it now has a page which says;

Type of Permit: Settlement
Place of Issue: Croydon
Valid Until: INDEFINITE

Today, is a new day.

“Kate mati..”, I nudged her arm with the palm of my hand.

For a brief moment, there was silence. I can’t exactly remember what she was telling him about, but all that rigorous hand-movement stopped as soon as I interrupted her.

She was speechless. She didn’t even look at me, but I could see her eyes moving rapidly from side to side, as if she was trying to comprehend what I just said.

“No!”

“Good God”, I thought to myself. What have I just done? This person was only inches away from a blunt utensil on her barely-finished plate of nasi lemak. I doubt she can do a lot of damage with it, but I wasn’t about to find out.

I could already see the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper: “MAN VIOLENTLY SPOONED TO DEATH”.

“Kate from Lost?”, she asked.

Her eyes were gleaming with hope. Hope that what she just heard from me wasn’t true.

She’s been under a lot of stress. We all have. And what I said certainly wasn’t helping. I think we all have been through enough.

“No.”, I responded softly.

“Betul?”, she needed assurance.

“Yeah.”

Sometimes we just have to say, what we have to say; hope is all that we have left.

She will just have to find out on her own.

After all, it was a nice night out…

…and I can always get her the next time.

Hehe.

It’s Sunday morning and I haven’t set all my clocks forward an hour. I guess it’s officially spring now, despite the fact that I still have to wear layers of clothing when I go out. I shouldn’t complain really, because the weather is hell when it’s summer.

Oh and speaking of hell…

“Oi duduklah!”

Well that’s a failed attempt at capturing the gigantuous IMAX screen in Southbank, London. The lens of my Minolta compact was just not wide enough to get the whole screen in. To give you a better idea, I’d have to split my shots into 9 sections and put to them together like a jigsaw. And I was sitting at the back!

Yes, it’s THAT big.

I went to watch with James on a Friday afternoon, hoping that there was less of a crowd to allow us to totally enjoy the movie. Unfortunately a lot of people had the same idea. It was a full house by the time the show started!

“Yeaaarrrrrghhhhhhhh!!!!”

What can I say. In my opinion, 300 is a really good movie. Hell (there’s that word again), it’s an awesome movie! Sure the dialogue is a bit camp, but the storyline and awesome battle sequences kept me on my toes all the time.

“To the cliff!!!”

I’m not one for history lessons, but the movie is loosely based on The Battle of Thermopylae and an 1962 movie called The 300 Spartans. To be more precise, it’s a film adaptation of Frank Miller’s epic graphic novel.

“…there is much our cultures could share.”

Gerard Butler plays the lead character as King Leonidas. I clearly remember him in Tomb Raider and he completely looks different here. The same goes for Rodrigo Santoro who plays Xerxes. A complete contrast if you catch him in Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle and Lost.

“has the oracle robbed you of your desire as well?”

I will say this; it’s a purely entertainment movie. Do not expect anything more from it. Although echoing him and him as well but not her, Lena Headey is, most definitely, flaaaammmminnnnn’ hottttt!!!

“it would take more than the words of a druken adolescent girl to rob me of my desire for you…

All set for Wednesday, Jim?