Ruminations

Day 1 after traumatic robbery incident

So the mother is recovering slightly. There is something strangely therapeutic about being able to repeat the story of the robbery in great detail over and over again to various relatives and friends as they troop in and out of the house, partly in worry, and partly in curiosity about the incident.

As she retells it, things always get the wee bit more dramatic, she gets a wee bit more heroic, and the robbers a wee bit more dangerous.

But then, there is something extremely comforting about having people now troop in and out of the house, talking politics, and public safety and wondering about the large monsoon drain that our country is travelling down. Family and friends are great familiar comfort zones that just... help.

Also there was something a bit comical about the new mode of living. Even doing laundry in the back of our house now smells slightly of a special ops operations with my mom insisting that she keep watch as I troop out with my week old laundry to the washing machine and go through the motions of sorting, detergent and pushing unfamiliar buttons on the monster.

"I will watch you," she says omnimously, "Be quick. They may be watching" refering to the group of nonexistent robbers who are apparently camped out on 24 hr surveillance on our washing machine.

Also I've taken to helping around the house. Dishes. Bits of tidying here and there. Things I haven't had to do since college. Things I find strangely familiar and, yes, comforting.

"I'm very stressed," she says, "can you do the dishes". So I do. But then she is unhappy with my performance at the sink and repeats what I have already done.

I pick up as I go along the house. Adjusting furniture, wiping table tops. Unfortunately I have not deigned to extend this courtesy to my room. The thing about having your room ransacked it, these robbers have actually unearthed weird things that have been long buried under the ever growing pile of junk that is 'my stuff'.

I've found
- Old tickets to gamarandjobat
- Various bits of foreign currency, which actually add up to quite a healthy sum
- RM 40 in Isetan vouchers which have long expired
- RM 50 in Borders vouchers which have long expired (this particular one is a cause for great grief)
- My favourite blue Purdue t-shirt with holes in the armpits which I have wrongfully accused my mother of disposing off

There is also this strange gap between the various odd boxes and bags in my room.

They obviously took something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is, and that really irritates me. Not knowing what I've lost. It was obviously quite a large box / bag, and they obviously liked it enough to have taken the whole thing, but I can't for the life of me remember what was in it!

Well that's today.

By my keen senses...

The thing about having your house broken into (while your mom was still inside and tied up and other fun things of that nature) is that it makes you think. Highlights of my unstoppable brain rant:

1. My dogs are completely useless
As I wait here on my couch for my parents to return from their almost certainly futile trip to the friendly, but highly useless, police station, my dogs are draping themselves on the furniture and getting into their normal routine of taking turns to terrorize each other.

On one hand, it is a relief to them unhurt and their usual goofy furry little selfs. On the other hand, I cannot help but try to recreate the scene of the robbery in my head.

Did they greet the robbers with their boundless happiness and sheer joy that they usually offer to any human being?
Did they try to make the robbers play fetch?
Did they try to follow the robbers home, as they are apt to with some people, giving said people the impression that they live under circumstances of extreme duress?

In conclusion, my dogs are useless. I will now get a german shepard who will kill robbers on sight and eat them over a few days as we hang their corpses from our front gate. This will teach both of these useless balls of fur a lesson, as they will no longer have the run of the house and will need to bow to the new Dog King (i.e. the German Shepard, who is yet to be named, or even adopted)

2. My room has been ransacked, but does not look completely different from what it usually does
My room has been ransacked. The went straight for my drawers under the misguided impression that I am one of those people who actually deign to hide jewellery in my socks. Also they raided the wrong room, which had almost certainly nothing of interest, unless the robbers happen to be voracious readers. (Which I'm guessing they are not, as they kindly left behind my very valuable leather bound deluxe sandman limited edition copy)

Also it does not look very different from usual. This is very disturbing to me as it leads to the conclusion that:

Condition of my room under normal living conditions = Condition of my room after being ransacked by robbers

This says alot about my state of tidiness (or lack thereof). I have always suspected that my room would be categorized as slightly slobby - this fear is now confirmed.

3. I'm not going to vote for Barisan Nasional
While I'm pretty sure that the robbers are not card-carrying members of any of the component parties, I cannot help but blame this current situation on the government. We live in a fairly good neighbourhood. We have security alarms. We pay our bills. We pay our taxes. We don't break laws - except traffic ones, because even the police don't really think their proper proper laws. We even pay the residential street patrolling fee. (Which by the way... where does that money go?)

So how come my house got robbed while my mother was in it?
What kind of country allows strange men to enter houses and tie people up and faff them about?

This kind apparently.

I hope the police get their nice new quarters and their new telecommunications system. This is because they've only got another two fucking years to enjoy it before we vote the next government in to kicking their overweight sedentary asses. So they should really enjoy it while it lasts.

the rat race

me: I got promoted
parents: oh. what are you now?
me: associate
parents: oh. i thought you already were an associate
me: no i was a junior associate
parents: oh.
me: ....

(silence)

parents: when are you getting married
me: -_-

Ching Ming

My last memory of Gong gong is that of me getting up to leave my aunt's house. He was in Singapore for cancer treatment, and I was visiting during the last school holiday before my final secondary school exam. I got up to leave, and said goodbye.

And then...

He took my hand. He had never taken my hand ever. And he took it then. He looked at me, and held it for a while. I wanted to cry, but I instead, I said I would see him soon. I never did.

When he died, I was at home, studying for my exams. There were people with him of course, my father, my aunts, my uncle, of course, my grandmother. Not me.

During his funeral, I hung around the parlor, talking to long lost relatives and just sitting. When everyone left for lunch, I stayed. For a while it was me and him, and I cried and cried. And my father walked in. I remember putting my head in his lap, and asking him to make it all go away. To bring Gong gong back and make the nightmare end. That... didn't work.

When he was buried, I stayed at home. I told my father I needed to study. On that day, I went downstairs and washed his car. When I finished I sat there, on the pavement, sobbing. I didn't study that day, and not the day after, and the day after that.

Today, sitting in the hotel room in Sydney, the memories come rushing back in a torrent. I remember him, his dark tan, his gruff voice, his slow gait, his gentleness, his everything.

Ceng Beng. Festival of the Dead.

I miss him so much.

OMFG

OMFG!

KRISPY KREME IS COMING TO TOWN

this is part of a diabolical plan to fatten and then eat me.

by someone very diabolical.