Wednesday, July 9, 2008

huarghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are territorial beings. that explains why we sit in the exact same seat in a 2500 seat lecture hall, why we feel the most comfortable doing business when using the same loo, why we run on the same treadmill in the gym, and why we have the idea of ‘my home’ and ‘my room’. It’s an Evolutionary psychology thing…Darwinian maybe….
Anyways, I’ve just moved into a new apartment, approximately ten minutes walk away from the older one, and 15 minutes walk away from the one before that. So far, this is the 12th address I’ve called home. It’s nice, and I get to have the cave.
I've lived in and called 3 different continents, 9 different towns/cities and 12 different houses, home thus far.
The first one was Ipoh which I can’t remember much about. The family had an address in Taman SIlibin when I was born. But then, the whole family had to move to Sheffield. As long as I could remember, we had at least 2 different addresses during our stay in the South Yorkshire city. The first one was a brown-brick bungalow, overlooking a brown-brick fire station across the street, with a rose garden in the front lawn. Then we moved into the house with the red door on 441, St. 4th road. The landlord, a Pakistani cab driver lives next door with his wife, his son and his daughter who we siblings get into a fight with every now and then. The house was nice, and I liked the backyard the most which we shared with the landlord. In the big backyard, there was a big apple tree, which has this freaky and scary quality to it when the leaves start falling. And right behind our kitchen, there’s a cone shaped pear tree which I could still remember plucking and eating the fruit from, and near the pear tree was a traditional Pakistani clay oven where the neighbor’s wife would usually bake and teach my mom how to bake naan and capati in. Further down the backyard was a big beautiful rose garden, surrounded by red-brick layered walls which we siblings and the neighbor’s daughter and a random Pakistani boy who I can not remember would climb surreptitiously and watch the white fluffy clouds pass by. Back then, I believed that dead people cruised on the clouds.
Then we came back to Malaysia. After a couple of weeks spending the time at the kampong, at our grandparents’ in Bagan Datoh and Chenderong Balai, we moved in into a staff apartment inside the university’s vicinity in Tronoh (known as UTP today); on top of the hill, under the big water tank. Life was great back then; no school no nothing.
After my parents got things figured out, we moved to this small town, which out of all the places I’ve called home, I think I like the most, Batu Gajah. My mom was posted to teach in one of the secondary schools in the small town, and it was the only civilization close enough to my father’s campus in Tronoh, otherwise known as Timbaktu. We called it home for about 6 years. It was great. I made lifelong friends from school. The small town was nice; the people, the pasar minggu and all.
The next stop was Taiping. It’s not much of a traditionally defined home. But having wasted 5 years of my life in this one educational institution situated in the middle of the beautiful and tranquil Lake Gardens, opposite the zoo, and right on the kaki bukit of Maxwell Hill, I think I have the right to call it home. Believe me; living in filthy dormitories with people of the same age group is really something. And out of all the addresses, with the great Maxwell Hill overlooking it in the backyard, the lake gardens on the front lawn and with the sporadic eerie siamang echoes in the background, this has to be the most beautiful and the most gorgeous of them all, excluding the boy’s dorms of course.
At the same time when I was busy getting my nubile head filled in with things I don’t really want to know in Taiping, the family was busy moving in to another town in the northern part of the country, to Nibong Tebal, Penang. My parents and my eldest sister used to live here, in the same Taman, before moving to Ipoh. But this time, we only moved in temporarily, waiting for the new-bought home to finish renovation.
So, a couple of months after that, we moved in to this one boring town in the northern most part of Perak, Parit Buntar. I have nothing much to talk about it, but last time, some stupid thieves broke in into our house.
But God is merciful. Before the aridness of the city had a chance to slay my soul, I got this offer to continue my studies in Shah Alam. So, I moved in into the hostel for a brief one year. And it was a lot of fun.
Then, after the brief honeymoon in INTEC, here I am, in the crossroads of America, in the state where everything seems to be 2 years behind. I haven’t seen Malaysia for a little over 2 years now, and still another year to go.

Anyways, the gentlemen’s final game the other day was an epic. Golf, soccer and tennis; it’s a great year to be Spanish. The government should give the people the whole year off for all that. And so, next stop, Spain sweet home….

But before that, I got a big mission early tomorrow morning; to command & conquer the seat at the rear of the class back!!!!!.......

Obviously, I had too much hockey…. But a few more clubs to break, then Tiger, u better watch out…

*byk gile kerja.....