The Return of The Chinamen
Everytime Storm Rider swoops into town from Singapore, he invariably drags Guru Besar out of his hole in bloody Kajang for some good old fashioned time wasting. Thanks to their overwhelming coolness though, the universe usually rewards us with fantastic mini-adventures for our enjoyment.
These days Guru Besar has grown himself a Hong Kong triad ponytail, and Storm Rider... well, I think he's just spent way too much time in Singapore (No offense, M!). Last night's mini-adventure was me agreeing to drive out to Kajang to hang out with Tweedledee and Tweedledum. For even more poor cultural taste, how about Ah Dee and Ah Dum?
By the way, Malaysians ah, we are prisoners of our own laidbackness and cell phone culture. Last night, despite having to work, I also quadruple booked myself. I was supposed to hang out with Substitute first, and then I asked Cobra Commander what he was doing, and then WhatWhat came into the picture, and then JuneBug had also called, and then some point in the afternoon, Storm Rider calls me from the highway and says he's just past Melaka and I gotta come find him at some point in the night. Wait, that is one more than quadruple. I've pentacle (?) booked myself? To make matters worse, none of these five bookings had ANY concrete plans whatsoever. If you wanted to prioritize and arrange your social calender, you would not be able to because everybody refuses to lock anything down.
ME: Wanna hang out Saturday night?
THEM: Sure, call me lah after dinner.
We have, myself included, become very guilty of avoiding proper plans because it keeps our options open in case something better comes along at any point. Actually I'm not saying we should bring this practice to a complete stop. I really like keeping things open, and KL is the kind of city both in personality and in size that this is a viable and actually tremendously fruitful method of socializing. That being said, we gotta bite the bullet and stop being scared of future plans. We can practice by doing things a few days in advance, and then move on to maybe a week before. Do you know in KL, it is almost impossible to call somebody on a Monday and ask them if they want to go for dinner? Thursday, 7.30pm? I'll pick you up. You would have to call back on Wednesday to make sure Thursday night was on, and then again on Thursday afternoon to find out if you really were still on. It's as if the city is only populated by rock stars and politicians.
JuneBug and I must have called each other at least 4 times last night, just to figure out what time and where to meet up, what we were going to do, or just pretty much make any kind of plans with each other. Each phone call too was full of polite hemming and hawing. We should work on it, JB. Make plans and stick by em! If they really suck and something comes up, call and cancel! I won't be upset, promise.
The most disgusting thing is that this is entirely common. I got out of it with Substitute by telling him the truth. I'm glad that at least a few of my friendships are still rooted is unflinchingly brutal honesty.
ME: Sub, I was going to make up some excuse about why we shouldn't hang out, but actually I'm pentacle booked, and I'll just see you next week.
SUB: Yay. Now I can play WarCraft!
As for the others, I managed to get WhatWhat to come to my place early. I got him to roll one of his famous Killlllleerrrrr Weiiiii Blunts and then we went to see the Commander of All that is Cobra and the members of his crack Cobra support team a.k.a his co-workers. They really are a bunch of snakes... in a production house. After that it was a quick dinner with JuneBug before driving...
Driving all the way out to Kajang. Driving through Bintang Walk traffic on a Saturday night, onto the Sungai Besi highway. All the time needing to pee from the beer and green tea that I had been steadily guzzling since about 4pm. Driving onto the Kajang-Silk Highway and not seeing the correct exit before ending up on a 20 minute detour before turning back around and ending up in the one-horse three-cowboy town that is Sungai Chua. I stopped at the Maple House Pub and Fun Club, a dinghy corner lot serving beer amidst plastic flower lights and Nepali immigrants. Guru Besar and Storm Rider were trashed. In front of their lazy bodies were, at first glance, at least two or three bottles of beer. Bloody lightweights. A really unattractive waitress poured me a beer and I settled into my chair.
Even before having the beer, it is safe to say that my reality was sufficiently altered and had been since at least 2pm. Before you can say that Robert is indeed your father's brother, the three of us picked up exactly where we had left off and started our own special blend of murdered Malay, English, and Cantonese as we fought our way through the language barrier. Like I've said before though, their English is terrible and my Malay and Cantonese is disgusting. Somewhere in the negative adjectives though, we come together and really enjoy each other's company and manage to communicate in ways that I wished the rest of the world could experience, at least once.
The Maple House announced last call and the three of us jumped into El Stormo Guapo and sparked a J. To slightly digress, Agency recently got married and her little door gift, a porcelain box of some kind, is the perfect little Container Of Vice. We took a leisurely drive through the village of Sungai Chua. We passed the fanciest restaurant there; the Station One Steakhouse, complete with warm lighting and acoustic Chinese singer-songwriter duo. They were doing a solid interpretation of "The Blower's Daughter". In front of the restaurant were the DVD boys, but old school style. They had opened up a little stall with the fluorescent tube, the movie titles all layed out on a table in front of them. I don't think copyright law enforcement is high up on their list of cares and concerns out in Sungai Chua. I think some of them are still thankful for electricity and don't want to push it too much.
Nicely buzzing, we continued to drive around and see the sights. I saw a bicycle gang of kids, no one older than 14, stealing a road sign and then speedily speeding it away. Maria Callas singing "The Marriage of Figaro" came on just as we hit a stretch of road with no streetllights. Busting on through the dark, everyone was quiet while Maria broke it on down. I was enjoying the cool air that comes with being this far out from the city (I drove 150KM last night. All of my mileage being AFTER 11.30pm). Storm Rider was playing with his phone. Guru Besar had his eyes closed and was moving his head like as if his chin was conducting the orchestra playing in the background. A few minutes of silence passed before Guru Besar suddenly sits up, wipes his face clean, looks at me and says "Wahhhhhh. What is this voice like angels? What is this angel music you are playing?" before leaning back against his chair. Not ten seconds past before he followed up "Eh, turn left there. Let's go for Lok-Lok."
Lok-Lok. It's a combination between satay, steam-boat, and old fashioned pigging out when drunk and/or stoned. You stand by the side of this truck and just grab skewered meat and vegetables and throw them into the boiling soup, wait a few minutes, and then you have FOOD ON A STICK! Food on a stick is absolutely glorious.
As a general rule of thumb, the better the club, the worse the lok-lok that is parked out in front of it. The lok-lok in front of Zouk is terrible. The lok-lok at Asian Heritage Row is rubbish. You just imagine how good the lok-lok at Maple House Pub & Fun Club in Sungai Chua, Kajang is. Truly I experienced a culinary moment last night when Storm Rider handed me what looked like char siew (bbq pork) wrapped in some obscure Chinese vegetable. I took a bite (actually I put the whole thing straight into my mouth... like a pterodactyl) and it was the best char siew I had ever tasted. What was even more surprising is that it wasn't ever char siew at all! It was duck, and duck liver, and through some Chinese magic they had made it taste like pork. I dare say it tasted even better thank pork. Shite. I dare say it and I said it. It was a tasty little culmination of what had been a great day of stoning, wasting time, and just recovering from everyday life in general by staying as far away from everyday life as you possible can.
Weekends... I think I could get used to the concept.
posted by Captain Karat @ 9:27 AM
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