Losing the Battle, Losing the War

Pulau Indah Sunset
Originally uploaded by koobz.

I had to shoot over Merdeka (Independence Day) weekend this past 31st August. To top it off, it was a night shoot, which means your days are fucked because you are preparing for the night and your nights are fucked because you haven't slept and you are shooting.

Dealing with a night shoot in the centre of town on a weekend is tough enough, but when you are doing it on Merdeka, you also deal with a bunch of flag waving hooligans riding around on their motorbikes making absolute nuisances of themselves. Add the extra day off from work, the drunk drivers, and just the generally bad drivers of Malaysia and you have a few recipes for disaster.

One such hero was a black CRV that was honking and swerving past us as we were in the midst of a tricky tracking shot using the back of a low-loader. He sideswiped us, beat a traffic light, muscled his way past a car that was waiting at another traffic light and zoomed out of sight. We turned the corner and just as he came into sight again, so did a taxi.

The CRV had run another red light and plowed through a taxi that was coming across the junction. The taxi slammed into a Guardian pharmacy, shattering the glass. The taxi driver, dead on the spot, was flung out and behind the car. His two passengers had broken multiple limbs and lay there in pain. The CRV driver had broken his leg and couldn't move but that didn't stop the gathering mob from beating him to a pulp. His passengers tried to make a run for it but the now fully gathered mob gave chase. One of them tried to jump off the bridge into the Klang River but missed and hit the riverbank instead, breaking his ankle... and then got beaten to a pulp.

I watched all of this from a distance. I was on shoot. I was working. I couldn't leave the camera and there were about 70 people there in the blink of an eye anyway. Somebody smart and not busy working or beating people up had already called an ambulance because they were there in record time for Malaysian emergency response teams.

That downer of an opener is not the point of this post though. This post is far more romantic and idiotic at the same time.

Instead of using smaller lights, Harold Goh-bachev, our Director of Photography, had opted for an 18K light to be boomed 80ft into the air off a cherry-picker crane. The white light canceled out the ugly amber that KL is usually flooded in. Cool, slightly bluish tones replacing warm, orange tones. This is significant because the amber has irritated me for years. Even when you fly into KL all you see is a sea of amber. The spill is more effective and brighter than the white light, and yes it is safer, but it is just UGLY. Everything looks so sweaty and hot and blearaggghghghhghhghghghgh.

Anyway, we were shooting in the older part of town with colonial building and pre-war shophouses (Medan Pasar area to you true KL-ites). There were millions of cockroaches, the whole place smelled like a drain, and the drunken maniacs were a friendly bunch. Then it started drizzling at about 5.30am. There I was in the middle of the street, getting the extra cars and motorbikes to line up so that we could shoot the traffic light scene again. I was wet, tired, hungry, cold and then I turned around was floored by what I saw.

Backlit by the powerful white light, the slow drizzle looked like snow. Not some stupid flash in the pan flurry, but proper medium strength snowfall. I didn't have my camera-phone with me at the moment, but it isn't important because I remember exactly what it looked like. I was one of those foreigners who would stop to watch the snow every winter when I was abroad just because it was so DIFFERENT to me. I had three full winters in Boston and I stopped every single time it snowed. I'd take extra long walks in the snow. Snow was more than the one hit wonder who sang informer, it signified the complete removal of myself from my home to somewhere else. That moment was special because I felt so far away from home and somewhere else yet I was right there. The excitement at being somewhere new while actually being somewhere you are completely used to... and avoiding cockroaches at the same time.

Thanks to the early morning downpour, the skies were cleared of the haze and were rock-solid blue. There was a strong breeze left over from the storm, fluffy clouds that raced low across the city, and a strong warm sun that was probably groovin' on Motown as it came up, because that was what they were playing on the radio. It was Sunday morning, it was Merdeka weekend, the roads were empty and the shoot was a resounding success. You have never seen a morning like this, Malaysia. Most of you were probably asleep, hung-over from excess jubilation for the birth of our nation. It felt like a late early spring morning in the west. Do you know how rocking a late early spring morning is? Fwoah. It's the best. Everything you can think about that makes a stereotypical beautiful morning was in full effect. Birds were having choir competitions, trees were rustlin'... it was the best.

It felt so good to be in Malaysia and being Merdeka weekend, it felt so good to be Malaysian. At some point they played "Tanggal 31" by Sudirman on the radio and I caught myself looking at a flag on the traffic light longer than I needed to. Corny, yes, but I was sleep deprived and it was just gorgeous, ok? I really wanted a Pokka Green Tea so I dipped into the 7-Eleven and this was the point that just turned the whole morning for me.

I got my beverage of choice and returned to the cashier, and ahead of me was this pudgy, disgusting man who was just being an asshole. He will now be known as Asshole Guy (AG).

AG: Where can I find information in the newspaper about real estate?

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: What is the name of the other English newspaper?

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: NO! That is the paper I'm holding in my hand! I'm asking you about the other English paper....

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: Where is a good place to rent an apartment? I'm new to this country and I need to know.

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: You are useless! Where else can I buy a newspaper around here?

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: What?

7E: *quiet mumbling response*

AG: Yes yes, that is all. What do you think?

And I just stood there, sunglasses on, completely quiet. This guy was about 35 years old and definitely an Arab national. Hands waving, perfect English, obnoxious as fuck. This situation is disturbing on many levels. Firstly, no idiot in their right mind goes about getting real estate information from the 16 year old who works at 7-Eleven, especially if you are in a foreign country. Secondly, the clerk was Malay. Malay culture is no longer the soft and gentle culture it used to be traditionally, but when dealing with foreigners and people speaking English, somehow it reverts to being very mumbly and soft. Therefore, if the belligerent moron took a second to LISTEN to what the 7E was saying, he would have gotten the answers he wanted and wouldn't have gotten belligerent and stupid in the first place.

Asshole Guy walks out of the shop, obviously headed for the newsstand across the street. I pay for my green tea, jump into my car and drive off. I'm seething. Someone should have put that asshole in his place. That's no way to behave in your own country and definitely not the way to behave in someone else’s ESPECIALLY ON THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MORNING IN THE HISTORY OF MALAYSIA, THE FREE.

I'm pissed. I turn my car around, and take into account pedestrian traffic behavior in the area; I assume that he'll be headed for one of the two hotels next to 7E. Lo and behold I find the bastard outside the first one. I drive up next to him aggressively, catching him off guard. He looks at me like I smacked his mother. I wish I would.

Me: Yo man... come here.

AG: What?

Me: Come here... I want to talk to you.

AG: What?

Me: Just come here. I was at the 7-Eleven with you just now. I heard you asking about real estate.

AG: So what?

Me: Let me do you and my country a big favor. Let me answer whatever questions you want to know about Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia in general. Whatever you want to know. Where to change money, where the good supermarkets are, where to buy an apartment, everything.

AG: Why?

Me: Because you are antagonizing the citizens of this country, and they don't need it.

AG: When was I antagonizing anybody?

(he's very arrogant and obnoxious and rude about this whole thing. I'm just playing it like Samuel L. Jackson on a plane. Cool, but man there are snakes everywhere and I can't take it.)

Me: Back there in the 7-Eleven. That guy was answering all your questions correctly, and even giving you more suggestions, but you are so rude and full of yourself that you don't even listen to what he was saying. So you just irritated yourself, and scared him, and just fucking stop it. We don't need your rudeness. We don't need your negativity. We've got enough to deal with without having foreigners come here and screw it up. You don't like it here, go back.

AG: Thank you very much for your concern

At that point, he walks off. I'm so charged at challenging a stranger in the first place that I just drive off. I don't sing him Negaraku. I don't yell at him to fuck off, or some racist remark. I just drive off. It really is his loss though. I would have been an excellent resource for him. He’d put me on speed-dial on the cell phone and line that I would arrange for him. He’d come visit me in the taxi that I’d get to be with him at all times. He’d buy me dinner in the best Indian restaurant in town not knowing that my family owned it and he was paying 30% more. He would love me to the point that the rest of Malaysia wouldn’t have to deal with his shit and then many years from now when his assholeness cannot be hidden anymore and they kick him out, they’ll give me some kind of honorary because I was on a mission to protect the country. Datuk Koobz.

Now in Man-World, AG has won. He has handled a situation with veiled politeness and left it without having to deal with it very much. His accuser is left flat-footed and without any comebacks because he has diffused the whole thing with one swift act of assholeness and is gone. But outside of Man-World, I think I won. How often does a complete stranger come up to you in public and tell you "Hey, you are being rude. Stop it." Hopefully he would have gone upstairs to his room and thought about it for a second.

But it is true. Malaysia isn't paradise, but some of us are at least working on it. We don't need the rude, and we don't need the negativity. I'm talking about from Malaysians and foreigners alike. There are plenty of foreigners here who aren't rude and are very positive and love this place to bits. There isn't much to not like about it. It's a great country... but to those of you who don't like it, just leave. No one is forcing you to be here. Stop torturing yourself and torturing us. We already put foreigners on a pedestal here just for being foreign. We already get tongue-tied and shy about speaking English because so many foreign fuckers can't get past the accent and then shit all over these poor people. I'd like to see a Malaysian tourist tell a Scotsman to go and learn how to speak English properly because he can't understand him...

For us Malaysians, I have nothing for us but a big fat *sigh*. We only get together beyond our mutual races when there is a car accident. That too the first question we ask is "Melayu Cina ke India?" (Malay, Chinese, or Indian?) followed by "mati ke?" (did they die?). We seem to take any kind of constructive criticism as being unpatriotic and judgmental. Stupid. Not accepting constructive criticism is being unpatriotic. If you don't like it here, just leave. I'm ready to leave for a short while but then come back. My negativity and rudeness is on the tip of my tongue and before it rears its ugly head, I think I need to be somewhere else. But then I'll come back, refreshed, and ready to do magic.

To the ones who don't want to come back, that's fine. The rest of us will do fine without you. Just don't complain to me that no one lines up, or that the food at the side of the road is too dirty. I don't want to hear it.

Happy 49th, Baby.