The Karang Guni Man: The Dog

I remembered something back yesterday when I was making my rounds near my home. It was those executive rooms flats with better amenities like larger playgrounds and a mini shopping mall to cater to the residents.

The incident wasn’t anything special but it has been lingering at the back of my mind.

I was singing my infamous tagline along the corridors when a middle-aged man opened his thick wooden doors and waved me over in earnestness behind the posh metal grilles. I happily returned the wave and when I went up I noticed the tall stacks of newspapers and magazines propped up nicely behind him and wondered how long has this family been piling them up.

He opened the metal grilles and beamed, “Karang Guni, I got a lot of stuff for you. Boy ah! Come help me!”

As he began to offload his goods at the entrance of his house, I saw the Business Times on top of the moulds of newspapers. I casually flipped them over and realized that only the top few papers of each heap are the Business Times, the rest are mainly the Straits Times and The New Paper.

“Boy! Get those magazines over here! Stack by stack ah!”

A heavily bespectacled boy, probably around seven years old, brought a pile of Reader’s Digest to his father and opened the wooden door wide to reveal a dog held in a small area at the living room. A small fence cordoned the dog off and the boy stood quietly, looking at a spot behind it. The dog was ridden with fleas and whenever it sneezed I can see bits of black dots dropping off the dog’s fur. A putrid puddle lay beside the canine.

“Aiyoh, I tell you to come and help me, not play with your dog!”

The dog wasn’t big; I can’t differentiate the breed though I know for sure it was still young, not more than a year old.

The father was working hard at emptying his wares and when all was done, I weighed them carefully and handed over several coins. I eyed the boy and he looked down and played with his fingers absent-mindedly.

I waved to the man and thanked him before he closed the metal grilles.

But before I left, I took another look at the boy and his dog stuck behind the gates.

A book

I was on the train the other day when it occured to me that when girls read they are really attractive, impressing upon me an etheral charm which I can't really grasp a hold on.

No, not 8 days, not Teens and not Her World.

I'm talking about books. Just plain simple books.

When a girl opens up a book and starts to flip through the pages, her gaze borders between being relaxed and intense as she attempts to ease back and enjoy a good book while trying to decipher the plot's motifs and themes. And as she devotes her concentration and her eyes pass dutifully from left to right, bits of her hair will ease off the ear cascade into a fluid wave and silhouette the profile of the face.

That was one of the many reasons why I fell in love with my girlfriend.

I am a helpless nutter.

Fresh mint

I was pretty amazed by myself this morning. When I had seemingly been bled dry and had no more left in me, my pen just kept on going. Rather than massaging the words out like how a true student would, I squeezed them hard and with no mercy. Its like when you pick up your tube of Darlie toothpaste and realize it is spent.

But don't you think that's the end.

And you squeeze the tube and roll it and even tried to push the follicles of the toothbrush into the opening of the tube just to get more of those non-existant toothpaste out. At the end of it all you decide to flush some water in by dabbing water on your finger tips and kneading the opening before proceeding to torment the tube of toothbrush again.

This very morning, out of nothing I wrote and wrote and wrote out lines of English which are supposedly aimed at sustaining my thesis statement.

Evidently I have ran out of ideas and they are simply incoherent, yet I kept on going

I am so impressed.

Do not

I know my language proficiency is considered of average standard and it is nothing to boast about, in fact in my earlier entry I mentioned that I was told explicitly that my poor expressions caused the grade of a paper to drop. And I do also know and am (highly) aware that in my daily conversation I do sometimes use words that seem too "big". Often I am chided for it but I just thought that I should just try to use some of the words that I come across every now and then. Oscar Wilde has always been my hero but I guess its a different world now. I do try and cut down on it for I do not want to seem acting too pompous or smart.

But the line was drawn when earlier in the evening I accidentally slipped the word "promiscuous" into the conversation I was having with my girlfriend and she stopped and repeated the word. I duly explained it and she said, "Oh, so that's the lay man term."

To say that I was upset by this incident is inconsequential and irrelevant, all I know is that I have to stop. Just be understood and cut out all those excess flabs.

Penal Code 377

I would like to thank the gahment for finally allowing us to do what we all have been, is currently and will be doing in our privacy.

Thank you lei.

Keane

I took the bus 518 again yesterday, although I have to admit that I did it on purpose. There is little reason for me to travel to town alone and walk around the shopping centers looking for things I do not want for all I wanted to do was to ride along the expressway and look out of the window, and shut my mind off.

When I got up the bus I realized that it was no longer empty, the girl with the chestnut brown hair that I used to see was no longer there and my seat is already taken.

Sometimes a big part of us wished that things stay stagnate. The things that are close to us shouldn't change, they don't have to leave us behind.

And as I clamoured into my seat I looked out of the window and gaze out of the rainy late afternoon, the water trails lowering slowly and spots of condensation blurred the view.

My ipod clicked onto Keane's Everybody's Changing and I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it was back then, with the empty seats and the quiet ride, and you and there I was, reliving it all on the bus.

"But everybody's changing and I don't feel the same..."

HL 307

"A good deal of work has been gone into the essay and the references are wide-ranging. The comparison ... also works well. A pity that certain weaknesses in expression of English are liable to undercut the quality of your work..."

British Council: English Courses for Beginners, anyone?

The Karang Guni Man: My Story

It is funny trying to write again, lest talking to myself here. It has been more than twenty years since I had left school and even longer since I wrote on anything other than receipts and forms.

My youngest daughter thought of getting me to sit down and write into a book what happened during my day, what I saw and whom I met. She said it would help to make me smarter and if I were to be famous, this would make me earn a lot of money. She even suggested that I start something online and put up pictures of my work. Of course I wanted to question the logic of the latter but how could you reason with an eleven year old? However the idea of writing a journal piqued my interest and stirred something I couldn’t really put my finger on.

Among my siblings I did considerably well for my “A” levels but we didn’t had any more money back then to send me to a higher learning institute, we wouldn’t even sure we had the money for tomorrow’s breakfast. I never held it against my parents. Money was tight and with so many mouths to feed the importance of enriching the mind is hardly on anyone’s thoughts.

But I digress far too easily as I seem uncertain as to what to write here. Write about the fat lady that tried to cheat me of twenty cents and shouted at me when I said that she should take the clothes and burn them to get rid of its demonic inhabitants? Or should I talk about my rusting van that seemed to be always coughing up right at the wrong moments? Just today it decided to die on me while I was making a U-turn at a busy cross-junction. I never got so much attention before.

Or perhaps I should write about how I ditched my previous job and land up being my own boss.

I guess I worry too much; I’m on the first page of my daughter’s jotter book and there is no hurry.

Dear Diary.

Hi, people call me Ah-Tan and I am a Karang Guni Man.

This is my story.

The Karang Guni Man: My Story

It is funny trying to write again, lest talking to myself here. It has been more than twenty years since I had left school and even longer since I wrote on anything other than receipts and forms.

My youngest daughter thought of getting me to sit down and write into a book what happened during my day, what I saw and whom I met. She said it would help to make me smarter and if I were to be famous, this would make me earn a lot of money. She even suggested that I start something online and put up pictures of my work. Of course I wanted to question the logic of the latter but how could you reason with an eleven year old? However the idea of writing a journal piqued my interest and stirred something I couldn’t really put my finger on.

Among my siblings I did considerably well for my “A” levels but we didn’t had any more money back then to send me to a higher learning institute, we wouldn’t even sure we had the money for tomorrow’s breakfast. I never held it against my parents. Money was tight and with so many mouths to feed the importance of enriching the mind is hardly on anyone’s thoughts.

But I digress far too easily as I seem uncertain as to what to write here. Write about the fat lady that tried to cheat me of twenty cents and shouted at me when I said that she should take the clothes and burn them to get rid of its demonic inhabitants? Or should I talk about my rusting van that seemed to be always coughing up right at the wrong moments? Just today it decided to die on me while I was making a U-turn at a busy cross-junction. I never got so much attention before.

Or perhaps I should write about how I ditched my previous job and land up being my own boss.

I guess I worry too much; I’m on the first page of my daughter’s jotter book and there is no hurry.

Dear Diary.

Hi, people call me Ah-Tan and I am a Karang Guni Man.

This is my story.