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.