I made an appointment to meet my academic advisor today. Why meet my "academic advisor"? It's a long story involving my lazy ass, an ill-executed transfer to Cyberjaya for my final semester of my degree course, and bureaucracy conspiring to ensure that I graduate one year late even though I'm not taking any subjects. Long boring story. Short form: Technically I will graduate one year later than my peers, despite not having to go to school.
And the university has this policy that I must meet with a lecturer/tutor assigned as my academic advisor(AA) once every semester. I did not know about this, until the email I received from Nisha, my AA, yesterday(Tuesday), informing me of this new policy. I sent her an email intending to make an appointment for two days later, but for some reason I made an appointment for today(Wednesday) at midnight Tuesday. The appointment was made over email, and since it's sent to my yahoo mail, I realised, too late, that I had to check it every hour or so in the morning to see whether she's free today(what a pain!) and the worst thing is I don't have to go to work today but still have to get up early.
So anyway Bob the Builder tried to wake me up at 8 today. I knew I wasn't working, and thought to myself,"Hey I can still be on time if I wake up at 12, since I told her after 2.00pm." I had a long night doing research and was pretty tired. So I got up at noon and poured myself a bowl of Muesli and HL milk and luxuriously enjoyed myself as I booted up the PC. Miss Nisha said I could come see her at 2.30.
I thought, hell, I'll be a nice guy today. Today I will dress my sharpest and bring my A-Game. Totally charm and impress my academic advisor. Shouldn't be hard since she's female. Probably young, too, since she's just a tutor. No harm doing so, right? It wouldn't hurt to have someone on my side in case there was another unseen bureaucratic snafu in the future. An academic advisor, no less, someone whose job is to advise and help me.
As I was plotting all this, I was still in my PJs with mussed up hair that I haven't cut for two months (regular hairdresser in Kluang. I haven't gone back home to Paloh for two months and I don't trust strange people with scissors). I lazed around, read the papers, surfed a bit for stuff totally unrelated to work, basically was a bum, until I saw the clock. 1.45.
Oh well, I'm only meeting her at 2.30. And it's a slow half an hour's drive. No problem.
So I continued lazing around until I realised it was 1.55. I had only 5 minutes to take a bath, brush my teeth, shave and get ready.
For some fucked-up reason, the logical part of my brain did not work this afternoon. Intellectually I knew I must arrive early to give a good impression if I want to charm someone, and I knew that to make it on time now, I had to take a quick bath and hurry the fuck up or I'll have to speed to Cyberjaya. But something went nuts in my noggin and I kept having the need to dress nice, so as to impress. In fact slippers were de riguer on campus and wearing a pair of sneakers meant you were the neatest guy in the world.
But nooooooooooo, spastic me insisted as I lathered myself happily in the shower, despite the fact that it was already 2 o'clock, I absolutely had to do the GQ thing.
I came out of the shower at 2.06, still having the time to preen in the mirror even though I never do that(what the fuck happened to my brain, I don't know). 6 minutes late.
I hurriedly rubbed myself dry and threw open the doors of my closet. Ooh. Let's see, now. Let's go with the grey flat-front wool slacks today. Sexy sexy. Worn with the black sweater, I once caught that tall long-haired Sarawakian-Christy-Chung-Lookalike checking me out.....
*what the fuck!! Like you care when girls check you out. Somebody injected you with oestrogen or what? You're late you idiot! What's with all the fashion nonsense. It's time to go NOW!!
I feel weird typing this, because even as I'm recalling what happened play-by-play, I don't believe I behaved like this. I don't give a shit how I look usually, and I'll happily wear shorts and t-shirts whole day long, because usually it's hot and long pants make you sweat. But at 2.06 this afternoon, I became like the gay dudes on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, fussing over colour co-ordination and 'accessories'
*Buyelkkkk. Vomits and keels over. Dies of confusion and mortification*
*WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT the FUCK!!!! It's 2.10. FIVE minutes late if you speed. So hurry the fuck up you idiot!!!
It still hadn't registered that punctuality and reasonably neat clothes would impress more than being tardy and dressed like a gay gigolo that just walked out of the latest Armani catalogue. I took my own sweet time putting in contacts, getting my nice oversized aviator shades like a good gay dude, and proceeded out the door with my money clip instead of wallet(because, get this, even as I was 15 minutes late, I remembered that the grey slacks were form fitting and it would spoil the line of my trousers if I used my billfold. Besides, money clips were cool. Somebody, ANYBODY, please just shoot me). I strode out the door with my carefully disheveled hair, cufflinks, nice shirt, and looked for my 'nice' shoes.
Then it hit me.
*You fucking moron!!! 15 minutes late lah!! Just get in the car lah pundek! You dress like Tom fucking Ford also no use liau now!
"Ohfuck ohfuck ohfuck......" I repeated to myself in a panic as I grabbed the nice shoes from the box, and ran towards my car wearing a pair of old slippers, intending to put on the nice shoes when I arrived. You would have been impressed seeing how fast I locked the gate and RAN to my car which was parked a distance away.
I jumped in, slammed the door shut, threw my shoes into the passenger side footwell and twisted the key. Before the engine caught I had released and twisted it again, as I knew it almost never started on the first try and some weird logic said to save time and just turn it again.
It started. I rammed the lever into first gear and tore off down the side alley of the housing estate, speeding past my neighbour's MPV down the narrow alley with barely a foot of clearance on my right side and my left tyres literally riding on the pavement just next to the drain.
As I turned out at the next junction, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. That smelly, all-invading, disgusting acrid stink of animal faeces.
diu.................
I probably didn't notice it before because I was too busy concentrating on not driving into the drain. It was too strong to be caused by an outside odour. I sniffed a few times to confirm(buelk) and turned my clutch foot(the left for you non-drivers) up to see a wet slimy patch of yellow shit already embedded into the treads of the old slipper and smeared all over my clutch pedal.
Colourful swear words were brought to the fore of my mental processes like cars off an assembly line, all the while interspersed with the constant background semi-panic of being late, a dull resigned frustration, and the feeling that I'd better not tempt fate and say that this day could not get any worse.
This time I was truly committed. I swore, and I meant it, that I would kill the cats who continue to shit outside my house. I asked my dad about this before, but he thought I was joking. When he comes back from Australia, that's the first thing I'm going to pester him about. Not how was your trip, not was Tasmania nice, not did you get any nice pictures, not wah, barossa valley 1996 bin 505 what a vintage!!... but dad, what's the easiest way to make a cat die a painful horrible death.
All cats should be shot(but that's another post).
I knew, at that moment, that today would be another of those cosmic joke days. The Great Kahuna in the sky does that to me sometimes, when situations so absurd occur that you cannot possibly believe it to be coincidence.
I couldn't believe that on the day that my brain's logic system went haywire and made me gay and late, I had to step in shit and get that acrid stench in my nose for the entire drive to Cyberjaya because there was no way I was turning back to wash it off and make myself half-an-hour late instead of 15.
I shook my head and gave a resigned, cynical laugh, and wound the passenger side window halfway down to reduce the stench.
But of course that would totally mess up my hair, which I spent an entire minute arranging in careful messy spikes. *Alanis Morrisette's Ironic playing loudly in background*.
Proof that it was cosmic joke day: TRAFFIC JAM. At 2.20pm on the LDP towards Cyberjaya. It was IMPOSSIBLE. But there it was: really heavy traffic on a road that you can speed on during rush hour. I almost cried in frustration.
And then, as if God was teaching me a benevolent lesson, a police Waja flashed its high beams from behind as it bore down on me with stupendous speed. I dutifully dove into the left lane as the patrol car braked hard like an AhBeng speeder and tailgated the ponderous SUV in front, still flashing its headlights. Once it overtook me I quickly eased back into the right lane to follow the speeding AhBeng police.
The speed limit on the LDP is 90kph, and the police car was doing 130 easily when it flashed me. The traffic was barely crawling along at 50 or 60 before he came along. But as the vehicles saw the blue lights and white paintjob, they guai guai(obediently) went into the left lane. Nobody fucks with the Police RAJA DI MALAYSIA..
Except for me. The AhBeng in uniform had caused traffic in the right lane to clear, and he was thus going at least 100kph(My kancil's speed limit). I said to myself fuck it and followed the patrol car as it sped down the road. If he's in such a rush he won't have time to stop me and ticket me, furthermore I'm speeding behind him, and thus don't cause trouble at all.
Traffic cleared up after the toll and I just stepped on the loud pedal. Maximum. Hantam saja. Until I arrived at the first serious bend in the road.
There's an off-ramp towards Cyberjaya that has 3 wicked corners. Wicked sharp corners, and one of them is off-camber and blind. Most people take the first left at 50 or 60 and brake hard as they enter the corner like the dumb amateurs that they are, and then they really slow down for the first right because it's uphill and it's the off-camber one.
I drove it like I was racing, watching for braking points, apexes and fastest constant speed radius. I whacked through the first left at 90kph(in a Kancil!! The tyres screeched and the car understeered). I even accelerated once I cleared the apex. I peeked and saw 100kph before I braked hard and heel-toe downshifted to 4th gear to get enough torque to claw uphill in my puny 660cc car. As my speed bled off to about 80kph, there were 2 slow cars in the right lane and an even slower car(probably going 40) in the left lane negotiating the tight blind right corner.
The slower car(in the left lane) was being a regular stupid malaysian driver like all the other 98% of you who don't signal and think they own the road, and was driving with his right-side tyres in the right lane. I don't understand stupid fools like that. Just because it's a corner doesn't give you the right to ride someone else's lane. And so he was holding up the two cars in the right lane with his inaptitude/inconsideration.
There was half a lane left with him riding the right lane, and I could easily squeeze through in my Kancil and with my superior dynamic spatial abilities, but I generally don't do that, as it would be quite traumatising to the idiot. Imagine if you were an Alfa romeo hogging both lanes and suddenly a Kancil overtakes you on your left when you thought it was impossible as there was no space left. But this time I had no compunction being a bastard. I was late and he was being inconsiderate. Plus there was the stench of cat shit. Easy decision.
So as we entered the corner, I downshifted and blasted through on his left(with nary an inch to spare) at 80kph as he inconsiderately drifted into the right lane. The (middle manager executive position probably) idiot who thinks he can drive(he can't for nuts) just because he has a powerful car predictably swerved into the right lane in panic. I smiled in satisfaction and watched him indignantly try to chase me through the third corner with his powerful Italian automobile. Unfortunately for him, the ability to buy horsepower is not connected with how good a driver you are. I wasn't interested in brinksmanship on the road, but I was definitely interested in not arriving too late, and thus he disappeared in my rearview mirror. Poor guy probably committed suicide wondering how the fuck he couldn't chase a refrigerator on wheels with his Alfa. Good riddance.
So I was already 2.35 pm by now(five minutes late) and I
- haven't arrived at campus
- found a parking spot
- put on my shoes.
The first two I could do nothing about, but the last one...... Boy oh boy oh boy, you're not going to believe this. I have this socks that have little toes like gloves, it's a huge pain to put on as you have to stuff each and every toe into the proper toe-let. Negotiating another of Cyberjaya's fast corners at full speed(100kph) and with my almost-bald kancil tyres literally screeching(I kid you not), I raised my left foot from the soiled clutch pedal, kicked the dirty slipper away, leaned my left arm forward to steer with my left bicep(!!!) and fumbled blindly as I used both hands to put on that complex sock onto my left foot. I felt like Mr. Bean when he brushed his teeth and changed his pants on his way to work in that classic episode.
Life does imitate art. I caught the steering just in time from careering into the bushes and a truncated life for me(what the fuck? Is it worth getting killed for 10 seconds saved) and gingerly arranged the toes to fit in the proper 'holsters' with my left hand. I succeeded as I swung past a slow-mo Perdana in the right lane. I don't know how afraid the driver would get if he/she knew I was steering with my arm.
It was time to repeat with my right foot, but this was more complicated, since I needed to be pressing on the accelerator pedal; It was easier with my left foot as I didn't need to depress the clutch pedal when going at full speed. What did I do? Thaaaaa-t's right folks! I used my LEFT foot to press the right pedal, at full speed, as we were going through a particularly nasty series of off-camber bends, while I steered with the inside of my left elbow and my face flush to the horn, trying desperately to put on my inside-out right sock while avoiding the disgusting yellow faeces that was all over the carpet, AND this stupid motorcyclist who was going 40kph in the middle of my lane. I bent my body to one side to steer the car into the next lane as I half-managed to put on the sock and tried to violently stuff it inside my shoe, just as the DHL traffic light loomed in front and I had to brake hard.
I released my left foot with a jerk....*notime no time no timenotimenotime i'm going to hit that Accord*, desperately fumbled my left foot into the right slipper and depressed the clutch as I stomped on the brake pedal with my sock-clad right foot. I did not hit the Honda Accord. The blood was thumping in my head, the stench of cat droppings assaulted my nostrils mercilessly, and I had almost been in a million accidents in just 10 minutes. It was CRAZY.
I could hear God's booming laugher in my head.
I parked my car, 7 minutes late, jumped out and ran to find Ms. Nisha.
No comments:
Post a Comment