On the 8th day of Raya, my loved one gave to me...

I guess it’s a curse, being an IT graduate, that I cannot live through a single day without access to up-to-date information. That’s what happened during my balik kampung period. The not-so-much of a beach house now is far away from any Streamyx connection and an Astro unit is pretty much unfeasible, so for nearly 5 days I was miserable without being able to check my e-mails, check-out soccernet, update my fantasy football team and get a healthy dose of Sportscenter and intensive coverage of Matchday 5 of the Champions League. One even had to go to town just to get a copy of The Star. And that doesn’t happen everyday. In effect I only found out about the result between Lille and Man Utd last Saturday. I had a wonderful Raya but it’s the periods between visiting relatives and eating the kuih Raya that was mind-numbing. It reminded me pretty much why I no longer watch free TV nowadays. I mean, that Jaafar Onn beras Jati commercial is just so incredibly annoying. They had this whole Kesultanan Melayu Melaka theme going on and there on the rice package is a picture of Jalaludin Hasan in a suit giving the thumbs up. Like, what the fuck? Consolation, if any, comes in the usual heart-warming ad from Petronas led by Sharifah Amani. Apart from that, watching Puteri Gunung Ledang and Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam again just gives me something to do. Oh how I craved for my PS2 back home.

But Raya is not just about TV and electronic communication. It’s about being in the festivity mood and being around your family and relatives. If that still works for you. It got me worked up for at most 2 days. My friends here in KL are already went karaoke-ing on the night of the 3rd Raya. I don’t know what happening to the youth nowadays. We don’t used to enjoy Raya as much as we did when we were younger. I’m not sure it has to do something with the age thingy.

Like last Sunday. Gambit had an open house up at his condo at Ampang and even though only a few people had showed up, it wasn’t really that bad because we ended up having a public viewing of Gol & Gincu on Astro Ria. It seemed a pretty good idea at first, and we’re talking mostly males here, when finally we realized how much of a chick flick it really was. But hey, we’re all avid supporters of the local film industry. Except all love stories which has Erra Fazira in it. Then, later on, Chelsea got beaten. Haih…

I happened to watch something very interesting on Monday. You remember that once I went to the Ning Baizura and Zainal Abidin show recording last July at Angkasapuri, courtesy of Sasa, right? Well, the recording was to be aired during the 5th day of Raya and since I had nothing else better to do, in a very uncharacteristic way I flicked on TV2 and stuck to it. And it was such a poor transition by RTM. Viewing it live was actually quite pleasant but when it comes on screen, goodness me, the stage looks awful tenfold and so were the dancers. And the audio crackled. Both Ning and Zainal has high pitched voices but RTM’s sound system just didn’t do justice. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part, which I didn’t tell you people before was when it was Zainal’s turn to perform after Ning, and while he was conversing with the audience after his opening piece, Aritha who was then seated beside me, decided to suddenly scream at the top of her lungs, “I love you, Zainal~!”. Almost instinctively I brought my face down to my lap and covered it with both my hands out of embarrassment. Zainal heard it and said something back but I couldn’t recall because I was busy whispering to myself, “I can’t believe she did that. I can’t believe she did that,” over and over again. And I thought that was that. End of story. But as I watched that recording on TV that night, that scene came on and you can clearly hear Aritha’s voice yet again, filling the auditorium. It had my jaw gaping. And this time I remembered what Zainal’s reply was. “Ape? Jangan cakap bahasa Mandarin, saya tak paham. Ha, wa ai nee,”. And the crowd giggled. I SMSed Aritha telling her what I saw, or heard that is, on national TV and she just find it all too amusing. As a matter of fact, so did I.

It’s now a week after Raya and things are returning to normal in the city. Traffic jams are building and people no longer rush back as early as 3 o’clock to be the first at their local pasar Ramadhan. But I happen to drop by at Suria earlier today and something caught my eye which really irritated me. It’s the school holidays. On there were hordes of teenagers pestering about aimlessly around. There’s the group of youth who think they are the next gen of Punk or Ska group and there’s the lovey-dovey couple, which is the most annoying and repulsive. Don’t they understand the meaning of the phrase ‘a public place’? It means the public uses the place. Meaning, as opposed as the name suggests, a display of public affection is not in the prime interest of the public. If you want to fondle your spouse’s bottom or would like to clean his or her ear with your tongue, would you please, please, get a god damn room! And it gets worse on the LRT. I’m surprised they didn’t just have a raunchy sex scene then and there. But I wasn’t after I read the Durex Global Sex Survey in today’s paper. After the bedroom, Malaysians like to engage sex in toilets. Although it didn’t state whether it’s within their private quarters or the public amenities. Knowing the state of our public restrooms I’m guessing the former. But I could be wrong. Still an interesting facet though, nevertheless. But if you want to talk about adventurous, whoa, Malaysians like to do it in the car, in their parents’ bedroom and some even at work and in the garden. I’ll leave the imagination part to you. And the average age we lose our virginity? 19. It’s quite scary but among the other countries, we are one of the latest. Only India and Vietnam are above us. In Iceland, people lose their virginity at the average age of 15.9. That means you’re an Icelandic weirdo if you haven’t had sex by the time you celebrate your 16th birthday.

Aah, there’s nothing like talking about sex early in the morning. That’s all fer now. We’ll catch up again soon. Oh by the way, Selamat Hari Raya and Happy Deepavali wo are kind hearted enough to visit my blog. Good day and good luck.