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This is how I feel according to my keyboard.

Something must be said about grandmothers. While mine is perfectly delightful as far as cooking is concerned, the 81 years old lady is rather aggressive when managing the family grapevine. It seemed that she has an opinion about just anyone with her husband’s surname. Over dinner tonight, I was grateful that her analysis (with one of the aunts’, no less) of the resemblance of my facial structure to that of my parents has moved on to the scrutiny over my brother’s new hairstyle, au naturel, which supposedly should justify his introduction to everyone outside the family as Rain. In turn, his narcissism pride over his long unruly weird curly mane (drawn on a piece of paper to the approval of the father) was met with righteous verbal disgust critique (this time including the cousin sister’s), and the subject himself was not present for self-defense. God bless him.

Over dinner, I considered the benefits of my trip to Penang. I had to get up at five this morning, much to the displeasure of my nocturnal nature. The sleep in my father’s car would have well made up for this abomination if I was not forced to open my eyes some hours later to a very warm car with the keys missing in action. Apparently we arrived at a construction yard in Taiping and he was attending a meeting in this flimsy trailer-looking building, leaving little gaps in the car window for me to breathe. I might have thrown an unsightly fit for an engineer’s daughter over child abuse if it was not for the buffaloes my father and his associates pointed out to me, grazing on idyll muddy grounds around pilings too high.

“You don’t have to pay to see them here!” One of his associates merrily pointed out to me, as if the visit of buffaloes should well make up for a project that should finish in four months. A project still in its foundation stage, no less.

“Unproductive meeting,” My father lamented, after we left. “I’ve been here at least 10 times.”

Which comment brought my mind to the main reason I wanted to come to Penang in the first place. Recently over a joint or two in the States, I came to realize that out of all my family members I knew my grandfather the least. This is a man I was told to have taught English in Thailand; the same man who was responsible for my father’s interest in English and indirectly, my own.

Over dinner, in his usual soft-spoken demeanor, he told me he forgot how to speak it, in Mandarin.

Including his childhood, his youth, the war, and his marriage proposal to his wife.

He did not remember any particular interest during his more robust years, nor did he remember having any ambition. Though, he did recall leeching living off the interest from his father’s rubber estate in south Thailand.

Life, according to him, is viewed with frustrations. Particularly due to old age. He is 86 years old this year after all.

Death, according to him, is hard to talk about.

I asked him what he has accomplished ever since his school years.

“I didn’t really do anything,” He replied in Mandarin. No further elaboration offered.

I don’t think I had a more depressing interview.

There has been this roaring barbarian of a woman within me attempting to overthrow the soft power patriachalism has been asserting (quite successfully, unfortunately) over the centuries (or millenia, if you’d please). For nearly two months since I’ve been home, I have been quite resolute in trying to prove my independence of the male’s (or female’s, for that matter) assessment of my physical attractiveness by proudly binging on comfort food of saturated sin, of the likes of nasi lemak and char siu. Not to mention that scrumptious chocolate torte in Chinoz in the Park. I believe that I have developed a rather unnatural addiction to rose syrup with condensed milk as well.

Oh, the unused carbs. Which would have been left unnoticed if it did not look like I was capable of curving my fingers into a perfect ‘C’ around a certain upper arm today. Or if a certain someone did not look like she was born with a waist of a large hourglass and perfectly long, tanned pins.

Okay, so she is a professional model (”A commercial model,” she emphasized.) and Aldo clearly produces suicidal stilts for stumpy hobbits like me.

A point which would have been driven home with the full force of a Ferrari if she did not keep exclaiming over how “tiny” I am (though subconsciously I’m somehow convinced that it’s better to fit a size zero than a size two, or four), or how she doubted she would have looked good in ballerina flats like mine because they’ll make her legs “look short”.

Whatever she meant. Here’s a woman of healthy sexuality and the body of a mannequin who is called “fat” by people in her industry.

I really don’t know how I was approached in Laundry Bar some time ago to frolic in Japanese roadshows.

And as I felt the soft bulge on my abdomen my mother has ceaselessly warned me against (not to mention waged a personal war against too) since I hit puberty, I suddenly find myself wondering where I left those promotional flyers by FitnessFirst.

There is little one can do when faced with the most obtuse of reasonings, no thanks to raw feelings. Faced with the options of leaving everything behind and leaving all that has yet to come, one often finds themselves tiptoeing on a balancing point, not wanting to fall onto one extreme or the other, with the mere wish of surviving on the unassuming bridge between the two. Preferably with a platinum card for maximum distraction under the sad excuse of being in the process of making a choice.

Choice; a decision that makes even the biggest optimist realize that they can’t always be the good guy all the time. Nobody can always play fair. Someone is bound to get hurt. Part and parcel of life.

Life here, at least.

But one can always choose to do the lesser evil. Prevention is better than cure. Better be safe than sorry. Sometimes, I suppose, to kill two birds with one stone is just plain cruel. Sometimes, I suppose, civilization and the media have bound us up and constricted our hearts to the confines of dictated morality. The jury has voted. The judge has spoken.

Selfishness becomes a crime. Guilt has never been more demanding.

And then, you have the same jury telling you to follow your heart. Look within your soul. Find your inner self. Make yourself whole. Mind over matters. Back to square one.

Choose again. Please.

What if, what you can find for what you want, seems so scattered, and so dauntingly non-exclusive, that it makes you wonder if you really knew what you want? How do you make a choice then?

What if, what you really want, can be your greatest, sweetest downfall?

..

On a side note, O.B. tampons are as smooth as cotton-wrapped crayon sticks that I doubt my labia’s cramping from its monthly drill. Advertising fuckers.

You know what I wanna do to three friendly, oh-so-concerned-about-the-crime-rates souls?

First I’d like to stab their throats so only they can hear their fears.

Then I’d slash the back of their knees so they know what it’s like to be at another’s mercy.

Followed by slices of their dirty fingers for contaminating my fucking money and my fucking skin and someone else’s skin. Before I give them karma the Arab way.

“Tegas…”

A slow, sensual, fulfilling piercing. With your basic corkscrew.

One bloody eyeball. One open mouth of gurgling horror.

“…adil…”

Another; his comrade’s. They could have been in the choir.

“…berhemah.”

The last accomplice’s. Again, just one. They could all use an eye patch.

If they feel like it, that is. Or if they have time to find one.

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And I’ll make sure that the last thing they see is the badge on their caps.

Royal badge, my ass.