Of My Moleskine Notebook

There is uncontrollable laughter downstairs. The air is infiltrated with different concoctions of perfume, cigarette smoke, and voices of different pitches are struggling to be louder than the ones that expressed before them. Michael Buble is crooning full blast on the stereo, ignored by all.

I am merely describing the atmosphere of my living room, with my mother and four of her old friends having their rare get-together. What are they talking about? I don’t know, and I seriously don’t want to.

Earlier on we had gone to a Chinese restaurant for some dim sum. Since all of these friends of my mother live in KL, they had decided to meet up at Holiday Villa for lunch, then retreat back to my house for a long uninterrupted chat and coffee.

And since my father is off on the other side of the world on a business trip, I had to tag along for lunch as there is no one to save me.

They’re taking pictures of themselves the way Hanis enjoys. (Two people in a picture with one stretching her arm out holding the camera) They’re teasing each other, calling each other a bitch, and on the way back here there was a plastic bag filled with boxes of tampons on the passenger seat.

After setting up the coffee table and laying out the desserts and dishes, I had to search for my cat, and now as I sit down to type this down, I can see him peeking from the back of my desk. He is scared. I am scared.

I look at them, and I think of my friends. I look at my mother and think of what Oscar Wilde said, and what my father enjoys reminding me.

All I can say is : oh, shit.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
Oscar Wilde

I called up a good friend of mine who I’ve not contacted in a very long time. We used to see each other really often, but earlier this year she transfered to Sri KL, so her schooling hours and extra curricular activities just clash terribly with mine.

This conversation with her was quite a jagged one, as we’ve not heard from each other or a long time, and both were spewing of guilt for not picking up the receiver earlier but it was a good conversation none the less, though after I hung up the call, I just realised one blatant fact about this life of mine in state school : We’re in like a goddamn playground.

She : So how’s classes?
Me : Er, good I guess. I have no idea, I hardly ever am in class. And when I am the teachers are hardly there.
She : Seriously? So what do you do all day?
Me : Er, sit down, do nothing. Go off to the school co-op and get ice cream to eat in class. Sit at the back and talk nothing with friends. Sleep. Get horny. The normal stuff la~
She : Serious? I miss not having a teacher in class.
Me : It’s a sad place, really.

Well, even if there IS a teacher in class, everyone is inclined to be bored out of their wits. Our geography teacher is hospitalized, our math teacher is being sent to courses, our BM teacher is being hospitalized this Monday if my information is right, our KH (living skills) teacher is nowhere to be found.

So whats left is our English teacher, who is very nice and enjoys giving our exercises from a book, our Moral and Agama teacher (a vigilant lady who didn’t let me and a few of my friends out to recess after three periods of Agama, and who kept us for an extra period in the Surau [while we had classes downstairs]), and our Sejarah teacher, who we hardly see due to the minisicule amount of Sejarah we get a week. Oh and our Science teacher. But I’ll stop there.

While I was doing my english work (cutting and pasting paper into a book) yesterday, a fellow classmate came over to Hanis and my table, and asked the weirdest question ever.

Him : Ainaa, what do you think of my ass?
Me : Stand up, Hanis what do you think?
Hanis : Err.
Me : Ok what. quite cute oso. *laugh*
Him : *insert fellow classmate name* and *another name* say its very big.
Me : Er, no? If your ass is big what size is mine huh?
Him : No, no, I mean MINE. I want a very flat ass you see. Well not FLAT but you know, no shape.
Me : Err.
Him : Like that guy *insert name*
Me : Yes. He’s got a cute butt.

Then as Hanis and I laugh this off and arrange our books.

Him : Do you know that the average vagina length is six inches?
*Hanis and I looking at the ruler, thinking this conversation is shitmad*
Him : Do you know what the average penis size is? I’ve been wanting to know but all they say is “Size does not matter”
Hanis : IT’S A FRIDAY FOR GODSSAKE.

The conclusion to this post is that : We need teachers. Fast. Please. Give us homework but please get yourselves in class. It’s my PMR year, I need to learn about calcium compounds, not the average size of sexual organs.

It’s my PMR year for godssake, I’m in the class stereotyped to yield the most science stream students for next year, where are the teachers, correction: where are my class Teachers?

Five years ago, my brother was studying his A Levels and had called this room where I now sleep; his. The out of place wall bookshelf (which my sister had installed when she called this room Hers, prior to it being a His, about eight years ago), which used to shelf unfinished copies of literature Which Thou Shall Not Be Read by The Little Sister for unfathomable reasons (politics, fiction, more fiction), is now replaced by my cubes and box book dividers.

One fine day back then when I was ten, I finally got my hands on one of the books out of this room to be read peacefully. It looked madly attractive due to its simplistic white cover; with a zoomed out picture on a ladybug, and had a very exotic (though as I would find out later; equally erotic) title, Nymphomation.

The book was set in futuristic Manchester, where BLURBS (which are robotic advertising machines) set the pace by mad advertisements of sorts. The book is about a lottery, which you buy domino bones instead of a ticket, and you wait for every friday night to win. It’s about addiction, about drugs and onions, about math students and probability, about love and just plain lunacy.

The book, looking back, wasn’t that amazing. The first three quarters were completely mindboggling, but the last quarter was confusing and had everyone having sex with everyone through some machine in some maze in some mathematician’s house in some deserted place in some…. Yeah you get the point.

Though the good parts of the book still lingers in my mind till now. Parts about human behaviour, resilience to survive, about youth and intelligence, and most of all about winning.

Play To Win.

A line repeated endlessly throughout the book, acting as page dividers, chapter dividers, for no other reason than decoration and style. Five years on, and I’m still collecting his books, though none of them are as turbulent and disastrously beautifully written as this one. My brother noticed this, and noted for the record, that he only bought the book for its cover. What Probability. Luck. Luck. Lucky me.

Why not chance a throw?
You might as well have a go!
With your lucky little domino!