My first robbery. And afterwards, the biggest burger I ever had.


I don’t know why, but as far as sketches go, I often get the person who is subject to some form beating. When I was in secondary school, Form 5 to be exact, I had to act alongside a pal for our English oral speaking exams and I was the overzealous boy whose girlfriend got nicked by his best friend; overzealous boy tries to hit the best friend and gets slugged in the face. Yee-haa.


During college, back in TARC, there was another English speaking test and this time I was a middle-aged man in his mid-life crisis with a debt and a failing family, who got a good pounding by a bespectacled loan-shark (“You can’t hit me!… Wait, technically you can, you’re a loan shark. But argh!”). It didn’t help to know that I was acting in front of a group of girls I barely knew, and that the first presentation I had involved me being hurt in a fictitious manner.


Wednesday I was a robber who tried to rob Li Mei (carrying a bag owned by Carmen, which I just got to know better and is a jolly girl) and got arm-locked in the process. Oh, and I got thrown on the ground! In front of a good 100 freshmen, who did some whoops when I was down and groaning. It was a promotional teaser to introduce the upcoming UTAR Safety Campaign, and we did it with a bang by bursting into the auditorium shouting and tugging at the poor bag until Li Mei Jujutsu-ed me and I got thrown. Apparently it worked, and while the initial plan was to have an unexpected drive-by snatch thievery (with me as the snatcher, but the idea got scrapped by the supervisor), I guess we managed to make a good enough impression.


Afterwards we were down at the Pavilion for lunch, and the Kelv-ster suggested the Carl’s Jr. restaurant. The burgers there are the sort that mutated from ideas written on pieces of paper, mixed in a biscuit can and prominently picked by the Creative Executive, who would proceed to place three ideas to a single burger and pitched to the director. You get all sorts of combinations; bacons and beef and mushroom and pickles and whatnot, and they all turn up in abominations held together by sesame seed buns. Wow, talk about the towering monster of doom.


They don’t look as ugly as I may make it sound; to the regular burger-lover, they’re possibly Van Gogh sandwiched in the classy strokes of Da Vinci. And they taste like Shakespeare exploded into lyrical splendours accompanied by Mozart and London Symphony. They taste good. They’re dead big, though, but shared with a friend it’s just about right (even halved, I reckon they’re the size of the average McD’s). Combo the burger with chilli-cheese fries and bottomless drinks, and you get something quite worthwhile once in sometime. I’d remind you to reserve more stomach space, though.


I managed to skip dinner that night. It was a huge, life-changing decision. My parents looked at me as though I just came out of the closet.


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Today (Saturday of the 24th of May 2008, 2 days after Indiana Jones went on his latest adventure after 20 years), Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day is Ruminate.

Word of the Day for Saturday, May 24, 2008

ruminate \ROO-muh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To chew the cud; to chew again what has been slightly chewed and swallowed."Cattle free to ruminate." --Wordsworth.
2. To think again and again; to muse; to meditate; to ponder; to reflect.
3. To chew over again.
4. To meditate or ponder over; to muse on.

You can use it this way;

The pot-bellied fathers of the participating children, in complete sync and understanding of each other’s paternal plights, pulled out their pipes and congregated at the corner to ruminate over the joys and ramifications of fatherhood.


And it seems to happen this way, really. I noticed that a group of fathers found themselves at the corner of the MPSJ this morning, their cigarettes out and carefully shielded away from any passing teachers, talking in a mixture of weariness and excitement about their kindergarten children. It’s Sports Day for the Kinderland children, held at the Subang Jaya Sports Complex, and I was there to help out the aunt and uncle.

I was listening for a bit (in a dire means to escape the repeating children songs booming out of the PA system, smack beside of where I sat), and I wondered if this is what fathers do, during parties or dinners or a random ball in some hotel somewhere for the wealthy celebrator. Do they really whip out some smoking device, gathered in a corner and discussed how Michael couldn’t seem to eat his broccoli, or that Lisa needed more discipline than what the experts suggested, or that the wife is suggesting another kid and that little Jason’s kindergarten fees are already sky-rocketing?

And I was there, half-listening and half tying my shoelaces (a little guilty perhaps, to be eavesdropping out of sheer boredom), and I guessed that maybe fatherhood sort of deserves something akin to the Gentlemen’s Club; but instead of talking the latest shipping companies, you talk about your kids.

I don’t really known why I thought like that and why I had decided to actually write about it (as I would put it; I couldn’t help but ruminate on it). Maybe I had wanted to write about how the fathers actually looked when they talked about their children, or that way that they could somehow agree with each other more than any other conversational topic.

Then I remembered that it’s Father’s Day soon.

Maybe dads deserve their own Clubs.