went to kuantan for about a week for a 'tak untung punya' business trip. sit in for colleague in KSB while he went travelling. good thing about this trip was that i worked only 3 days. i arrived on tuesday, worked on wed and thursday, fri and sat are weekend in terengganu, sunday 6 june 2010 was replacement holiday of Malaysia Agong's Birthday. Though not untung, at least I got my sort of 'time off' there.
been catching up with friends there. haven't been back there for long time. finally had my own time on Sat evening. so i enjoyed driving around my temporary owned Nissan X-Trail, too bad it was only a rental car. i reached Jalan Gambut, to my excitement this place was having pasar malam. it was about 6pm when I passed there. so i decided to come back after dinner.
around 8pm, i went back to that pasar malam. It was already packed with people. Road was jammed with cars that parked by the roadside. I saw a space, so i joined in the crowd, parked my car by the roadside. Walked to pasar malam, at the start of pasar malam, there were so many stalls that sell clothes. Cheap clothes. I'm talking about RM2.00 per T-shirt. RM2.00 !!! I've never seen anything so cheap before in my life. Not even in Cambodia. But of course, do not expect a Levi's type of quality, be real. haha. tempted to buy one or two, just for the thrill of it and can be used as my work t-shirt, but then again, i have too many at home, better dont add-in the thrash load which i have been trying to clear that I already have at home. So i remained empty handed through the first part of this long and hot pasar malam.
the second part of the pasar malam was all about food. Most of it are common food, like fried rice, fried kuey teow, Malay kuih etc. nothing special, i just bought some kuih as my supper later that night.
There were few stalls that sell gadgets, like touch lights, small speakers, etc etc. There was one stall that sells old books and old magazines. It didn't interest me because they are in language that I don't really read.
Basically that's all for pasar malam. I reached the end of it, so i turned back. on the way back, i stopped by the book stall just trying to see if there's anything interesting. The owner of the stall is an aged chinese lady and her daughter. I don't know, my instinct told me that maybe I could buy some books to help them. so i looked around, see see look look, here and there, finally i found some children english story books and some very very old reader's digest, as old as 1989. those children english story books are all hard covered ones. it's only RM3.00 for one, and i was more excited when the aged lady told me the reader's digest is only RM1.00 per copy. Wah!!! Very cheap. i was thinking, as i'm now trying to improve my english vocab, children books are good for me too. Back to basic basically. Build a firmer foundation. So i spent RM20.00 for 7 books. Good deal.
then i started to chat with them, asking them about Kuantan. Where to find food, well, basically a lot of where, what, how and when. The kind aged lady then said if I don't mind, they would take me around in the morning the next day, which was Sunday. They don't feel like doing the business at the pasar pagi near the stadium, as there is RM19.00 charge for doing business there. Such an interesting encounter, i thought to myself. But then, I had nothing to do on Sunday anyway, and they didn't look like bad people to me. So i 'adventureously' agreed. we exchanged phone no. she said she'll call me early in the morning to wake me up. I said OK. somehow i knew they would definitely call.
sure enough, they called at 8.30am, caused i told them i want to wake up a little late on Sunday morning. And 8.30am was still a little too early for me. hahaha. I didn't answer. they called again at 9am. time to wake up. i answered. so then they would arrive at my hotel in 15 minutes time. i refreshed, wondering what would happen after we meet. Would they want to ask me to buy them expensive food? give them some money? worse, ask me to marry the daughter (the daughter is only 15 years old)??? hahaha... then i told myself, just relax, and play by ear whatever that happens. I'm matured enough to handle dramas in life already.
When i met them, i saw another shorther but chubby figure with them, that was the son of the aged lady, the brother of the daughter. later i found out he is only 11 years old. The siblings were so excited to get onto the X-Trail. I was excited to have their laughters in the car. They are such innocent and naive children, reminded me of myself when i was living in kampung then. they were discussing where to eat, unfortunately the place was closed. so had to take me to another place, Food court 66... The place is not very big, with maybe less than 15 food stalls operating.
We ordered drinks. to my surprise, the daughter didn't order any, the mother and son only ordered ice water. hmmm. interesting. the daughter then ordered roasted pork rice. it was interesting how she 'enjoys' her meal. she started by eating all the roasted pork, then her rice. she said she didn't like to mix things up. well, salute, that's a healthy way of eating actually. then after she finished her rice, she ordered another rice. she just ate her rice with soup. and it's funny to see how she enjoyed her rice with soup. after breakfast, then we had time for more chatting. At that moment, they didn't even know my name just yet, and so didn't I. So we introduced ourselves. hahaha. funny encounter. The mother actually has the same surname as me, so I'll call her madam Liew. the son is Jun Yang. Daughter is Chui Wen. They were saying wanted to take me to the beach, I guess they were referring to Teluk Cempedak. Jun Yang really loves to swim. I didn't really like to go to the beach at noon, so I told him if he wanted to swim, he can swim at the hotel swimming pool. he was asking does he need to pay, would the hotel allow him to swim there etc. haha. everything free, i told him. he was so excited. asked me to take them to their home to take his clothes. hahaha.
came to their house. it's a real chinese kampung house, reminded me a lot of my old house. the house was messy, full of goods that they sell in pasar malam. the house is very old, and needs a lot of 'makeover'. I was right, they were quite poor. but i cannot offer anything, i'm not capable of offerring help at this moment. feel bad. but what i can help was to go through the list of books and see if i can find anything. then i saw this book, a complete book of fairy tales. what a nice book. dont think i'll ever see this book again in my life, something you just have to grap it when it present itself to you. so i bought lah this book, RM24.00 only. to me it's worth it.
in the hotel, the kids said they want to come to visit my room. they mentioned earlier during breakfast, i was then thinking how to reject them nicely. after getting to know them, i let them in my room. basically i have nothing in my room anyway, if they would want to rob me, they would regret. haha. they saw the room, a little small, but comfortable. they're very straight forward. so they changed into their 'swim suit', basically just a normal clothing only. They had fun under the bright sunlight at 12pm in noon. Madam Liew and I were sitting by the pool side chatting. Finally I got the story. She didn’t tell me, but I asked a lot until she cracked. Haha. So I respect her, other people would want to tell you before we ask anything. She has her dignity, I knew.
Apparently Jun Yang has his eyelashes grow inside his eyes. Every half a year he has to come to GH in KL to cut his eyelashes. Otherwise it will poke his eye balls, become itchy and vision will blur. It’s so unreal, i feel errggghhhh even to think about it. Now there is one doctor in hospital in bukit jalil that could do operations for him. until now he hasn’t called them yet, so they don’t know how much the medical fee will cost. Madam Liew said she heard that it could be few tens of thousands. She did seek for public donation before on China Press newspaper. And for Chui Wen, she was infected by bacteria or virus in her brain when she was in her primary 2. This caused her some ‘intelligence’. She’s slow compared to normal kids. But looking at her playing so happily with her brother in the swimming pool, does it really matter to be smarter than others? I was thinking, to me, she’s matured and she has a pure mind. She sees things very clearly than most adults do. However, there’s one thing that needs to be cleared, that’s the bacteria / virus in her brain. I, as Elken active member before, I have heard of cases that people died due to virus infected brains. And of course, I don’t know how to help, but I’ll find out.
This encountered thought me a lot. Rich and poor, we’re all human being. Being rich is not direct pathway to happiness. Being poor doesn’t mean you’re unhappy automatically. Back to my few articles before this, I was asking, why are we here in this world? Etc (can’t really remember now what I wrote there hahaha)… I guess I just want to be happy, find my root, find who I am, what this world can do for me, and what I can do for this world, what I can learn from my journey so far, grasp opportunities that come along, don’t feel so much regrets at the end of my life, enjoy most part of my life, enjoy people around me, enjoy whatever that happens to me – be it good or bad, be pure, retained the pureness and innocent in a part of my heart, care for people, care for myself, care for my family, care for my parents, care for animals too, be patient, be passion, be clear with my targets, have my long term and short term goals, don’t waste time, appreciative of what I have, be motivated, be positive and want to be better, improve continuously, be a better man, one day be a good husband, good father and good grandfather. Hahaha. I can go on and on, but I think it’s enough for the time being.
I not only need a cold beer, I need a Vodka and many shots. Hahaha.
