langkau fiction

…well, at least for a couple of days. My dad’s in town and, with the absence of my younger siblings and close relations, I’m obligated to take this big boss around. By ‘around’, it is not necessarily restricted to the geographical Kuching.

The working trip to the Tinjar country was great. It turned out to be a drinking trip but will write about that later. The photo above basically shows you where I’ve been. Not much of a pictorial information for you but hey, at least there’s a photographic description. Let’s just say the boat was going fast lah…

Got to catch up on work.

…a wonderful trip!

The Christmas-New-Year fever has befallen upon most people I know in my workplace. For the past one week, our office has been quiet as my colleagues have ritually ‘disappeared’ from work. This trend is rather normal here especially in anticipation of an impending holiday, in this case, Christmas. Even for those who do not celebrate Christmas, they’d take leave from work. Sometimes, this makes administrative work difficult. Well, I do not want to write about it. All I know is that everywhere — workplace, town, home, village, coffee shop, pub, etc. — the Christmas atmosphere is there! Plastic Christmas trees (because we do not have such pine trees here) are lining up in the supermarkets ready to be taken home, complete with those flickering brightly-colored lights. Then, people dressed in Santa Claus uniforms , which makes you wonder if Santa exists (in the pub, a sexy-clad lady would come up to you and you’d think, “are you Santa Claus?”). Sometimes, you can listen to different versions of Rudolph the red-nose reindeer blasting in the supermarket background (and yet, we don’t have reindeers in this part of the world). And then, you can see mock Christmas presents decorating the floor (when you know under those colorful present covers are actually boxes of Tiger or Heineken beers). It makes me wonder if this is what Christmas is all about?

Oh, well. I won’t be around. I will be leaving for Miri this evening and tomorrow, I am going to Tinjar to visit some of the communities there. It may sound strange to some people, especially those in a holiday mood, but I will be busting my ass out doing work there until god-knows-when for several days. Maybe even a week or so. Maybe a bit more. Who knows but it’s going to be great! But honestly, I am looking forward to be out of Kuching during any festive or holiday season, just to escape the hype that I never really understood.

It says “Di sini ada sabong ayam 1/5/04″ (“There’s cockfighting here on 1 May 2004″)

I have not been to the Tinjar area since 2004 and I’ve got good memories of the place and of course, the people there. Where else can you see a crocodile basking on the other side of the river bank while you’re sipping your early morning tea from the ruai of your veranda? And Lapok, the ‘capital’ of mid-Tinjar river, is a cute little bazaar comprising of three rows of shophouses surrounded by log ponds. As cute as it may be, it is also a lawless place where there are no police station, no clinic, no district office, no proper public facilities, no telephones, no offices, etc. The only form of public facilities they have are the schools spread along the Tinjar river. Lapok bazaar itself is made alive by people working in the timber camps, truck drivers (loggers), gamblers (cockfighting), outcast thugs, illegal immigrant laborers, drug pushers, smugglers, etc. It’s like a cowboy town without a sheriff and his deputies. At times, during the weekend you could see all the expensive Mercedez cars belonging to rich tycoons parked on the side of the dusty gravel road — the owners are ‘inside’ gambling on cockfighting and whatnots. Last July, there were robberies and a truck load of cargo was hijacked by gangsters in Lapok. And this is not considered something out of the ordinary. Like what an Iban man told me one day, while we were drinking Orangeboom at one of the coffee shops by the river, “nadai perintah kami ditu, nak” (trans. “we do not have law here, son”). And this is where I will be for the next couple of days or maybe a week. Indeed, it’s going to be a wonderful trip!

After two days of langkau fest with Dibid, Jass and Fred in Sadir last weekend, I decided to rest my body from absorbing further amount of alcohol. Not even a drop of beer. So, what did I do? I went to BDC after work, got myself two DVDs that should be able to entertain my non-functioning brain and hit the bed early. And that I did. I got “The Warlords” and Tim Burton’s highly-rated musical version of “Sweeney Todd” for what’s supposed to be a relaxing evening. All for RM12.00.

I put on “The Warlords” first. The immediate visual movements on the screen were people — hundreds of them — continuously stabbing each other with swords and spears. No, no, not stabbing. They were literally ploughing on the fallen bodies! The physical settings, their attires, weapons, horses and everything around them said this was how mid-19th century China looked like, one of China’s darkest periods. Suddenly, my snack of tomato, onion and cabbage didn’t taste nice anymore. But there were no dialogs yet because everyone was busy killing each other on the battlefield. When the violence was over, leaving dead bodies scattered all over the ground, one arm suddenly protruded from a lump of brutalized corpses. This man was alive. He pulled himself out of those dead bodies and walked aimlessly along a path leading to god-knows-where. Along the same path, he passed by a woman who was ahead of him. A few paces later, he dropped down. Thump! Still no dialog.

Next scene takes us to a dark house (they didn’t have electricity then, I presume) and showing a woman carrying a bowl of soup to the man who earlier had risen from among the dead. This man was sitting on a bed, his face expressed of a man forlorn. Then, the dialog started between the man and the woman. I knew the movie was going to be in Mandarin so I turned on the English subtitle that went like this:

Man: “My persons were death rays all. I am to pretend to be dead.” [he then cries, his hands clutching his head in exasperation]

Woman: [still standing, talking to the man] “My brothers, more than 1,600 persons all!”

Man: [still sitting on the bed, crying] “The word camp that helps the beast to stand on the behind, on every occasion.”

Woman: [she sits next to the man, trying to comfort him by putting her arms around his shoulder] “Looking at me that to help brothers so a is a….”

Man: “All didn’t…” [starts crying again and this character was played by Jet Li!]

Narration of a man in the background: “Led for a night in abandon of break the house. Don’t know is that gruel, still that woman. Let his felling originally he return on the hoof.”

And there I was holding my plate of untouched tomato, onion and cabbage, staring at the TV with my mouth opened, making a mental note: “What in the name of Donald Duck is going on here?!” I thought it must’ve been some kind of alcohol withdrawal syndrome that was playing trick on me. Either that or this is a bad case of translation. Don’t get me wrong. I can deal with bad translations in movies as long as I understand the gist of the scene or story. But here, oh…I mean, what exactly is “he return on the hoof” or “helps the beast to stand on the behind”? Huh? Were they talking about horses? Goats? I didn’t know whether to laugh at or curse my predicament.

I turned off “The Warlords” and put on “Sweeney Todd” instead. Let’s see if Johnny Depp and friends have funny surprises. I knew “Sweeney Todd” has elements of violence, especially the protagonist — Mr. Todd — being a barber and a serial killer at the time. The setting was early 18th century London, another dark chapter in its history. It was not until ten minutes into the movie that I realized this was not Tim Burton’s version of “Sweeney Todd“. There was no Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham in the film. I quickly grabbed the DVD cover and on it said it was the Tim Burton version, complete with Depp sitting on the chair with a thin razor in his hand. Nope, I wasn’t delirious. It’s the right cover with a wrong different content. But I continued with the movie and loved it! It wasn’t great because of the bloody scenes (lots of it) but Ray Winstone’s portrayal of Sweeney Todd in this version was quite convincing! I only discovered today that this version of “Sweeny Todd” was directed by David Moore in 2005.

My yesterday evening was a bit bizarre, I guess…

I love snakes. People who knows me knows that I love snakes. But I am neither a snake expert nor do I do crazy things like what they do on TV (e.g. catch snakes, play around with them and even talk to them!). Well, I did catch a baby Naja sumatrana once a couple of years back and that was a stupid thing to do. I read about snakes, I take photos of them and I regularly consult my friend, Neil, who is an expert on these slithering creatures (who also wrote a book called A Photographic Guide to Snakes & Other Reptiles of Borneo).

Anyways, on my way home from Sadir last night, I came across the Black Headed Cat Snake (Boiga nigriceps) crossing the road. I think it was an adult as the length was around 1.5 meters. It raised its neck to about 1ft when it saw my car coming towards it, figuring out the gigantic moving metal that was heading its way. I stopped and got out of my car to get a closer look at this beautiful specimen. It didn’t even attempt to run slither away from me! Instead, it raised its head again, flickering its dark forked tongue trying to smell sense the strange creature on two legs. This was good because it gave me time to take some photos of it. At the time, I wasn’t sure of the species because I was so damn nervous and excited at the same time.

The dark-head cat snake can grow to more than two meters long and like most cat snakes, it’s a back-fanged snake. Just imagine Dracula with a fanged first-molar instead of the usual cuspid (our canine lah…). Most people would ask this common question: is it venomous? Not in the way we commonly perceive as venomous, i.e. bite and die, or bite and cut off hands. This is probably a mildly venomous snake but the venom is localized. Ok, ok…I was reading Neil’s book yesterday and apparently, this snake is actually more dangerous than it seemed. The book said “[Black-headed Cat Snake] needs to be treated with caution, as envenomations from its bite have been reported“. Yes, the seven words were in bold, which means it’s not good news when this snake bites you! I’ve never heard anyone died of a cat snake’s bite. Then again, who would want to be bitten by any snake for that matter? Last night, this beautiful snake was more curious of its surrounding and the flashes from my camera.

Although the Boiga nigriceps is usually arboreal, it does come to the ground to do its hunting. It preys on lizards, birds, rodents and even other snakes. It inhabits lowland forests up to an altitude of 1,000 meters. Where I found this particular snake, the altitude was around 400 meters. Neil told me that the snake is usually reddish in color in Peninsula Malaysia but the ones in Borneo are often greyish or greenish. The one in this picture is olive-greyish in color. A much, much more beautiful photo — which isn’t mine, of course — could be found here.

Well, what else can I say about this fabled team? AC Milan has swept all the honors when it comes to winning international club trophies. Winning the Club World Cup for the fourth time yesterday, by trashing Argentina’s Boca Juniors 4-2, makes AC Milan the world’s most successful club with 18 trophies safely tucked in the club’s trophy cabinet. Two goals by Inzaghi (useless Gilardino can just sit on the bench for all season, I don’t care), Ballon d’Or 2007 winner Kaka and central defender Nesta were more than enough to send a message to Boca Juniors that their penalty-shootout win over Milan in 2003 was a fluke. And forget about the other so-called ‘great’ teams that boast nothing but a collection of overrated prima donna players that are worshiped by tasteless rumor mongering tabloids.

AC Milan IS the team to beat no matter what other people (who sometimes shamelessly consider themselves as ‘football experts’) think about them. Forget about the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Inter Milan (ptui!), Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Bayern Munchen or other rich clowns clubs that claim unwarranted greatness. Please tell me (with facts or at the very least, acknowledged international accolades) if these teams stand on the very same pedestal of greatness that this all-conquering Milan is now standing on.

And after this great victory, Milan’s living legend — the man lifting the trophy in the photo above — has announced his retirement come June 2008. He is by far one of the greatest fullbacks around and just like his great predecessor, Franco Baresi, this legend is totally undermined by the footballing media that’s madly obsessed with overrated, unproven players. How is it a player — now, at 39 years old — who has won 7 Italian championships, 5 Champions League trophies, 3 Interncontinental Cups (or Club World Cup), 4 European Supercups, the Coppa Italia and 5 Italian Supercups have never won individual recognitions like European Player of Year or World Player of The Year in his career is beyond my understanding.