langkau fiction

I was in Ruai last night – and the night before – trying to re-orientate myself with the place. When I arrived there at about 3.32pm 6.30pm, the place was empty apart from the good ‘ol bartender Desmond. He updated me on the general welfare of Ruai and its customers during my week-long absence, while I bored him with my stupid travel stories in upriver Belaga. By 9.26pm, a group of people started to stream into the bar. These were people I’ve never met before. Then, more came from the front door and by 10.16pm, the place was crowded with some regulars busily chatting with the strange crowds of people.

I didn’t pay them any mind until one of my fellow bar regs came up to me “Hey, are you going to “rainforest” [meaning the Rainforest World Music Festival]?” It was then it hit me: the strange-looking people were here for the festival. “Oh, no..,” I told my fellow bar reg. He understood and then, embedded himself into the crowd like a maggot that loses itself among its kind in an eating frenzy. Okay, so the simile is bad lah…

As the night went on more questions “Are you going to rainforest?” were thrown all over the bar that it gave me a multiple vertigo. It was dangeously becoming a philosophical question. I called out to Desmond, who was handling the orders and bills single-handedly, and asked for my damage. “If you’re busy it’s okay, man. I can always pay you tomorrow,” I told him. He just laughed “Nah, you can pay me now, I’m not that busy.” So, I gave him RM40 for my two jugs of Tiger.

I think I’ll just skip Ruai until this “rainforest” phenomena is over.