Sunday, July 10, 2011

respite

i like my current haircut now that it's finally growing itself out (i had to have two hairdressers cut it 'cos they couldn't get it right, and unfortunately the last one hacked off a thick load of my hair even though i told him to only shape the fringe...ugh these clueless-on-emo-haircuts ah bengs). i get up, look at myself in the mirror and walk out of the house rocking a genuine just-woken-up look without appearing unruly). 

dido's no angel album is playing in my ears right now...heaven. anyway, i wanted to recapitulate on the recent fortnight that's just passed, starting with why i still stand by the opinion that staying back beyond working hours in the office to finish up whatever i can is a good idea (despite my parents protesting, my mom constantly calling my cell and office phones in her usual fretful mode and my dad even threatening to get me kicked out on the final night, which i stupidly believed and is something that he might have succeeded in doing but failed in terms of gaining my respect). 

like i was telling my brother over a cuppa teh tarik during a late-night supper on my car rental trip below, i wasn't doing it for the company boss so much as i was doing it for my eternal boss. also, i knew that going through with it would build my confidence for facing tougher situations ahead of life, which is something my parents never seem to understand (frustratingly, they still make considerable efforts to shield me from making mistakes in life because i'm "so immature and helpless" without realising that the only way i can really grow up is to be allowed to learn to make my own mistakes based on my own decisions, not theirs). anyway, on to the trip. 

what started as an impromptu one-day car rental the day after my final day at work so that i could show my ex-colleague and his housemate around town turned into a six-day stateside personal trip (save for a one-day deviation to malacca state) simply because i couldn't bear to let the car or rather, driving, go (i did exchange the proton exora for a wira on the second day after accidentally scraping the mpv's side as i tried to turn my way out of the spiral ramp of a shopping mall's underground parking outlet). sure, my parents complained that the wira's seat cushioning was so sunken in that it touched the metal frame, and the wira couldn't go beyond a certain speed (it'd start to feel dangerously wobbly and off-balance) compared to other heavier cars i've driven, but it was a pretty homely car to me, and it enabled me to relive my high-school audio memories by only having a cassette (instead of CD) player in its deck. 

the car rental assistant smiled knowingly when he pulled out kavana's instinct from the cassette player, still shocked that i still own working cassettes (what can i say, i just like collecting and keeping certain old things). we then proceeded to chat about anthony kavanagh -- how that was his last record and how he was pretty good in those boyband-crazy days [note: i found out later he's still a regular fixture in UK television audience's minds]. but the emotional music backbone of this trip would have to be jars of clay's if i left the zoo, which i hadn't listened to since i forgot about my cassette collection and turned to CDs. i happened to pop it in as i pulled out of a parking lot in self-toured batu pahat (my brother had come along to provide directions), which was fitting since strains of "goodbye-eye, hye-ee, eye-ee-eye" started coming out from the speakers (from the first track's goodbye, goodnight). 

i'll also never forget driving along jonker lane's old shops tearing up at the refrain "we will come running, fall in His arms; the tears will fall down..." from jars of clay's love song for a savior (okay so it was from their eponymous first album, but the third zoo album was still the one i most played). again, the theme of safeness in the Father's arms and tears of relief from there being no more need to hide when we see Him again was evident through this refrain. 

other places that car took me (and my bro or dad, depending on the location and not counting the evening i drove my family out to dinner) were desaru (beautiful arched senai-desaru toll bride, but disappointingly reduced number of resorts when my dad and i finally reached desaru itself), kluang (where my bro and i saw transformers: dark side of the moon, which was the first time i'd seen the franchise and liked it to my surprise), batu pahat (where bro and i discovered a pretty nifty town-famous coffee franchise called rengit coffee), muar (where a mall with tissue paper-equipped, free toilet stalls actually existed and where i got a good view of the town as i drove along the curved bridge over muar river itself) and the non-heritage sites of malacca (marina centre where i pulled the handbrake up in time before my front tyres almost fell into the small longkang in front of where i was parking due to nervousness of two observing police officers on motorcycles who then got a shock but subsequently started making small talk with me and sharing that they were from jb too, tanjong klebang and pantai kundor). 

freedom, independence, allocation for deep thought, joy...these were reasons for why i'd keep postponing my return of the car to the next day and so on...until i reluctantly called it quits on the sixth day and went back to being a parent-policed, car-less kid =p