26 posts tagged “weirdness” (page 2)

I hitched a ride back to the office with the CNA cameramen in their van. They sat in front, I sat behind with the camera equipment. Somewhere along the way I overheard one of them saying --

"Kau tau tak ilmu apa aku nak belajar sekarang? Aku nak belajar ilmu terbang. Naik kapal terbang mahal lah."

In English: "You know what I would like to learn? I want to learn the knowledge of flight. Airplane tickets are expensive lah."

It's only funny in Malay though. A lot of things are funny in Malay simply because they're said in Malay. Nothing really sounds serious in Malay.

Also earlier that day I was conversing with the cameraman who wanted to fly. We'd met plenty of times but we'd forgotten each other's names.

Him: Eh I malu lah nak tanya... nama you siapa?
Me: Yasmine. I pun lupa your nama... Yusuf kan?
Him: Hey, Ismail lah! Mana aje you dapat Yusuf ni.
Me: Sorry ah, I main hantam aje.

In English:

Him: I'm embarrassed to ask... what's your name?
Me: Yasmine. I've forgotten yours too... Yusuf right?
Him: Hey, Ismail lah! Where did you get Yusuf from.
Me: Sorry, I was just whacking.

See, only kind of funny in Malay.

The Russian: Are you afraid of robots?
His mother: No. What kind of robots? I don't know what kind of robots you are talking about.
The Russian: All kinds of robots.
His mother: Like robot arms?
The Russian: Ok, are you scared of robot arms?
His mother: No.
The Russian: What do robot arms do?
His mother: I don't know how they know what to do, it's all programmed. I'm not the engineer, I don't know.
The Russian: No, what do they do?
His mother: They... pick and place.
The Russian: Oh is that a phrase, pick and place?
His mother: Yeah, they pick and place.
The Russian: So do you have to talk to it to make it pick and place?
His mother: No, it's all automated.
The Russian: Do you talk to robot arms?
His mother: No.
The Russian: Why not?
His mother: I don't know their language.
The Russian: Do they ever get lonely?
His mother: I don't know.
The Russian: What exactly is a robot arm?
His mother: Like a crane lor.
The Russian: Which do you consider superior, cranes or storks?
His mother: I don't know, I'm not an engineering expert, don't ask me.

It was just an elevator's ride away and it was still 10 p.m. so why not, right? I fixed my hair and stared down the gawkers and joined the party.

As far as first times go, this was a good one. Being in the entourage of people whose faces other people recognised meant free entry and immediate access into the VIP lounge.

I have the best colleagues in the world. The coolest bosses too. Even if it means dissecting my complicated home life under 70-decibel Sexy Back.

My colleagues did not realise it was my first time until I told them. They said I looked like a natural but I'm sure they were just being nice.

It was good to stand above the crowd and laugh at people who can't dance. "You see that white guy in the striped shirt? He's rich but he's still a virgin."

This was how my day started:

I woke up at 11 a.m. and responded to a missed call from June.

She said, "Hey Yasmine, my friend wants to know: Are you homophobic?"
"What? Of course not!"

If only all the questions I faced throughout each day were this easy.

(Later on June's friend explained to me that she was doing a project and needed to interview someone in the media who was not homophobic, and she thought of me. That was nice. If nothing big ever comes out of my life I have that at least -- virtual strangers know that I'm not homophobic!)

Him: You see! Everyone says your itinerary is fantastic, you did such a good job. But has anyone thanked me for what I've done for this trip? No, nobody's grateful for all my hard work!
Me: What have you done for this trip?
Him: You see!! You don't even remember!
Me: OK why don't you tell me what you've done?
Him: Because it's an insult to me to say it!
Me: I don't remember because you've done crap all for the trip.
Him: Aaaah!! You hurt me! My eyes are rolling up to the heavens! They insult me! They insult me!

Later...

Me: What? I didn't catch any of that. And not because I wasn't paying attention, because I was.
Him: Nabei! I speak so slow. Like a turtle crawling on sand while upside down and that sand is actually a big rock.
Me: Hang on! (Quickly types down what he just said.) A what rock was it?
Him: A big rock.
Me: OK... (Finishes typing.)
Him: I feel disturbed. I feel like you are molesting me... molesting my madness.

The Russian had to review Borat on Thursday. He invited me. He told me the press screening was at Yangtze. I said, are you serious? He said yes. I still thought he was joking. Then I asked the reviewer from my station if she was going to watch it too. She said yes. I asked, it's at Yangtze right? She said, when my girlfriend told me about that I thought she was joking but now that you've said it I guess it must be true.

So we went to Yangtze. It was creepy. After taking a lift to the fourth floor, you see a dinghy corridor and it's not at all clear how you're supposed to get to the cinema. And once you reach the box office, you will look around and think, this is a cinema???!! There were four movies showing at the cinema: three soft- to hardcore porn films and Borat.

Inside the theatre, the floor was sloping. The seats were worn with decades of use and quite uncomfortable. The screen was small. The curtain covering it actually looked like a curtain; it was maroon and scalloped. The last time I was in a theatre like that, I was watching He-Man: Masters of the Universe.

It also smelled bad.

Obviously, the film distributors thought it would be "cool" to make us feel as if we were watching the film in Kazakhstan itself. But it was not "cool". It was more "gross" and "like totally creepy".

Before the film started I was convinced that the whole set-up was a hoax for Channel 5's latest gag show, tentatively titled "Laughter Nation" and at the time the movie was supposed to start, a person would instead come out to the front of the theatre and announce that this wasn't, in fact, the media screening but an elaborate prank, haha!

This did not happen, but there was a man who walked around before the film with a video camera, shooting everyone and trying to make people talk like Borat to the camera, so I am not fully convinced yet that my suspicions will not come true.

So I was just sitting here at my computer, listening to This American Life and minding my own business, when my iTunes suddenly connects to a shared music server, and the next thing I know I have access to someone else's playlist. Someone who has the same music taste as I do, and twice as many songs.

I have no idea who this person is, is it my neighbour? She has Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, The Cardigans, Beck, The Beatles, Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park, The Strokes, Sufjan Stevens, Tori Amos, Travis, Radiohead, Postal Service, Oasis, etc etc -- a lot of the stuff I have.

And she has tons of stuff that I've been meaning to check out: Bright Eyes, Camera Obscura, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Pretenders, local and regional bands like Electrico, Furniture and The Great Spy Experiment and she has the complete collection of Rufus Wainwright and The Perishers, which I have been wanting for months!

I know it's none of my brothers, they listen to heavy metal bullshit. And I know it's a girl, because her podcasts are all from Vogue.com. Or maybe it's a he. A gay dude in my building...

And the playlist is called "I feel you". Dodgy, I know, (and yes, she has a lot of emo crap on the list) but I feel like a character in an indie film who finds her soulmate in some ethereal, vague way, and then as the plot develops realises she's a lesbian after all. This might be the start of something, people!

I hope she's enjoying my Regina Spektor and The Decemberists, whoever she is. If only there was a way I could talk to her.

About two weeks ago, I got recognised. Or rather, my voice was recognised. Twice on the same day!

I was at the launch of SMR.T's upgraded first-generation trains, which has a few new disabled-friendly features. I decided to focus my story on that aspect rather than the colour of the seats or the better air-conditioning, so I interviewed two disabled people who had been invited to the launch.

The first was a blind lady. First I asked her if I could interview her, then I asked for her name, and then finally I introduced myself. When I did she said, "Oh yeah I've heard you. I thought your voice was familiar but I didn't want to jump to conclusions."

After that I interviewed another lady, and when I introduced myself she recognised my name too.

I was definitely chuffed. I mean, I don't go on air regularly. There are days and sometimes stretches of days when I don't go on air at all. When I do go on air, it's always for 2- or 5-minute spurts. I really never expected anyone to remember my name.

It sure beats having PR people ask, "You from Berita?" the moment they see my face. Seriously. What, just because I'm Malay I most definitely must be writing for the Malay paper? There was once I went to a press conference and without saying ONE word to me, the PR person took the name tag that said "Be.rita Haria.n" and put it in front of me. The irony was that the CNA reporter there was also Malay, but he asked her where she was from before giving her a name tag.

I guess he figured if there were two Malay reporters in one room, they can't both be from English-language media. Surely there can't be more than one Malay working in an English newsroom in Singapore right?

But it's not just a Malay thing. My colleague, let's call her Sha.ron, has the most impeccable, clearest English-speaking voice in the newsroom. But for some reason PR people often assume she's from the Chinese-language media. It boggles the mind.

When I arrived at the Alliance Française, I was an hour early for class. I went to the Olio café on the second floor. I saw one of my classmates there, but in the seat opposite his was a woman's bag, so I figured it would be most polite for me to just sit somewhere else.

It turned out that the bag belonged to another classmate of mine, a woman I'd never met before because she hadn't attended the first two lessons. I learned this when other classmates came traipsing into the cafe and one by one joined their table, completely ignoring me. All of them have been in the same class since the elementary course. I was the only newcomer.

It was quite uncomfortable, being just two tables away and acting like I hadn't seen them because it was too late for me to just get up and say hello and I would have to face all of them later in class.

So I left five minutes before class started and waited outside the classroom. The rest of them soon came and entered the room. I followed. Once inside the classroom, one of them, a woman named Ju.dy, sat next to me and introduced herself. Then she continued talking to the rest. I left myself out of the conversation.

Then the teacher came in and took attendance. When he came to "Mar.ia", there was no answer. Then he said, "I want to say something..." and he checked the door to make sure Mar.ia wasn't there, and continued, "Last Wednesday, I noticed she was... a bit weird. I think she has problems in her head."

He then went on to describe why he thought she was mentally ill, but I didn't really understand it because he was speaking in French.

At this point Ju.dy leaned towards me and asked, "Do you know Mar.ia?"

I shook my head no, because I hadn't attended last Wednesday's class.

"She's new to the class, and she came for the first time on Wednesday. She didn't understand what was going on in the class. I mean, nobody else understood also lah, but, you know, she actually got angry lah ok."

Ju.dy said that this Ma.ria person had snapped at the teacher when he called on her to answer some exercise questions, "I don't understand! How would I know?"

Just two seconds after the teacher had told us about his misgivings about the mentally ill student, Mar.ia came into the room. Immediately she asked the teacher for her registration slip or something, and she sounded very annoyed already.

He said, "Oh, c'est dans ma voiture."

She rolled her eyes and snapped, "I don't understand what you're saying."

So he told her that it was in his car and he left to get it. Mar.ia sat down at one corner of the room, separated from the rest of us.

When the teacher stepped out of the classroom, one of the other women started talking about some guy that all of them had known from their elementary class. But while she was telling her story, I heard mumbling coming from Mar.ia. I tried to pick up on what she was saying but I couldn't make it out. I could only tell that she was pissed off at us, all of us, for some reason.

So I was puzzled. I mean, it looked like she thought all of us were ganging up on her, but she had just only entered the classroom, and it was impossible that she could have observed some kind of conspiracy in the 30 seconds. Aside from Jud.y whispering to me before her entrance, nobody had said anything negative about or to her.

I looked over at Ju.dy and she smiled, indicating that he had noticed the mumbling and dirty looks too. Then I looked at another classmate, Math.ilda, and she said, "Did we miss something?"

So then those of us who had heard and seen Mar.ia cursing started to laugh. This obviously only pissed her off more, as it was apparent that she knew somehow we were all laughing at her.

The teacher returned and we started class. Everything was fine, except that whenever the teacher spoke, Mar.ia would mumble too. Everytime the three male students in the class laughed at something -- something that had nothing to do with her -- she would shoot them a dirty look and mumble something. Everytime the teacher explained a concept, she would look annoyed at all of us and say in an impatient tone, "The answer is 'plus', what, how can you not know?" She went on and on.

Math.ilda got so irritated that she said, "Ben.oit, don't mumble!"

Ben.oit is the teacher. He got really confused when she said that but I think he caught on after a while. Soon after Mathi.lda's outburst, Mar.ia left the classroom but left her belongings behind. Immediately the class started complaining to Ben.oit.

Well, Mathi.lda and the other middle-aged woman, Si.ew Mei, did. The rest of us nodded our heads in agreement. After hearing the women say that it was distracting etc etc, Ben.oit excused himself and left the class too. So we then took this opportunity to talk about Mar.ia among ourselves.

Of course, Mar.ia walked into the room in the midst of our discussion. The moment she walked in, she said, "What? I can't be in this class? I paid for it too you know."

Which sparked off a confrontation between her and the two middle-aged women. They asked her what the class had done to piss her off. She pointed at the guys and said, "I'm sick of being treated like a lau cha bor."

This produced confusion all around. Then she continued, "Can you please sit properly? There are women in this class."

The guys didn't say a word, they were so confused. They had neither done nor said anything to mock, tease or patronise her. But the drama ensued. At the point where Mathi.lda was offering to give her the $15 that she would have to pay to transfer to another class, Ben.oit walked back in. Then Mar.ia started attacking him.

"Last week you leaned so close to me. It was very inappropriate. I didn't ask for it. You were invading my private space."

While Ben.oit defended himself in French, Math.ilda said, "If you don't like him you should change class. He gets worse, you know. Don't you Ben.oit?" while Si.ew Mei said, "He's French, they're like that. Ils sont charmants."

But she kept on scolding Beno.it until he got so pissed off he started speaking in English, "You know you're famous among all the teachers here? Ang.elo's just told me that in his class you told all your classmates to shut up and not tell you anything because you knew the whole book already."

She just said, "I don't know what you're talking about" and crossed her arms and looked pissed off. But she shut up, and we resumed the lesson and she remained quiet for the rest of it.

At the end of the class she quickly ran off and Ben.oit told the rest of us that she'd been kicked out of two classes already. Funny, considering how she'd said during the confrontation, "If I'd known who was in this class I wouldn't have picked it."

And all the way from the class to the bus stop all we could talk about was Mar.ia. By the end of the night I was one of them, part of the class. There's nothing like a nutcase to really bind strangers together.

I was covering the S2006 Volunteers Appreciation Event at Vivocity. (S2006 = the IMF-World Bank meetings.) Before the event started, I walked around collecting soundbites from the volunteers gathered there.

The volunteers had interesting stories to tell. One girl told me about how she brought a delegate to an optician, and the optician tried to overcharge the foreigner but she intervened. Another girl told me about how the delegate she helped, an IMF official from Washington, is now still in touch with her because he wants to launch a line of fruit juices here and has asked her help to promote it.

A guy who volunteered to be a chauffeur during the meetings told me that his job was to drive India's Finance Minister around. He said he still talks to the minister now, and has even made a business deal with him. I put this on air. You can hear me saying "With the Finance Minister of India?!" in the soundbite.

I also bumped into Mr Bob's brother there, but I didn't interview him because he didn't want to be interviewed, and I let him off the hook because I liked his brother.

One of the girls I interviewed, the one with the IMF pal in Washington, turned out to be really friendly. Let's call her Sal. After I had gotten soundbites from her in both English and Malay, she clutched my arm and said, "You're from the media, right? Will you be able to get near the stage and the performers later?"

I said, "Umm yeah. I'm gonna be backstage."

She squealed, "Oh my God! Can you take me? I want to take a photo with Hady!"

I didn't even know Hady was going to be there, but she pointed out a slot in the itinerary that read "Mystery live performer" and said, "I think that's going to be Hady."

Since she had been such a sport, standing there with me for a very long time and working hard on phrasing her answers to my questions, I said, "Sure, I'll try to get you near him if I can. But I don't know where he's coming from or where he's going after he performs so no promises, ok."

We exchanged phone numbers and parted, me to get more soundbites and she to sit down at the amphitheatre.

The event soon began, and the Prime Minister gave a speech. Then came a buffet dinner. During dinner I got more soundbites, then wrote a script and filed it over the phone. By the time I was ready to eat, all the food was gone, except for some fried ngoh hiang. It was the saddest iftar I've had all month I tell you.

I was alone and bored, so I called Sal and we reunited at the amphitheatre and I sat with her and her friends for a couple of short, boring performances.

Then the hosts announced that Hady was up next. And they pointed to the big blank space between the stage and the seats and said, "Why don't we turn this into a mosh pit? Come on down!!!"

I was hoping to hang around next to the stage or maybe even behind it, but of course Sal wanted to watch Hady from up front, and she went, "Temankan I lah!" (Please accompany me) so of course I had to. Plus none of her friends was keen on going with her, so I was pretty much the only Hady-kaki she had.

We were actually one of the first few people who slowly, shyly made their way to the newly appointed mosh pit. But soon after we placed ourselves near the stage the pit filled up and when the hosts asked "Who here is a Hady fan?" there was a huge roar.

Then Hady came on stage and performed three songs. Throughout, I was resisting the urge to laugh at everything. At the fact that I had ended up moshing for Hady Mirza. At the fact that someone's digital camera was in my hand and I was expected to snap photos. At the fact that I was in a pit where everyone around me was singing along to Hady Mirza's new single. I mean, seriously.

Actually I thought it was quite sweet when everyone sang along. It felt... homegrown. Unpretentious, definitely. Who the hell sings aloud in public to a Singapore Idol song and expects to look cool at the same time? There's absolutely no coolness attached to being a fan of the Singapore Idol and people who profess to be fans know this. It was sweet.

At one point Hady came really close to my section of the audience, and he saw me, and I could see that he recognised me. He raised his eyebrows and waved. I waved back. And yes, later on I told all the female colleagues I was close to. I know, it's Hady Mirza. But still. I'm uncool, ok.

And no, I'm not being perasan. He does recognise me. We used to bump into each other a lot at my office building during the Singapore Idol season and we always smiled at each other. But I've never spoken to him except to wish him good luck once.

Anyway. At the end of his performance he jumped offstage and immediately, and I mean immediately, his security officers enveloped him and whisked him away. We couldn't even tell which direction he'd gone in. It was like magic. Of course, that meant Sal couldn't get a photo with him. She was really upset. She actually wanted to track him down somehow, but given the size of Vivocity, she soon realised it was futile. But at least she got his whole performance on video. (She wasn't the only one. I'm guessing some recordings of the gig will turn up on YouTube soon enough.) If I ever bump into Hady at work again I'll ask him to give her a call, his number one fan.