Hall of Shame: 3 phases of humiliating episodes in my life

well, ummm so far la..

so, any embarrassing incidents happened in your life so far? me, yes, three major humiliating incidents! each respective episodes happened in 3 different phases of my life.

1st phase:
i was 8 or 9, travelling with my mum, heading towards the little town of ranau in my uncle's old rumbling datsun pick-up.  and boy.. my uncle drove like he was competing in the rally! when i think back, at the rate he was going, the speed-o-meter was probably be between 80/90km per hour! imagine burning rubber on a gravel road. you're bound to get your butt bouncing mid-air in your hardwood-like seat (well, i think the seat was made in wood, padded with a disgustingly thin sponge and covered in black plastic vinyl!) and the humiliating moment happened when the pick-up went through a pothole and next thing i knew, i flew off from my seat and landed directly  against a pak cik (who was doing a betel nut-chewing marathon, sitting on the opposite side of my seat). i tried to break my fall with my right hand and it landed squarely against his crotch!! everyone inside the pick-up was laughing and hooting madly. the pak cik yelped, i think he probably be feeling his painful nut and he was gaping with a mouthful of betel nut! i was big enough to know the true meaning of humiliation and throughout the remaining journey, i didn't dare to lift my head up. i believe i shed tears of humiliation that day too!

2nd phase:
i was 15. i was inside this bookstore in Centerpoint KK (the name of the shop is Eaton's) buying stationeries. the cashier tallied my purchase, and it was RM25. I fished out my wallet and it was empty. i dug out my pocket and out came this 50 sen coin (loose change from my bus fare earlier). as it turned out, my mum had given me a hundred and i forgot to put the note inside my wallet! i left it laying on top of the dressing table in the room that my sister and i shared! i was damn malu because other people were queuing up behind and i was standing there with an empty wallet. in the end, i told the cashier that i left my money at home, i needed to go home and would come back later to pay the 'ransom' for my purchases. thank god, she agreed. otherwise, i had no idea on how to salvage my shredded dignity! and the 50 sen coin? coincidently, the bus fare to my house was 50 sen! and i did come back to the bookstore, paid up and made a quick exit. i was saved by a 50 sen coin, literally!

3rd phase:
it was around october, last year! i banged myself against a glass door. my office gallery door to be exact and it happened while the gallery was in use for a lunch function, organised by one of the departments in my faculty. the resounding thud, followed by a loud "aduuiii, SHIT" was enough to stop all conversations, all gazes were diverted in my direction, glasses, forks and spoons raised in mid air, acara menyenduk lauk-pauk juga tergendala. the impact was enough to make the glass door shook/rattled and i was kind of melekat macam cicak kubin against the door. the outcome? humiliation as big as sarawak, not to mention a super huge blue black lump in my forehead! imagine hearing the word 'SHIT' while you're lunching! how did i manage to tabrak the door in the first place? well, usually the door is left wide open but on that particular day, it was partially closed. i was talking and looking at my friend (he was standing a few meters away behind me) while making a beeline towards the door and next thing i knew, crash!boom!bang!

so there you are, the three phases of humiliating episodes in my life. i hope there won't be a fourth! fingers crossed...

what's yours?

Once upon a time (story of a kampong girl)

I was lucky enough to be born during the 80's :-) Looking back, those yesteryears were my best treasured moments, and hey...I never stop collecting memories!

Despite growing up in a "struggling to make ends meet" kind of environment, me and my siblings were pretty much happy on our own. I was the youngest in my family and was such a pester, a royal pain in the ass, that according to my brothers and male cousins. Needless to say, I was a tomboy. I was very small, thin, sporting dark skin, smudged and dirty face and my hair was...gosh, I think my head was a breeding ground for lice!!!

My aunt was like "Child, you come over here. Let me have a look at that lice farm of yours (referring to my head) my..my...child, I won't be surprised if I get to see lices as big as your dad's kerbau hitam jumping off from your head" and she would comb my hair painstakingly, searching for lices and would only gave up after my constant fidgeting. I hated people messing up with my hair, to me, it's a biggest annoyance while the rest of the terror gangs were out in the backyard or lake, playing!

My mum, aunties and uncles dubbed us as the 'Terror Gang" Why? They said, "Children, your wild and crazy antics would make us die of heart attacks!" Being such a hell-riser kids, it always fell deaf on several pairs of red ears (due to the constant ear-boxing sprees by our mums)

Our favoured afterschool games were:

1. Tarzan & Jane

There was a lake not far away from our house. It's not so deep and you could see many wild pineapple plants growing densely along the its banks. We always have this kind of competition like who would get the most juicy and rippen pineapple fruit. Of course, being the smallest in the group, I would normally lost, beaten by the bigger kids!

ok, back to the Tarzan antics, there's a big tree growing at the right side of the lake and some thick and sinewy vines were clinging onto it. Voila! Those thick and sturdy vines were just the perfect instruments for swinging games! To our young minds alike, "yeah...bring on the Tarzan!!!" So, there would be several 'naked as a jaybird' kids, yelling on top of their lungs "Oooooooooooooo!" with brownish thin arms and legs flailing dropping/splashing right into the lake. Splaaaaash, that was fun!

2. Forest and bushes exploration

we liked forest and bushes too! Often times after school, we would ventured into the forest and bushes behind our houses compounds. It's such a thrill when we encountered some edible wild fruits (wild rambutans, durians, berries, tarap, etc), and the most thrilling part was making animal traps - which of course would normally got away! However, some of them were not so lucky and ended up being roasted on makeshift camp fires (we didn't torture 'em okay, we were just a bunch of hungry kids :-D) Yup, we were a bunch of little bushmen!

3. Truth of Dare(devil) stunts

i'm sure by now, most of us are kinda familiar with this game (well, at least for kampong kids). I remember we're always up doing crazy things. The year was 1989, and I just turned 8. It was a monsoon season and it's raining constantly from morning to evening. Sometimes, it rained 24hrs non-stop. Most afternoons, after school, we would be trapped inside the house. Sometimes, school would be cancelled for several days (or a week at most). For us, it was a torture. We couldn't play Tarzan & Jane, we couldn't go for forest and bushes exploration and our parents forbade us to play in the rain or else...! Such was the verdict. But of course, being naughty, typical hard-headed kampong kids, 'the curfew' normally lasted about one or two days.

the craziest stunt we ever did was daring each other to swim accross a flooding river! When I think about it now, there's no amount of money can persuade me to do such death defying stunts. I've been neutralized from it. The story goes like this:

it was about 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. It was raining and we were bored to death. 4 of us sneaked out of the house and ambled towards the river. Sure enough, due to the heavy rain, the river had swollen twice to its original size. It was murky, with its strong current carrying pieces of broken woods, uprooted small trees and occasionally some floating logs downstream. Stupidly enough, we never think of the danger (or in this case the dire straits of consequences should our parents caught a wift of what we're about to do!)

Our method was, firstly we walked farther upstream (along the riverbank of course, about 5oo meters).Then, we would start cross-swimming the river from farther upstream and reach the other side of the river by just following its current flow . Of course, you won’t be swimming in a straight line. True enough, we landed about 50 meters from the already marked designated landing spot. Boy, we felt like we struck a pot of gold big time! I mean, no one in my kampong (adults or young alike) attempted to cross-swimming a flooding river before and did it successfully! It was a really really big deal for us. The feeling was kinda like “a chest-thumping Mr. Ripley with his findings of strange / unbelievable artifacts”

Unfortunately, the elation was short-lived! Our parents were waiting on the other side of the river, thunderous expressions and deadly scowls with mean looking rotans in hands. Boy, the sound of ‘paaaaaps…piaakkks…adoiiiiiiiiiis’ was like a bad choir! Pokok senduduk pun hinggap di bontot. We were being walloped left, right and centre, merauuuuuuuuuuung sakan! Suffice to say, the next day, we had enough red welts in our skin to compare with. Who had the deepest cut, who had the longest or the shortest red welt marks, who cried the most and who won ‘the most budak jajal (nakal) / tough kid’ award.

We're lucky that none of our parents died of heart attack! Ok…eventually, we had our two weeks of fame. We became the talk of the kampong for about two weeks or so. Other kids at school looked at us with some kind of admiration and boy…did we bask on it? oh yes, tremendously!

Too bad, all these ‘kenakalan’ ended when my family relocated in the city and I was sent to a boarding school. I was 12 years old. They're distant memories now but once in a while, during family gatherings, stories of the ‘terror gang’ especially the river incident will resurface and those young nieces and nephews would go, like, “wahhhhh….uncle / auntie, inda sangka kamurang semua ni betul2 terrer!”

Yes, I was indeed, lucky to be born in the kampong. And, deep down in my heart: Yes, I am a kampong girl :-)