When There is a Will ...

The man is running on the beach in his red swim trunk.

I see his calf and thigh muscles bulging and contracting in the rhythm of his steps, his biceps and triceps screaming for attention in every swing of his arms, his naked torso glistening under the evening sun like the polished sculpture of a Greek god. His stomach was flat and taut, with not even an inch of flab. The heaving chest was boasting a pair of perfectly-formed pectoral muscles, and I could not pull my eyes away from it.

"Oh God, I'm staring at man-boobs!" I feel disgusted as I pressed the button on the remote control.

With a blink the television screen turned blank, wiping off the fantasy lifeguard. Only if reality could be turn off with such ease, I wished.

I was slumped on the sofa of my living room, with a cup of instant noodle in my hand. As I slurped away the last strand of the noodle, I sneaked a peek down my legs. The pair of pudgy limbs reminded me of snooker table's legs. Instead of a flat steely washboard, my tummy was a bouncing, rotund ball of flesh. I pinched the flesh around it, and held those two inches of flab between my fingers. And if there was such a thing as a male-bra, I probably needed a B-cup for the sagging twins.

"You too can have a dream body. Don't give up!"

I turned my head to the direction of the voice.

It came from the treadmill standing proudly at the corner of the room. I was totally freaked out when it spoke to me for the first time, but now I was used to it. The treadmill was no ordinary exercise machine. It was the top-of-the-range PTX3000 model with a grey plastic console that housed an 8'' LCD monitor and assortment of buttons. From a touch-sensitive heartbeat sensor to muscle-density measurement, it had more than enough tools to tell me how in or out of shape I was. It even had a DVD drive and built-in TV receiver to ensure endless hours of entertainment while I was sweating it out. The console was held between two white metallic arms, which looked like the twin neck of the machine that linked the console to the running mill below. The running belt was made of durable plastic with a layer of black soft rubber to provide cushion to the user. There was a handle at both side of the machine, clad in matching black rubber grip, and the handles were adjustable to the height of the user.

No doubt that the machine was engineered to provide maximum comfort and safety while pushing the user to the limits of physical perfection. Else I would not have bought it two months ago.

During the first few days I woke up an hour early than usual to jog on the treadmill. Then in the evening I spent another hour sweating it out before dinner. I felt so alert and alive for that few days, until day number five. That morning I woke up with chains of lethargy coiled around my body. Every movement of my limbs was accompanied by throbs of pain. Apparently on my way to the fitness nirvana, I got sidetracked into the hall of physical suffering. But that was not unexpected, considering I had not exercised regularly for five years. It would take time for my thirty year old body to adapt to this new rigorous regime. Not so easy to be back 'in the zone', so to speak. Thus I told myself to take it easy; not to overdo it and think of long-term.

"Don't learn to fly before you learn to walk!" I quoted the Chinese proverb to myself, and grinned. Not everyone could turn words of wisdom into weapon of procrastination.

So that day I lowered my expectation and revised the work out schedule. I rewarded myself with a one-day break between three consecutive workout days. The three to one ratio sounded good. Or at least for a week it did. One cold and rainy morning a week later, I pulled the blanket over my head, and revised my schedule to a more reasonable and humane ratio of one-one.

Once my will power wavered, the ratio became alive; fluctuating and changing on its own. As of this morning, two months after I first stepped on the treadmill, the ratio was at one-seven. Yes, it had been seven days since I last touched the machine.

"Mr. Chua, it has been seven days, four hours and thirty seconds since the last time you used PTX3000. Please do not give up. It's never easy in the beginning, but it's always worth it in the end," said the syrupy female voice from the console, coaxing me back onto the painful path to physical perfection.

Its advertising blurb was not lying when it claimed 'Having a PTX3000 is like having a personal trainer at home!' I just did not expect it to nag at me! It started two days ago, and the frequency of the advices had been increasing gradually. Worst of all, there was no way of shutting it up. I already pulled its plug from the socket, but apparently the treadmill came with an internal battery in its console. More than a few times I had considered using an axe to hack the machine into pieces, but its three-thousand ringgit price-tag killed that notion.

I was about to call them to complain when my hand phone rang.

"Good evening, Mr Chua," a familiar voice cheerfully greeted me.

"My name's Agnes, and I'm calling from Perfect Solution. We've been receiving feedback from Ir PTX3000 treadmill, and we understand that you're not actively using it."

"Are you serious?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes sir! We're very serious about our customer's fitness. Here at Perfect Solution we …"

"I meant the treadmill actually sent feedback to you guys?" I cut her off.

"Yes sir! Our treadmills are programmed to inform us if the customer is not benefiting from their investment."

Wow. Not only the machine knows how to nag me to exercise, it also can seek help from outside. I could not help but being impressed.

"We ran a thorough scan on your machine, and found no mechanical or software defect. So pardon us for being so direct, but we feel the problem is you, Mr Chua."

Guilty as charged, I said nothing.

"If it's convenient, we would like to invite you to our office tomorrow. We would like to work with you on an alternative plan, or at least refund your purchase."

Wow! While many companies out there promised refund, this is the first time a company actually offered me a refund on its own accord and initiative. No complain letter was needed. Without a single word of threat uttered. And it was not even their product's defect or anything like that.

Something was definitely not right.

***

The next afternoon I was at the showroom of Perfect Solution in MegaValley shopping mall.

"Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to Perfect Solution," a young lad cheerfully greeted me as soon as I stepped into the showroom.

"Hi, good afternoon. I'm here to see Ms. Agnes Lim," I told him.

"Oh, you must be Mr Chua. Please follow me this way, sir!" The sales personnel escorted me into one of the consultation rooms at the back. It was a small rectangular room with a low wooden table in the middle, and a three-seat leather sofa at one side. An aquarium filled with myriad species of small colourful fishes was perched on a wooden cabinet on the opposite side of the room.

"Would I like some coffee or tea, Mr Chua?" he asked with a smile.

"Coffee will be great, thanks!" I answered. He nodded and left the room.

Barely two minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and a young lady stepped into the room. She was wearing a buttoned-down white shirt with black mini-shirt, which accentuated her curvy figures. Her hair was short, and tinted light brown to compliment the colour of her twinkling set of eyes. She found the perfect balance; looking very appealing without compromising her aura of professionalism.
"Hi, Mr Chua! I'm Agnes," she flashed a winning smile and held out her hand.

As soon as both of us were seated on the sofa, an elderly lady arrived with a tray of beverages and cookies. Everything seemed to operate with a clockwork precision here.

"Mr Chua, as I mentioned on the phone last night, we're very concerned about the drop of activity level in your fitness programme," her voice was soft, but firm. "And based on our latest anabolic and vital rates analysis, we do not believe that you have any physical difficulty to continue enjoying the PTX3000. Therefore, sorry if we're too direct, the problem is your mind. To be specific, you lack of the necessary will power to stay on the difficult path towards your physical well-being. "

That was a nice way to tell me that I was a lazy bum with no discipline to exercise. She flashed her million-dollar smile again, and I wondered who could ever get angry to that face?
"Well, I guess it's my fault. Sometimes I just feel too lazy to work out," I admitted.

"Don't worry, Mr Chua. That's why we're here today. I believe everyone can have a dream body. We'll help you with to achieve it. Just don't give up!" her voice syrupy sweet.

Suddenly I recognize the voice. It was the same voice from my treadmill console, but with a subtle yet important difference. Each word coming from that girl had the warmth of emotions, compared to the cold, robotic intonation by the machine. Perhaps that was something technology still cannot duplicate. Not yet, anyway.

"How are you going to help me? And how much do I have to pay?" I cheekily asked. There was no such thing as a free lunch.

She took out a piece of paper from her leather briefcase and handed it over to me.

"This is a cheque for three thousand one hundred ringgit. It's the refund for your treadmill, plus addition goodwill payment for all your troubles."

I paused for a moment, and then looked straight into her eyes, "So what's the catch?"

Her eyes suddenly twinkled with excitement, and the sweetness of her smile was raised to another level. It was so saccharine that I could have drunk the coffee on the table without a single pinch of sugar, and not noticed the difference. It would not be easy to say 'no' to her, whatever she was going to sell to me.

"The condition of the refund is simply; you have to try these on for at least 2 hours."

Agnes reached inside her briefcase again, and pulled out a silver envelope. The packaging reminded me of the facial masks that my ex-girlfriend religiously wore at night. She tore open the envelope, and pulled out a round silver patch the size of a fifty cent coin. It looked like those nicotine patch used by smokers to quit their habit.

"This is one of those medicine patches, right?" I asked.

She nodded, and explained, "Not quite, but it's something like that."

"You guys want me to try some drugs in order for me to get a refund?" The tide of anger suddenly rose inside my chest. I knew there must be a catch somewhere; most probably customized training programmes or other schemes that cost me money. But never in a thousand years would I have imagined their audacity to push drugs.

"We're not going to put any drug into your body, Mr Chua. Instead, the patch will imbue you with something that has been lacking in your system lately," Agnes replied calmly. The smile never left her face.
"And what may that be?"

She stared into my eyes, and gave me an enigmatic look.

"Trust me, Mr Chua. You're not going to believe if I tell you."

***

My feet felt as if I was running barefooted on shards of glasses. My lung was breathing in pebbles of fire, which were burning my spine. The world was spinning around me, urging me to end this torture; to collapse.

"Hang on there, Mr Chua! You're very close to your target, but not quite there yet," the robotized voice of Agnes gave me the encouragement.

"Yes, I can do it! I must do it!" my voice shouted inside my head.

About a minute later, I could feel the roller began to slow down, letting me warm down as I trotted towards my targeted distance.

"Congratulations, Mr Chua! You've completed a 2.5 km run today!" the voice came from the console three minutes and seven seconds later.

I wobbled off the treadmill and sunk down onto my sofa; indifferent to the disgusting fact that my perspiration had drenched the fabric cushion. With a practiced gesture, I flicked open a can of 100 Plus and downed its content with a long, slow but uninterrupted gulp. My body was sore and battered, but not my mind. I was happy, and frankly, insatiable. I felt like running another kilometer, but I knew the roller would not move another inch. That was another one of its high-tech features; it would push its user to the physical limits, but by using its complicated bio-metric sensors it ensure that he would not step over the line. I threw a glance at the workout chart on the wall, next to the treadmill. I had not missed a single day of the new fitness programme prepared by Agnes during our meeting eight days ago.


When she first told me about the patch, I laughed in her face.

"Oh, come on! I think this is one hell of an original idea. But, come on, you expect anyone to believe that?" I scoffed at her explanation. To her credit, her smile was as enchanting and sweet as ever.

"Honestly, this is the first time I heard of anything as absurd like this. Your marketing people get high marks not only for originality, but also bravery for even trying to pull this off. You're really insulting the intelligence of your customers! " I ranted on and on, hoping for a reaction from her. But there was none. In fact, the look from her eyes suggested that this was not the first time such accusations were thrown onto her face.

"Mr Chua, I know the concept is very radical. Your reaction is totally to be expected, and understandable," she explained calmly. She was good, very good indeed.

"This patch is the end product of many years of scientific researches by some of the top scientists in the world. It's touted as one of the biggest technology break-through in the past fifty years."

I threw a cold, skeptical stare into her eyes and she returned it with the conviction of an acolyte.

"You're serious?"

She nodded her head.

"Oh, hell! No use for me to argue this with you. If I put this on for two hours, I will get my refund back, right?"

"Yes. That is, if you still want to return the treadmill to us. Which I really doubt so," she was beaming with confident.

"No drugs or other illegal substances, right?" I needed more assurance.

"Yes, we guarantee that. It's stated in black and white in our Refund Form. Our patch has no drugs or illegal chemical." She pushed the piece of paper across the table towards me.

"It contains only pure will power," she proudly claimed.

There. She said it again. I did not hear it wrongly earlier. The patch was designed to imbue the user with doses of will power. It would increase our enthusiasm and fortify our mental strength to overcome laziness and reluctance. Just like the way those colorful pills at pharmacy counter help our body to produce vitamins.

"We always maintain the high quality of our products, so the will power in our patch is sourced only from proven athletes," she elaborated.

"Athletes?"

"Yes. From our research, we know that athletes have the strongest will power to perform daunting physical exercises. In search of excellence, most of them have to go through endless hours of training, and even overcome the pain-barrier to reach another level of physical perfection," she elaborated.

"I just hope you guys didn't source it from our local footballers!" I jested.

"No, sir, God-forbid! We always maintain the highest level of quality in our products!"

I smiled. It was an interesting concept, but I was still skeptical.

But that was eight days ago.

Today, after using a few packs of the patches, I am a believer. I had never felt so much enthusiasm and willingness, pardon the pun, to exercise as I did in the past eight days. Not even in the days of my youth. The Will Power patch was really a miracle product.

After taking a long shower, I picked up my hand phone and called Agnes.

"Mr Chua! It's so nice to hear from you again," she exuded enthusiasm, as usual.

"Yeah, same here. I just want to tell you that I'm really impressed with your Will Power patch," I told her. Of course I realized she must have already known it, since my PTX3000 was feeding them with my progress reports

"I'm glad that you're happy with our products. I believe you're getting the appropriate returns from your investment now. The samples we gave you were the extract from local athletes. When you're ready, we'll recommend upgrades to International Athletes, and finally to our Olympian Winners patch."

"Yeah, OK." I paused for a moment. "Listen, I'm really intrigued by this wonderful scientific breakthrough, so I'm wondering if there's anyway I can find out more about it."

"Sure, Mr Chua. There's a book titled Neuroscience Evolution by Prof. Alfred Milton. Outside retail price for the book is RM345, but for our customers we're offering a 20% discount."
"Huh? You guys are selling book on this subject?" my voice was layered with surprise.

"We've received so many similar enquiries from our clients. It's only natural for people to be very interested in such a marvelous technology, so our marketing department thought it would be sensible to include the book as our after-sales service," Agnes explained.

"Ok. I think I'll get the book. But it's written by this professor guy, right? I'm just a supervisor in a supermarket, with no degree or what-so-ever knowledge in this neutro-science stuff. Would I have trouble understanding the book?"

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that, Mr Chua," she assured me.

"We've wide range of Intelligence patches."

DON'T DEPEND ON ME

by Kow Shih Li

I have lived with my aunt for the past thirteen years. She is forty nine and on good days, she looks no more than forty. In forms with blank spaces next to 'Occupation', she writes 'Accountant' but I am much better at managing real money. Due to this simple skill, it is my duty to balance the expenses against her pay cheque and she depends on me to get the bills paid on time. For this, I extend myself a modest allowance every month.

Aunty is my mother's younger sister, born a year apart. My parents died, both in road accidents, five years apart. I was orphaned at seven and Aunty raised me as best she could, which was not too badly at all.

We live in a house which belonged to my parents. Upon their deaths, insurance was a blessing which helped avert financial insecurity during a time of sorrow. Since Mother had been savvy enough to leave a will, the house will be mine when I turn twenty one in two years. Until then, it is held in trust by Aunty. I guess you could say that I put a roof over Aunty's head.

The roof in question is a single storey house on the corner of a street with eight feet of garden on one side and a neighbour called Uncle Thomas on the other. The garden and Uncle Thomas have a love-hate relationship chaperoned by Aunty. The garden is now overgrown with stray vegetation, pandanus gone wild and rogue lemongrass. The beds of chillies and trellis for climbing beans have been overwhelmed by barb-headed weeds, light-sapping creepers and shrubs that turn overnight into trees with thorny green trunks.

I have tried for a long time to persuade Aunty to allow that man on a motorbike to bring in his machete, motorized grass cutter and towel around his face to clean it up. She refuses. The little jungle has its fingers now on the doorstep of our kitchen. It stays just outside the boundary of what is acceptable through Aunty's sheer force of will and the fact that she occasionally pours a jerry can of kerosene on the edge and throws a half finished cigarette on it.

There was a time not so long ago when we had fresh chillies to pound and pandan leaves to put in our desserts. Smiling neighbours up to ten houses away came to cut fragrant stalks of lemongrass from our garden. There were ladies fingers hanging from the trellis and watermelons pregnant on the vine under that. We even had two rows of spinach planted on raised beds.

That was the time when Uncle Thomas could be found in our garden every evening digging, trimming, watering and tending to the little plot while Aunty made tea and white bread toast with butter and sugar. They would sit looking at the chillies until the sky turned dark with crows flying home to roost.

Uncle Thomas never stayed for dinner. Maybe because Aunty never asked him to. She was not a very good cook. I tried hard to eavesdrop crouching low under the window near the kitchen but I never overheard a conversation. I think they hardly talked. Maybe that is how things are when you get older. The only sign I saw in my covert observations, like a view you get when a curtain lifts momentarily in a short breeze, was the one time I saw Uncle Thomas pluck a leaf from Aunty's hair. She put her heart in her eyes when she smiled at him.

After the visits stopped, Aunty tended our garden with a vengeance. "I don't have to depend on him,' she would say with anger breaking her voice. It was during this period of manic gardening that Uncle Thomas dyed his grey streaks black and brought his Vietnamese bride home. We saw his friends come for dinner and barbecue sessions. We were never invited.

The garden grew erratically under Aunty's rage. The chillies shrunk in fear and the ladies fingers dropped off before they were more than the size of a baby's thumb. The spinach, on the other hand, grew larger with coarse, defensive leaves that were inedible. The watermelons split open before they could ripen and soon, Aunty stopped trying.

Then, she started collecting men. Of all shapes and sizes. Men who rang our doorbell and opened their car doors for her. Men who called and stayed on the telephone line for hours. Men she never spoke about to me. Their names eluded me but I knew them by the cars they drove. There was the one in a baby blue Volvo 740, a gaunt man who always stood outside the gate finishing a cigarette while waiting for Aunty to step out in her high heels. One in a silver Ford Laser sedan with glasses and broad ties. Another in a green diesel Pajero who always said 'Hello, young man' if I answered the door. A balding dandy in a black two door Honda Civic hatchback, in jeans and white shirts. A chauffeured executive in a Mercedes Benz who never got out of the back seat, not even when Aunty was trying to lock the gate holding up her long dress in one hand and her purse in the other.

I sometimes see Uncle Thomas do things I am not meant to see. Like when he checked Aunty's tyre pressure when the car was parked outside. Or the time he picked up our morning papers and put them under our porch because it looked like rain. Or oiling the hinges of our gate. Small signs of care or remorse, I did not know which. Aunty never noticed or pretended not to see.

I often wanted to ask Aunty if she was happy but we never spoke of such things. Like the other day, when the words were just behind my teeth. I opened my mouth and instead, told her that I was doubling my allowance, just for this month. It was so that I could go to Pulau Tioman with my girlfriend after the exams.

"Don't depend on me to take care of you," she said as she was wont to say these days. She knew I knew I did. I relied on her income to put me through school. On her presence as the only living relative I have. I depend on her to feed and clothe me the same way the garden depended on Uncle Thomas. To be stopped from growing wild and unkempt from lack of care. I do not understand why she says what she does.

Without warning, last Friday, she fell unconscious walking to the sink with the dinner dishes. When I called, Uncle Thomas climbed over the dividing wall in our backyard and carried her into the car. He drove like a madman to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital.

A tiny clot had grown in the one of her many arteries. Like a miniature stopcock, it blocked the free passage of blood to a part of Aunty's brain. Deprived of oxygenated blood to feed and keep it alive, this part of her brain died and along with it the nerves and puppet strings it was attached to. Aunty lost the use of her left side and her speech.

I saw frustration in her eyes and shame in the set of her head. When I fed her, her lower lip could not close over the spoon. Her eyelid sagged with her cheek as though her face was carved of butter and left out to melt. Her tongue lolled in her mouth and I knew it could not mould the sound coming from her throat into words. She could have spoken and I would have learnt to understand her but she stayed totally silent for five months.

I suspected that she tried to speak when she was alone, away from prying ears. No one would hear then that her consonants sounded like vowels and imagine her tongue like a wooden spatula filling her mouth. I guessed at this because when she did speak, it was clearly audible and the words were perfectly formed.

She said,"You can't depend on me now." There were no tears.

"It's OK, Aunty. You can depend on me," I said.

I wanted to hold her hand then but I did not. I wanted to say that I was so afraid she would die when she was at the hospital and I would be a seven year old again in a funeral parlour. But I did not. I said, "Uncle Thomas and I are going to start fixing up the garden."

Uncle Thomas and I tore up the wilderness in our backyard. We planted a carpet of soft, springy grass, a border of tiny star-like purple flowers and a climbing plant with bold yellow trumpet blooms which hugged the perimeter fence. The structured fronds of big palms shaded a multitude of plants with variegated leaves. Begonias on the ground and hanging pots of flowering petunias looked like candy kisses on some mornings. Our garden became a profusion of pretty things.

On some evenings, Uncle Thomas and I sit on the porch looking at the morning blooms close into themselves and put their heads down. Occasionally, his wife would come over with 2 cans of 100-Plus and dainty snacks laid out on a plate. She would sit with us for a while with a smile on her smooth, young face. Sometimes, we would just sit in the gathering gloom of dusk and wonder about what goes on inside my house.

Eating for Free

By James Ooi

Sitting down at my favorite hawker stall in Jalan Alor this morning, I was just about to tuck into my bowl of dry curry chicken noodles. The skinny guy sitting in front of me got up abruptly and just sprinted out of the shop.

Suddenly the lady noodle seller Ah Sim screamed and another guy selling snacks outside the shop started running and shouting in Chinese, "Hoi! Hoi! Kannineh! Pok Kai!!!"

Loosely translated that literally means "Hey! Hey! Fuck! Damn!!!"

Pandemonium broke out. In the ensuing chase, some tables got upturned and some plates fell to the floor and broke with a noisy piercing clatter. A minor scuffle ensued as the pursuer managed to catch up with the non-paying fugitive. Then the hawker guy sat on the fugitive's shoulder to keep him still and immobilize the bugger.

The other lady hawkers came and started batting him with brooms, ladles and kicking the shit out of him. I am sure it wasn't pleasant for that poor chap who was being bashed for eating and running off without paying.

Still I couldn't help but find it so funny.

***

I remember those days when I was a student and I didn't have much money to eat. I often thought of like eating and not paying. But somehow I never did that. It was not because I am a good person. It's just that from my early childhood my parents have instilled in me the idea of asking for something and paying for it.

And nobody ever asks for free food unless it's from their relatives or their own parents.

So what did I do when I had no money? I just didn't eat and just accompanied my pals and watched them eat and drink. Most times, they would offer me free food anyway. So it wasn't that bad.

About 30 years ago in Petaling Jaya, there was this supermarket called 'Thrifty' and at that time it was probably one of the few supermarkets in town. I used to collect card pictures of birds and animals that were free gifts coming with the condensed milk cans that my parents bought monthly.

As an eight-year-old kid, playing with these cards was a lot of fun. My brother and I would have endless hours just playing with them and we would often fight over them. Yeah, over nothing but plain old colored cards with pictures of animals. Silly huh.

So at the supermarket we would see these cans of condensed milk and the playing cards attached as free gifts. And the thing was it was so tempting to just reach out and take the cards. The more I thought about it, the more desirous I became to snatch a few. In the end, my brother and started stuffing our tiny pockets with these cards.

Two tiny would-be robbers. One aged eight and the other aged six.

We tore off the playing cards from the cans and stuffed our pockets with them until we would hardly fit another card in. We thought we had got away with it. Happily we ran off to find our parents.

But it was not to be.

Suddenly this huge gigantic security guard, a Sikh guy who appeared to be like a huge gorilla to us boomed loudly, "Stop!!!" We stopped dead in our tracks. At our age, a full-grown adult is so damn bloody huge and a hairy adult is also very scary.

We thought it was lucky that our parents were around. We thought we were safe but instead we got a terrible scolding and were caned until our legs bore red-caned marks on our calves. It was a lesson in honesty and perhaps that's why we never felt like stealing anything for that matter from that day onwards.

It was like if we didn't have money for it, then we'd forego it.

***

It was chaotic. People were rolling around in the street on this bright early morning. Struggling, thrashing and screaming. You can probably imagine the chaos.

There was a fight going on and the 'thief' was severely outnumbered by one man and five old women. A mass and tangle of hands legs and arms waving about wildly. It seemed to me that the hawkers especially the old ladies took perverse pleasure in pinching and kicking and touching the young man all over. If I saw it right, this old lady even grabbed at the guy's crotch. For what reason I just could not imagine.

Possibly she hasn't had sex for years I guessed after looking at her age and haggard looks. And this was the moment that she can finally touch some poor bastard's cock without fear of retribution. Thinking about it. What's the problem with paying for three-ringgit worth of noodles? Don't have the money, just wash plates lah. For God's sake man!!

I think getting your privates molested by some horny old hawker is much more dehumanizing than just washing plates or getting told off for not having money to pay for food.

It really doesn't pay to abscond after eating a meal and not pay. If you have to choose, then abscond from a pretty hawker. That way when she beats you, you can scuffle with her and cop a free caress or cuddle rather than get some old lady having her horrid way with you.

But that's just my point of view lah.

The L-word On the Beach

by Chua Kok Yee

Lisa was ten years old when she found a message in the bottle.

She was on holiday with her family at Pulau Pangkor, and strolling along the beach with her eldest sister, Mabel. The sun was sinking into the ocean, leaving fading layers of orange across the graying sky. The ocean shimmered with reflections of the remaining sunshine; a welcoming prelude to the twinkling of the stars arriving soon from high above.

Lisa was shuffling her bare feet along in the soft sand, when she came across a half-buried bottle.

"Ah Jie! Look, there's a bottle there!" she pointed it to her sister. Mabel, who was seven years older than her, picked the dark green bottle up, and dusted away the sand. Then she pulled out the cork, and fished out a roll of brownish paper from inside.

"Is it a pirate's treasure map?" Lisa asked anxiously. She was already wearing an eye-patch and holding a long sword in her mind.

"Hahaha, no, it's not! It's just a message in the bottle," her sister told her.

"A message? What does it says?" Lisa studied the note in her sister's hand.

Both of them were standing at the edge of the water as Mabel's slowly unfolded the roll of note. Even though she squinted, her eyes lightened up when it traced through the lines of the note. Her lips sculptured a smile, and she read the message in the bottle to her little sister. Those simple words seemed to glide across the paper, sailed through the air before it anchored inside Lisa. That evening, under the embrace of the tender sea breeze and vanishing daylight, young Lisa received the first love letter of her life.

If you're holding a small piece of my heart; no matter where you are , I will never be alone again.


Twelve years later, Lisa wrote her first love note on a beach.

"You sure you're OK?" Mabel's voice over the hand phone was soft and tender, with a hint of concern.

Of course I'm not. I just found out that ex-my boyfriend is a pretentious jerk who has been cheating on me all this while. I gave him everything; treated him like a god and asked for nothing more than his love. It hurts like hell when I found out that the person I genuinely love think of me as just another conquest. When we kissed for the first time; I was thinking how special it was. But it must have been just another routine for him, another steps in his scheme to get into my pants. It made me feel so stupid; I'm so frustrated and angry with myself!

"Don't worry, Ah Jie. I'm OK," Lisa told her sister. Her pains were entrenched too deeply inside that she would not be able to share it even if she wanted to. Besides, she knew that she must overcome the pain on her own; only she could stitch back the pieces of her fragmented heart.

"When are you coming home?" her sister asked, but Lisa knew the question was from her mother.

"I'm not sure yet. Most probably next month or so after the results come out." At that time, Lisa was working in a beach resort in Cherating while waiting for the results of her university final examination. But Lisa did not go home the following month.

Upon her graduation, the management of the resort offered her a permanent position. Since she has always loved the tranquility of the seaside, she decided to stay on. From the day she arrived at the beach, she had been religiously taking slow walks along the beach late in the evening. She loved the sound of the waves as it gently rolled over the sand, and then slowly recede into the sea, taking along all the regrets and hurts of yesterday.

During one of her evening strolls, she saw a young girl working building a huge sand castle. The girl, most probably about seven or eight years old, was diligently scoping out buckets of sand with her plastic spade, and then patiently re-shape them as the walls, towers or blocks of her castle. The castle was quite impressive for a young girl to build on her own, with a tower on each of the four corners of its square wall, and a huge tower in the middle of the courtyard.

"Hi there!" Lisa squatted down near the east tower, and waved at the girl. The girl has a pair of huge eyes, and her brownish hair was tied neatly at the back. She looked at Lisa for a moment, then her little lips curved to a smile before she continue to pile wet sand onto the basement of the centre tower.

"That's a nice castle you have there," Lisa tried to coax a conversation.

"Thank you. I hope she'll like it," the girl barely lifted her eyes from her castle.

"Who is it for? Is it for me?" Lisa teased her.

"No, you silly! It's a present for the Mermaid!"

"Oh? You know the mermaid too? She's my friend too. I think she'll love it!"

"Really?" the girl eyes widened with joy.

"Yeah. It's a very nice castle," Lisa assured her.

"I hope tomorrow she will come visit the castle, and we can play together," the girl said, her face brimming with hope.

Lisa stood up, and looked further out towards the sea. A heavy feeling of dread came to her heart as Lisa confirmed her anxiety; the girl has built her castle too close to the edge of the water. When the high tide comes in the morning, the castle will be washed away. Tomorrow the girl would come back to the spot with great hopes, only to be disappointed by the disappearance of her castle. But how do we tell a child that, sometimes in life, our honest toil and pure intentions worth very little?

Lisa stood in silence as the girl put small flags on the top of the towers.

"What if tomorrow when you come here the castle is gone?" Lisa asked. She felt she had to gently prepare the girl for the impending disappointment. The girl continued to adjust one of the flags as if she was ignoring the question. After the flag was straight and flapping in the evening breeze, she returned a question to Lisa,"How can the castle be gone?"

Lisa unconsciously bit her lower lips,"Maybe some bad people steal it?"

The little girl stared at her for a moment, before she gave her a smile that seemed too wise. Then she told Lisa,"It's OK.

"You won't be sad your castle is gone?"

She shook her head as she flattened the western wall with her spade, "The mermaid don't like it anyway."

"How do you know that?" Lisa did not quite understand her. Her bafflement must had been comically obvious on her face, as the girl giggled at her expression.

"You're so silly! If the mermaid really likes it she will protect it. No one can steal it then!"

Lisa would not had expected that answer in a thousand years. She stood there for awhile, slowly contemplating the words, while waiting for the girl to complete the castle. Later that evening, after sending the girl to her hotel room, Lisa returned to the sand castle. She brought along a chopstick, and scribbled the words from her heart onto the wet sand next to the castle. That night, Lisa wrote her first love note on a beach.

If you're holding a small piece of my heart; no matter where you are, I will never be alone again.

Three years later, someone finally replied.

That evening, Lisa was strolling along the beach as usual when she noticed a peculiar shape on the edge of the water. Under the fading light, it looked like a huge semi-circular wall of an abandoned sand castle.

"Oh, no! Another grave for the pet!" Lisa moaned. In the past, she had a few cases of kids burying their pets on the beach. She had nothing against kids paying a meaningful last respect to their beloved pets, but a hastily-dug grave on the beach usually meant floating carcass when the tide is high.

But as she walked closer, she realized that it was not a grave. The pile of pebbles and rocks were arranged carefully in circle, with a layer of plastic sheet wrapping the inner wall. It was quite crude, but the two feet high circular wall played its role to perfection by preventing the seawater from invading inside.

Lisa stared unbelievingly at the words in the centre of the circle.

In her heart, she was hoping that a man will find the words she left behind on the beach, and he will keep them in his heart to protect them from being washed away by the waves. Then one day, he would look into her eyes and then return them to her, word by word.

She had never expected, or dared to hope for, anyone to actually physically preserve her love note on the beach! Now she did not know what to do!

Shall I leave my hand phone number or what? Or maybe email address too?

Lisa pulled out her chopstick, and wrote down her phone number underneath the original message.

"Hi!"

Lisa turned around and saw a girl. She was a tall girl, with a fashionably short and spiky hair. Her large almond eyes were diamonds that sparkled on her smooth round face. The white singlet she wore accentuated her womanly curves, and her slender legs looked great in a pair of khaki shorts.

"Hi!" Lisa replied, feeling the color rising in her cheeks. She has written so many times on the beach, but always alone in the dark. No one has ever caught her doing it before, and she suddenly felt vulnerable. It was like reading aloud the most intimate poem in her diary in front of a stranger.

There was a wall of awkward silence between them, before she pointed to the writings on the sand.

"You wrote those?" she asked, her eyes wide with anticipation.

Lisa nodded her head.

A wave of disappointment washed over the girl's pretty face, and sluiced out the lustre in her eyes. She withered, with her slumped shoulders and bowed head, like a morning rose under the afternoon sun.

For a moment Lisa was perplexed by both the girl's question and reaction. Then the cursed needle of realization slowly drilled into her heart, and injected bitter doses of reality into all the sweet possibilities. Lisa searched for the stranger's eyes, demanding the answer to an unnecessary question.

"I'm sorry," the girl apologized without lifting her head.

"It's OK," Lisa lied.

"Really. I'm sorry. I didn't know who wrote it, but it was so romantic. I thought it was by a guy, so I.." she explained.

"It's OK," Lisa said, this time she meant it.

The girl and her were so alike; both victims of their own lonely heart. Inside, they built an incomplete puzzle of love, and waiting for the arrival of the final piece. It was a cruel twist of fate that they heeded each other's call, even though they did not have that final piece.

"Thanks," Lisa said. The girl lifted her face, and stared at her with eyes as clear as that morning's blue sky.

"Yeah, I wish it was a guy, but at least you get it. You knew what to do, and that means a lot to me," Lisa told her.

She nodded, and beamed a sunshine smile that Lisa thought was the sweetest she had ever seen.

"At least now we know there are still some romantics out there, and we can always hope, right?" she replied with the words that were lingering on Lisa's tongue.

"Yes, we still can hope," she murmured to herself.

That night Lisa and the girl sat together on the beach and shared stories of loves, heartbreak and hopes. When the morning came, they hugged each other, bid farewell and never see each other again in their lives.