Rants & Raves of Jasmine’s Fiction

Shakespeare once wrote:  “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man.  O, be some other name!”

I’m sure some of us can identify.  Ever thought your parents were nuts when you were old enough to understand the significance of your name?  Ever been the butt of your schoolmates’ jeering rhymes with your moniker?  Ever get tired of correcting/explaining to people about your handle?

Having been bequeathed with a unique last name, I know all about the problems that come with it.  I’m proud of my name now but it wasn’t always so before…  But at least I wasn’t on the receiving end of some of the more, uhm, child abusive names…  I mean, what parent in their right mind would name their son Percival?  Like my friend who introduced himself to me with “call me Dick!  Its short for Almerick but you can call me Dick.”  (I swear till this day I cannot call him Dick to his face without laughing!)

Some parents are evil!  My mother’s former classmate from her school years has an obsession with Native American Indian names and he though it would be amusing to name his son as such.  And the result?  His poor son’s legal name is Flying Dragon.  I’ve seen the birth certificate.  It’s true.

I went to school with a girl named Babycia and a guy named Yam Bucket.  My dad has a friend who’s name is Satan.  In college I hung out with these two jokers named Kok Ken and Kok Pink.  I have a friend who dated this guy called Ansem, as in Handsome without the H.

And lets not forget those with the easily nickname-able names; my friend Mark Darryl Seaton who, no surprise ends up with Mark Devil Satan.  I have a mate named Amos and his nickname is “Cookie”.   And I must not forget my dear friend Carmen Kismet Oh the “Raisin-Girl”.  (For those of you who have no idea why, the Malay word for raisin is ‘kismis’.)  You think that’s bad?  Her father’s name is Bunny Oh!

Of course some parents come up with creative ways to name their children; like my sister’s colleague whose name is Dawn and her sister’s name is Eve.  And Mark “Devil Satan’s” cousins Swan and her brother Hawk.  (Okay their real names are Swan Sim and Soo Hawk but still…)  My former piano teacher’s name is Rocky, his brother Stony and his sister Pebbles.  I also know of four sisters who are Yvette, Yvonne, Yveline and Yvlaine.

We have no power over our names but what would happen if you do?  Would you pick a name that ‘suits you’ or would you self appoint yourself something bizarre and outlandish?  (Don’t laugh, I know of someone with the self appointed name of Thoorak.)  Or would you marry someone and change your last name?  My sister knows of a girl whose name is

Crystal

.  Nice and normal right?  She ended up marrying a guy whose last name is Chandelier.  Match made in heaven if you ask me.

So what’s in a name?  Don’t ask me.  I have enough problems of my own.

Its 2pm on Monday afternoon.  Everyone and their aunts are out for lunch.  The roads are jammed up the yin-yang.  The damn lights are refusing to change and when it does it lets a total of THREE cars through.  That is if those three drivers are blessed with quick reflexes.  If not, only ONE slowpoke crawls through to the chagrin of the rest of us waiting in line.  After waiting for 25 minutes, you are now 3^rd in line.  The green light comes on.  The 1st driver zooms across quickly but the 2^nd idiot fumbles with his clutch and to your horror the lights change. 

It’s Kobayashi Maru.  The dreaded ‘no win’ scenario.  The Devil and the deep blue sea.

What would you do?  Your options are now: 1) Accelerate and stick on driver #2 like crazy glue and ride out the amber/red light and risk incurring the wrath of the long arm of the law, or 2) Bite the bullet and wait out another change of lights.

In my defence I was on an empty stomach and a full bladder so I went with option #1.  Round the corner I went as the lights blinked red and as Murphy-san would have it, there was a copper waiting for his meal ticket.  Me.

Flashing his lights he motions for me to pull over.  Grousing, I jerk my car into the curb.  He takes his own sweet time walking up to me.  I crack my window open and stick my driving licence through the tiny slit.  He waves for me to open the window.  I shake my head defiantly.  His face contorts in annoyance as he waves for me to open my window again.  Once more, I shake my head. 

Losing his temper now, he waves for me to open my window for the 3^rd time.  I say clearly out the crack that I can hear him fine, and vice versa.  I swear his eyes almost bug out over his cheap sunglasses as he screams at my window, “lampu merah!”  For you single-linguals, it means ‘red light’.  I shrug and stare stonily back at him.  If he thinks I’m going to be cowed with a show of temper he’s got another thing coming. 

Visibly trying to calm down as to not lose his free meal; he leans intimidatingly into my window and growls, “macam mana?”  Oh ho!  He’s asking me the equivalent of How Now Brown Cow. 

It’s Kobayashi Maru once more.  The rock and a hard place.

What would you do?  Options now are: 1) Get a $350 ticket and a black mark on your driving record, or 2) Buy him a free meal.  Get a ticket or bribe the copper for half that price.  I’m not beneath grovelling for a Get Out of Jail Free Pass but honestly, the fastest way to raise my blood pressure is to ask me for a bribe. 

I.  Hate.  That.

So I went with option #1.  Levelling my Death Stare at him and I incinerate all his hopeful thoughts of a quick buck.  I spit out every word, “Write.  The.  Ticket.”

I swear I heard his sphincter pop.  He snatches my licence and proceeds to write me up.  It must be a new experience for him not to have a quivering idiot behind the wheel.  He is PISSED off.

Stomping back to my window, he jams my licence through the tiny opening in my window.  Again (like it will achieve anything) he waves for me to open my window.  I very casually depress the automated button and my window rolls down 2 inches.  Do you know that it’s very amusing to watch a cop visibly making a massive effort not to succumb to road rage?  Smiling beatifically at him, I casually pull out my camera phone and *SNAP* I take a picture of him.  I grin as he sputters in disbelief.

I can see that he would like nothing more than to kick my door in but seeing that I now have a record of this encounter, he is powerless.  I love technology.

Biting off a curse and gesticulating wildly he shouts at me in broken English, “You no open window, how to sign?!?”

Blinking innocently at him I reply, “According to my mathematical calculations of space, I’m sure the clipboard will have no problems fitting through.”

Snarling, he thrusts the clipboard and his pen through the 2 inch gap and I take my time looking through the ticket, making sure he spelt everything correctly and generally making him stand like a buffoon in the blazing hot sun while I sit in the comforts of my air-conditioned car.  Finally after 5 whole minutes, I sign the ticket.

He rips off the ticket and stuffs the piece of paper towards me, almost getting his fingers clipped in my rapidly closing window.  Snatching his hand back in shock, he mutters something totally unprintable.  I wait till he mounts his bike before I cut him off on the road.  I damn near piss in my pants laughing when he gives me the one finger salute before roaring off.

Sometime in life one will encounter Kobayashi Maru.  I say if you have nowhere to run, get your jollies in first.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a ticket to pay.

My mate wrote a blog in the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre - Hell Is Other People.    He paints a very bleak view of the unmannered hoi-polloi - the screaming child with the indifferent parent at the theatre; the greedy shrimp shovelling bastard at the buffet table; the reckless arsewipe on the road; the self important snobs who think the world owes them a living.

Another mate of mine noted that phrases like "please, thank you, I’m sorry, excuse me" are all extinct.   Indeed, where have all the manners gone?  Has the race for bigger and better things left little things like respect, courtesy and tolerance in the dust?   Are we to think that just because we live in a ‘civilised’ age that we can dispense with civilities?

I’ve seen many asshats in my time.  I’ve been accused to my face for being a ‘resource leech’ just because I’m Asian on a school scholarship.   I have a casual acquaintance who thinks I’m flirting with the waiter every time I thank the poor sod for filling my glass.  I could go on about the ex-boyfriend who yelled at me for donating money and old clothes to charity.   And don’t get me started with the road-hogs; the queue jumpers; the selfish shits that blithely spread their rears on the seats reserved for the disabled/old/expecting; the screaming exhibitionist on the cell phone; and the self righteous ‘I-know-everything’ fucktards.

Sigh.  What is the world coming to?   Scripture tells us Hoc est enim corpus Meum.  Everything is Sacred and Immaculate.  How I wish that were so.   Everywhere I turn, everything I read, someone is getting fucked over so that someone else can get further up the ladder.  Injustice, poverty, cruelty, rape, incest, murder, war, famine, disaster…   Give me La Vie En Rose anyday.  Hell is indeed other people.

Yet…

I have also seen really moving acts of kindness – the young girl that gave her coat to the homeless guy in the dead of winter; the couple who bought dinner for the starving beggar; and the volunteers in the heart of the tsunami/earthquake/hurricane aftermath.  I know of a lady who spends her whole week collecting food and distributing to the needy and people who give up free time to clean out animal shelters, read to old folks and play with orphans.  I’m in awe of the brave folk who would race after a mugger; administer CPR; those who stand up for the weak and down-trod or even those who just hold the door open for the next person.  Good Samaritans; helpful, genuine folk; THESE people truly restore my faith in humanity. 

I know I’m a jaded sangfroid most days but when I encounter pure souls like these, a very famous poem come to mind:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!    

- Emma Lazarus

I feel that Sartre and my friend didn’t get it completely right.  Yes, Hell is Other People.   

But Heaven is there too. 

I was having an IM conversation with an acquaintance today and about 5 minutes into it I could feel my blood pressure pounding at my temples.  And what was the aggravating topic? 

I swear I cannot make this stuff up.  And I quote: “I can do Black Magic!”

What do you say to people like that?!?  Okay, I play along.  I asked him to clarify.

“Oh, my friend taught us how to manipulate the energies around us.  It’s not only our energy, it’s everything everywhere.”

I hate to break it to you buddy but every martial artist worth their salt out there will be telling you the same thing.  We call it ‘chi’.  I tell him so.

“No!  You don’t understand!  It was like a ripple through the very fabric of space.  I could feel the power gathering around me!”

Hmm.  Big words from a little mind.  I try to tell him to google up Aikido, or Bruce Lee’s The Tao Of Jeet Kun Do.  He wouldn’t have any of it.

“NO!  It’s not the same thing!  My friend could collect energy around his testicles and he got us to hit him there and he didn’t even flinch.”

I’d like to hit him in his testicles.  I tell him that Shaolin monks practice the same techniques.  Only they don’t call it Black Magic.  They call it a higher state of consciousness.

“You’d think differently if you were there to see it.  It’s not just the energies.  We can even call up some ghostly spirits!  And I saw one too!  It was exactly like they described it in [the book]!  It was like a religious experience!”

Mate, gullible people like you, are the reason why cults exist.  I can see Santa Claus and the Virgin Mary in my ham and cheese sandwich but I don’t call it a religious experience.  I call it imagination.  Just like children who SWEAR that there’s a ghost in their closet or the bogeyman under their bed. 

Read enough horror stories and I can guarantee the noises and shadows you hear and see WILL bloody freaking be “exactly like they described it in [the book]”.  I tried to reason with this idiot but as with all narrow minded people, they think that their opinion is canon law.  It was like trying to push a watermelon into a straw.

I had to end the conversation before the salsa dancing vein in my forehead exploded.  Why are these people allowed to breathe???  Sigh.  All I can do is massage my temples, click on Block User Forever and eat my Santa Claus/Virgin Mary ham and cheese sandwich.

On second thought, I think I might save it and auction it off on eBay.  Someone out there might be gullible enough to actually pay me a few hundred bucks for my divine lunch.