Writing Is Therapy

I HAD THE the feeling there was something wrong with the intermediate double-storey terrace house which the agent showed me a week after we — me and the family — arrived in KL from Singapore in November 2007.

For one thing, even in the guise of the fresh paint, the house had all the tell-tale signs of a prolonged disuse, like an old barn abandoned in the woods.

I reckoned that it might have been more than a year — could have been more than a decade for all I know — since the last occupants walked out of the rusty gate, with its tar-like paint flecking in the sun like dead skin.

Yet, for another, I could feel that something had remained there, taking refuge in the darkened corners of the house, perhaps it had even invited some other beings to share the empty rooms with.

Come in, we won’t hurt you

The fresh paint didn’t look inviting; but I could feel the house — the things in the house, whatever they were — waving at us, urging us to go in and why not just have a look, because we might like it…

Come in, come in, we won’t hurt you, I could almost hear them whispering under the window inside. We haven’t had blood for more than a year — it might have been more than a decade for all we know — and to tell you the truth, quite honestly our dear Jackson man, we have almost forgotten the taste. Come in!

You see, I had a very strong feeling that the house was haunted.

The agent, he’s a real-estate negotiator, his business card said — big deal, his business card did not say — the agent did not say anything about the house, except that the owner wanted it rent out for RM600 a month.

“Two plus one, half-month utilities, 15 per cent stamp duty,” he said, spewing out the terms of the rent in quick succession in a manner only real-estate negotiators could have spewed.

He repeated the terms moments later when he noticed the puzzled expression on my face, this time very slowly, complete with addendum and further explanation as per necessary as though I was a slow learner.

***

IT WAS THE school that sealed the deal. If not for the school, which is located within walking distance from the house, we wouldn’t have ended up renting it, not when among the first few items we found in the house was a worn-out long-sleeved Polo shirt lying on the floor with spots that looked like blood stains.

I could only imagine what might have happened here. This house had stories but no one was telling, not even the landlord, the real estate negotiator or the neighbours. Yet I could sense a presence even in the broad daylight.

Desperate for a house

By that time, we had already been putting up at a hotel for over a week and we desperately needed to find a house. My meagre fund was dwindling fast and besides, I would have to report for work soon.

So on Nov 30, we sealed the deal — me, the real-estate negotiator and the landlord — and the day after, we came to clean the house.

On Dec 1, we moved in and on the same day bought our first few possessions — two mattresses, a wardrobe, a fridge, a washing machine, two cooking gas tanks and a cheap stove.

We hadn’t done cleaning the upper floor; so, during the first few days we were in, we slept in the living room while the ghosts, seeing that we had claimed a place there, decided to move upstairs.

We lived in peaceful co-existence during the period. We kind of more or less agreed to stay within our defined territories — us in the living room, them upstairs. You don’t encroach into ours, I don’t encroach into yours, just remember that, Jackson man!

***

BUT I DON’T make deal with ghosts; so on the second week, we claimed the upstairs as well.

By that time we had bought almost all the basic items we needed to function and make the house our home. The ghosts would have to go. The house was ours now.

Fast forward to present-day, even now, over a year later, I could still feel their presence though not as strong as before.

Sometime when I am alone in the living room late at night reading blogs and browsing the Internet, I could feel the homeless ghosts coming near and often times, they would come real close and look over my shoulder, perhaps to see what was it that I was doing or what on earth was that  foldable book of spell that I was playing with.

“This is called a laptop computer, you silly ghost, not some book of spell… and I am browsing the Internet if you know what I mean. I bet you don’t have these things in your world, huh?”

I said that once, under my breath. But if my little joke had been funny, I had no way of telling if the ghosts were laughing.

[NOTE: this entry is from my old blog over at Blogspot, written on December 18, 2007 with some updates and editing]

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… and Ali the Taxi Driver, Ah Chong the Chicken Rice Seller, Gopal the Barber, Yomogun the Farmer.

If you have been following the US presidential election, you would know who Joe the Plumber is. He is, well… a plumber, who confronted Barack Obama over the Democrat candidate’s tax proposals.

Obama’s Republican rival John McCain, seized the moment in the last presidential debate on Wednesday (Thursday morning Malaysian time) and used the plumber’s exchange with Obama as a central piece of his argument against Obama’s tax policies, saying they would hurt average American businessmen like Joe the Plumber.

Joe the Plumber is rich by average Malaysian standards. Anyone who is planning to buy a plumbing company worth more than US$250,000 (RM850,000), like what Joe the Plumber was reportedly planning to do, is rich by Alis’, Gopals’, Ah Chongs’ and Yomoguns’ standards, assuming Joe the Plumber is living in Malaysia.

In Malaysia, an annual income of RM60,000 is already considered high by the standard of the average Joe, including this Joe.

Even then, with the increase in the cost of living, that amount is hardly enough for a family of four — with two school-going children, a mortgage to pay, a car loan to service and a house rent to pay — to have a decent living in cities like Kuala Lumpur.

Joe the Plumber would have been already an elite here, sitting securely up there in the economic and social strata.

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