Breaking For Buffalo (Part 1)

 

Until now I can't figure out why I went to Buffalo, of all places.

It's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo even if you knew that it's the second biggest city in New York. Perhaps it's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo because it's the second biggest city in New York. The problem with the name New York is that 100% of non-Americans and 99% of Americans know only New York the city, not New York the state. So the second biggest city in New York  state is only meaningful in the way that Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic.

Maybe I just liked the name Buffalo. There were easily more than 2000 colleges in US, so how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? There were no full-blown college rankings in 1980. The only scams those days were black money and scratch-and-win. So choosing a college was pretty much an art and a game of chance.

All I'd heard was a couple of really good colleges in US I shouldn't waste my time on because of my appalling physics and chemistry grades in form five. Harvard accepted only very quick geeks and gooks, apart from future presidents and prime ministers or future sons of future presidents and prime ministers. And everybody agreed that it's easier to go to jail than Yale. So I didn't apply to Harvard and Yale.

Good thing that Petronas had no problem with my school choice. A good friend named Zainal had his application to do MBA at Moscow approved with no fuss. Moscow  was actually a town in Idaho, but I've no doubt that Petronas would've approved it even if it's Moscow in Russia. Getting scholarship at that time was roughly 100 times easier than it is now. The whole idea was, right or wrong, to encourage smart staff to get smarter, not the smartest staff to get smarter. All you'd to do was to fill a form and provide one good reason why you felt that you'd not been educated enough. Another friend wrote succinctly that " I just discovered that my current third-class degree in Malay studies wasn't cut out for all the challenges going forward". The committee immediately fell for this 'going forward' trick and approved the scholarship, with full pay and all allowances thrown in.

It's all different now. I heard that, on a scale of complexity, getting Petronas scholarship now is the midpoint between Yale and jail. You know, how you've to be clever and seen to be clever and how I hate this cliche. You've to be a potential Petronas president or son of a potential president or, better still, if you're the president himself. When you somehow met the criteria, there's still the small matter of an interview. There's no committee to interview you now, which is well and good until you discover that it's going to be a vice president instead. You and some maverick vice president, one on one or one to one, sizing up each other, over dinner. Lose your spoon, you'll lose your scholarship.

It's 1982 and it's annus mirabilis. I got married and we're breaking for Buffalo. My young wife (she's young at that time) admitted that she'd never been to Buffalo. She also admitted that she'd never been to Kelantan. At least, she's consistent. All the same, we're excited about the prospect of living through the next couple of years in the second biggest city in New York state, hahaha. We're further fired up by friends and former classmates who'd just come back from US with glowing tributes to US liberal education and cable TV. Most of them had attended schools in Athens, Troy, Syracuse and other ancient-sounding places, but none from Buffalo.

I don't keep any record of the exact date we left for US. But I'm sure it's either late August or early September 1982, just in time for the Fall semester. What I can still remember is losing all my sense of proportion after a long flight spanning over 12 time zones, three sunrises and four inflight breakfasts. And, of course, the long layover at Chicago airport and the smooth landing at Buffalo-Niagara Airport. Nothing striking about the airport. Those days an airport was an airport, not the whole kingdom. Immigration was fast, no body patting, no terror trivia, and we're allowed to keep our shoes and belts as part of our fashion statement. We picked up our luggage and eagerly wheeled out toward the exit just to see what's outside. As we pushed the door, gusts of cold air flooded in and froze my spine. My (young) wife smiled and shuddered slightly. She'd never been to Buffalo.

It's early evening, about six or seven. The sky was still bright, and cloudless. I was immediately overcome by the rush of fall foliage in the distance. What a pretty sight. All's fine, it seemed, except for one small problem: we had nowhere to go.               


        

  

Going Away

Early last month I was among a crowd of family members at KLIA to see Azra off to England for further studies. Azra is my wife's sister's daughter (technically my niece). It's a heady and joyous occasion, and a chance to greet and meet relatives I'd not met since....... the previous Sunday. Azra's all upbeat with no visible signs of distress or despondency normally associated with an impending filial parting. With her iPhone ringing off the hook, there's simply not enough time to be sad.

Her parents were equally relaxed and calm and just happy that their pretty daughter would get the much coveted overseas education. Who wouldn't? I don't have the statistics, but my guess is less than 1% of Malaysians of her age are lucky enough to go to UK instead of, say, UMK (Universiti Malaysia Kelantan). I'm not implying that Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, or Kelantan, is wrong or rogue or anything. It's just that Kelantan is not UK.

When the time came for goodbye, there were no bouts of chokes and tears. Her dad was a hard-driving businessman who deals with tools and turbines and he's not supposed to cry for any reason. At least not while I was around. So I didn't expect him to break new ground this time. Her mom, well, I could never guess or second guess what's inside although she's my wife's sister (technically my sister-in-law). She's less forthcoming than her sister (technically my wife) and it's hard to say here or now whether that's good or bad. Suum cuique (Latin). I supposed she's a tad sad, but she's determined not to let anyone guess. True to form, mom hugged her daughter and said some standard stuff like take care, study hard and so on. Well, what do you expect? 

That was it. Azra took the escalator and was out of sight in less than two minutes. She didn't look back. She didn't have to because she's never away. Cellphones, Whats App and other human inventions and interventions have compressed the world. No place is actually too far and too foreign now. 

I couldn't help but think of the time when we (me and wife) were leaving for US in August 1982. We'd been married for about four months. It's so many years ago that it could've easily been 1882. Anyway, things were different those days. For a start, it's the old Subang airport. It's more crowded than Old Trafford. You could get depressed in no time and for no apparent reason. People just next to you wailed hysterically and you thought they're part of your family and you just had to cry along as a courtesy. Internet, email and cellphones were a long way off. International calls to US were slow and expensive because they'd to go through six different operators.

My flight itinerary reads like Amazing Race: a stopover in Taipei, an overnight in Narita, a 6-hour lay-over at Chicago, and finally a late night landing somewhere near Niagara Falls in upstate New York, in a record time of under 50 hours. I suspect the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci took the same route and time when he discovered and named America exactly 400 years before.

Those days, if you're going overseas, you're going overseas. Far and away from everything you'd known. The cheapest way to communicate was by mail and you'd to write properly and in full because nobody understood LOL etc at that time. I've to admit that I was actually more worried about missing or wrong flight connections. I didn't want to go to Ottawa.

When our flight was called, my wife broke down and cried.

Learning and living overseas, even in frigid, far-flung places like St Petersburg, is a worthwhile experience. I've made it a point to be at the airport to see close relatives off for further studies, as if my presence would motivate or encourage them in some way (which I doubt).

But lately seeing-off students overseas has been mostly muted and low-key non-events, lacking the drama and trauma of bygone days. Maybe KLIA is too spacious, clinical and artificial. It lacks character and atmosphere (cliche much). Plus, flying is no more a novelty with AirAsia now giving away free seats every three days. Nobody wants to cry every three days. I've lost count of how many times I was at the airport to see students off to UK or somewhere to do medicine or some strange subjects, but I was left deflated every time. Except for one time in 2001, when my eldest boy was leaving for US.

It's almost 20 years after my historic flight, and the difference couldn't be starker. It's KLIA now, no more Subang kopitiam. In 1982, I was 29, fully grown, and married. In 2001, he's under 18 and, by law, couldn't watch Saving Private Ryan. He's among a small group of students flying off to US that day, very early morning, 2 or 3 am.

When we reached the airport, his hordes of friends, 40 or maybe more, had already stormed and occupied one-half of the airport, turning that part into a Formula 1 podium. What a rousing and rapturous send-off. I've never seen so much joy and jubilation in parting. These young people just knew how to do it, and I was stunned by the spontaneity. They sang, they hugged, they laughed, they waved. Even my tone-deaf brother-in-law sang along when the whole group broke into "Leaving on a Jet Plane".

When my son's flight was called, my wife broke down and cried.



  




      

       

Bangkok Dangerous

 
On 22 May 2014, Thai military seized control of Thailand, and imposed martial law and a nationwide curfew. Bangkok had never looked so dangerous.

Thankfully we're in Malaysia, a purportedly peaceful country. We had absolutely nothing to worry about, except for petty issues like reckless drivers, taxi drivers, Whats App, house break-ins, bank break-ins, political break-outs, crony contracts, water rationing, snatch thefts, Astro, GST, price hikes, diesel smuggling, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, May 13, Sabah kidnappings.

So should we worry about Thailand? We should. Why? We're planning to go to Bangkok on 24 May, that's why. Five days, four nights with the army, guns, tanks, mortars, bombs and tear gas didn't sound like a mouth-watering prospect. No question, we're very worried. We had with us eleven Air Asia confirmed tickets for flight to Bangkok on that date, non-refundable, non-exchangeable, non-transferable. We're nonplussed.

Why eleven tickets? Because it's eleven of us. Me, wife and our two girls, a sister-in-law, a niece, a brother-in-law, his wife and their three kids. Magnificent eleven. The big question was, Should we go ahead with our plan? Or should we activate a plan B? Did we have a plan B? We'd bought the tickets two months ago and they're dirt cheap because Air Asia had spies with the Thai army and they knew about the coup as early as 2012. That's why they priced the tickets so low: RM204 return. Coup d'etat specials. Compare that with RM1204 one way if you want to fly to Lahad Datu just to be with all those Sulu soldiers.   

The Foreign Ministry people issued the normal cover-their-asses travel advisory: cancel all plans to travel to Thailand, and travel to Ottawa instead. TV3 rep who was in Bangkok, embedded in the army tanks and throngs of protesters, had this advice for us: Don't come to Bangkok. She's happy and smiling in Bangkok and we shouldn't be in Bangkok.

Among the eleven of us, three were school girls, two college girls, five boys and girls above 50 years old (including one above 60, you know who), leaving only one 19-year old boy who's technically able and ready to fight the Thai army if we had to. The odds were heavy. Should chaos and clashes break out in Bangkok, who's going to save us? Corrupt monks?

Finally we drew up a plan B. So Plan A was: Go to Bangkok. Plan B was: Go to Bangkok. Decision: Go to Bangkok.

Problem was, we're too negative. We must think lateral, outside the box, blue ocean, and consider the upsides: the army keeps the streets safe. Protesters have gone home. Curfew starts at 10, so my brother-in-law can't sneak out, his wife should be happy. Hotel room prices are rock bottom. Manicures are free with massages. Smelly backpackers are few and far. Best of all, it's a dream outing for our school girls, I mean, they'd been studying their hearts out, days and nights, non stop, LOOOOL. There's no better time to hit Bangkok.

So we went to Bangkok on Saturday, 24 May. From Don Mueang low-cost airport we headed straight to Pattaya low-cost city, two hours by road. Our itinerary was flexible. If Bangkok behaved, it's one day in Pattaya and three days in Bangkok with day trips to Ayutthaya and Floating Market. If Bangkok turned ugly, it's one day in Pattaya and three days in...... Pattaya, we skip Bangkok.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a livelier and more vibrant town than Pattaya. The only industry here is entertainment, all kinds, you name it. We're given rooms that faced a best-selling bar with loud music and laser lights that blared and glared with nerve-numbing intensity. Luckily everything had to drop dead at 10, when curfew kicked in. Ha, ha.

Just for the record, we had a lovely tomyam dinner at a food court in a nearby mall. The waiter was friendly and there's no communication breakdown. He's from Kelantan.    

Turned out, Bangkok was beautiful, no army, no tanks, no Molotov cocktails. Only go-go girls and lady-boys. Our base camp was Omni Tower, about 400m into Soi (Lane) 4, off the world-famous Sukhumvit Road, where 99% of the population were transient tourists. To reach our hotel, you've to literally navigate through blasts of high-energy music and spinning lights and rows of randy bars with pole dancers and, you guess, go-go girls. Our schoolgirls screamed with delight. I'd to literally calm down my brother-in-law. The 19-year old guy was quietly making plans to come again, without his mom and pop. Clever boy.

Chatuchak Sunday market was brimming over with real people and fake stuff. MRT and Skytrain rides were pleasant, without curious Banglas and Indons watching. We'd to buy 11 tickets each time, creating long queues and commotion every time. Our station was named Nana, but you've to say it with the right tone and tune. If you miss one note, the locals would think that you're asking for a body massage. Hotel was perfect, my brother-in-law and his wife had a room all to themselves. The half-day trip to the old capital city Ayutthaya was fun. The floating market at Damnoen Saduak turned out to be exactly what we'd expected: a floating market. Hahaha. The schoolgirls had a real dandy time, sleeping, giggling and eating in one big bed. What did you like best, girls? Lady-boys !


We flew back to KL on 28 May. In one piece.

The Magnificent Eleven: Nisa, Pak Lang, Mak Long, Mak Lang, Irina, Aida, Sarah, Faliq, Mak Ngah Yaa, Azra

 

Sorry, Girls. This Boy Is Prettier Than You.

The Guy Who Took This Shot Is A Pro

This Camera Works Only In Subang Jaya.

 

This Ayutthaya Temple Is 900 Years Old. This Couple Is 950 Years Old.

These School Girls Love Lady Boys

Aaaahhh ..... I'm Dreaming of My.......... Dad

 

Boats Were Empty Because We Bought All The Fruits

  

Thai Food With Free Sugar.

 

That Guy At The Back Is Smiling. He'll Be Coming Back To Bangkok With His Friends.

    

            

Random, Remarkable Persons

He's here. He's gone.

Have you ever been amazed by any person you've only met or known for a short while?

I've been amazed by an unbelievable brother-in-law. Thing is, he keeps on amazing me even after more than 30 years. I know you've been amazed by your mother or mother-in-law or the odd uncle but that smacks of nepotism. In our clean country any form of favouritism is now unlawful and is investigated by five different ministries. Instagram and infantilism are fine.

But, really, what I mean is somebody you experienced only very briefly, like a week or maybe a year, but long enough to leave a lifelong impression. You wish you knew him longer or had more of him. The irony is that, had he lingered on, he'd probably be no longer remarkable. Here's my short list:

1. Datuk Anwarrudin Ahamad Osman

I had probably ten bosses during my 30 years in Petronas. Some were good-looking, some were industry average, while one or two were simply acts of God. Datuk Anwar was the fairest of the lot. No scientific study has conclusively shown any correlation between CEO's physical appearance and his company's balance sheet. But for the average staff, a sexy boss is a good start.

By chance of structure, I'd to report directly to him when he was CEO of Petronas Dagangan. (I wasn't his driver, please). I've to admit that, the day he came in, I was very nervous for about two seconds. Two seconds. His smile practically disarmed the beast and the boy in me. He had this charming habit of switching freely from Free School English to Penang Mamak Malay in one single breath. I saw some of the most intimidating people swept aside by this ploy. During a meeting with Shell, the macho MD was visibly upset with his staff for forgetting to bring along a  file or  a letter. Datuk Anwar quickly defused the crisis with "I did that all the time" face-saver. I've never met anybody who's so cool and composed that nothing could possibly upset him.  In this age of intense competition and insane KPIs, Datuk Anwar was a whiff of fresh air.

We had our share of run-ins and lighter moments, of course. The most unforgettable one was when we'd to attend a cabinet meeting chaired by the then PM Tun Dr Mahathir. We'd to brief them on Petronas plans for bunkering business. I could see that Datuk Anwar wasn't too happy. He suspected that Petronas President was just washing his hands and sending us to the slaughter. We prepped Datuk Anwar until he's ready to melt PM.  In Malaysia, there's no bigger meeting than the cabinet meeting. Anwar (Ibrahim), Rafidah, Samy were all there. Before our turn, there were some strange projects discussed. So I got bored. And sleepy. I just fell off and was down in dreamland when I felt a sharp shove into my ribcage. Then I heard Datuk Anwar whispering "Apa hang nak mampoih ka, PM dok tengok hang tidok !"

2.  Professor John Boot

Don't be fooled by the name. Professor Boot was a Dutch. Dutch are broadly boring people. You name me one exciting Dutch person if you can pronounce it.

Anyway, this Dutch don taught me Probability and Statistics at a university in upstate New York in 1983. Statistics, like Dutch persons, is never exciting, unless you're a sadomasochist. The problem was, the quantitative part of my IQ hadn't developed much since standard six. And now I'd to pass graduate Statistics. If I failed, my two-year study leave would be reclassified as a two-year study tour.  

But this Dutch was no douche. He brought the dead subject alive with unorthodox teaching larded with plenty of wit and wisecracks. I still remember braving an early morning snowstorm to attend his class. Prof Boot used pornography to explain some sticky statistical concepts. So nobody skipped his classes. One day a dog strayed into our class, without a blink the clever professor declared "haha, random walk" alluding to another complex statistical tool. In his hands statistics was simply cool and fashionable.

I did very well. And not only that. My pathological fear of numbers was all gone for good, allowing me to lead a normal life. Ha ha ha.  

3. A Deliverer in New Brunswick

It all happened so fast I never got to keep his name. There's no Android in 1984 to catch him.

I was travelling through the eastern side of Canada after my last paper, with wife and our one-year old boy, in a rented Ford Taurus or Ford Taunus, can't recall which Tau. My object of desire was Prince Edward Island.

I was well on the way, cutting through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, when we're stranded. One of the tyres shot and went flat. It's almost dark and dinner, and the highway wasn't exactly Federal Highway. Cars passed by once in two or three days.

I was struggling with the tools and wife was comforting my wailing boy by the roadside when a car pulled over. A big-size man came out and told me not to do anything. "You wait here, soon as I get my kids home, I'll come back". In less than 10 minutes, he's back. Boy, he's bigger than my car. He changed the tyre faster than the Red Bull pit crew. Before I could say thank you and get his name, he simply vanished.  


4. Mariezka

Not an ordinary name, but who's to blame.

I was starting a Petronas service station project in Indonesia in 2004 when I first met Mariezka at our marketing company office at Bapindo Plaza, Jakarta. She immediately struck me as exceptional - only in the sense that she's so plain and ordinary. With all those Indonesian artistes and so on, my benchmark was high. Born in Bangka island, she had a degree in engineering, or architecture, or whatever.

The company CEO (a Jawa Batu Pahat named Faris Mustafa) proudly announced that Mariezka would be assisting me in Jakarta. I had about 25 years' experience and she'd three or four years of odd jobs. Faris must be on dope. He might as well give me a Mongolian model.

As it turned out, she's anything but ordinary. She had more talent than all those fake artistes combined.  I've not met anybody with so much flair for people. As we're starting a business, I'd to see a lot and all sorts, of people. Of course I'd had plenty of experience with Indonesians before, but they're maids and plumbers in Subang Jaya. Indonesians in Jakarta were different league. They're good with the language. No means No, and Yes means No. Plus they had this attitude that all Malaysians (except Siti Nurhaliza) abuse and iron their maids. Clearly this time they had the upper hand.

But we had Mariezka. Even the wackiest anti-Malaysian fanatics fell for her finesse. She bridged the gap and smoothed things out, and I had not even one problem seeing and talking with the people. It's tough for an Indonesian campaigning for Malaysia, but she took it all in her stride, with clear conscience that all this would lead to a more competitive Indonesia. We got our license, bought a piece of land, and built and operate our first service station in Cibubur. I could see her deft touches everywhere. 25 years experience counted for little in Jakarta. She simply turned the tables on me. I learned a lot from her. Of course she did also learn from me:  a few Kelantanese words.

The Bangka engineer or whatever simply took the Indonesian oil and gas industry by storm. I'm serious. Migas loved her. Shell wanted her. Pertamina courted her. But she loved Petronas, only to discover that the self-styled global champion was already in love with restructuring and will never, ever get tired of restructuring. One year before I retired, Mariezka joined Schlumberger as a global consultant, or whatever, earning more than Faris.

5. Haris Budiarto

An Indonesian, if you don't mind. We knew each other for a very brief period in 2004, but long enough to leave a lasting memory. Pertamina and Petronas were working on a joint service station in Jakarta, and Pak Haris was my counterpart.

Nothing spectacular about him. With dark Javanese complexion and retreating hairline, you'd never mistake him for Brad Pitt. But I could feel his glowing warmth and, most critically, his deep sincerity, a priceless commodity in a land crawling with cronies and showmen. He helped me navigate my way through Pertamina, and after three months its "kantor pusat" became my second home in Jakarta.

Pak Haris had this nasty habit of grabbing the bills. He paid for my rounds of sop bontot, bebek, pepes, gurame and jus sirsak whenever we'd the chance to settle down for nasi padang. His excuse was always the unimaginative one-liner "Nothing lah, Pak", which was one letter longer than his routine greeting "Bagaimana, Pak " whenever we met. To him, friends had no price.

After six months our bizarre project fell through, but we still kept in touch right into my retirement. He's later transferred to the provinces and we never had the chance to meet again. But he did promise to call me if he's in KL for any reason. This was the only chance for me to at least buy him lunch and reciprocate with "Nothing lah, Pak".

In June 2011, I messaged him: "Apa khabar Pak. Kapan ke KL?". No response. After two days, it came:

"Pak Haris meninggal, Pak. Kecelakaan di Surabaya".

6. Mohd Fadzil Man

When I was in secondary school, I wished I could talk and write like Fadzil Man. I mean talk and write in fast and proper English. My first language was Kelantanese, which was closer to Arabic. English was, to quote Paul McCartney, a long and winding road.

We're dorm mates in Blue House hostel when I was in form two and he in form five. He's a prefect, debater, rugby player and, for good measure, the best science student in school. In short, he's everything I wasn't. But we somehow hit off and got along very well.  I suspect he had a soft spot for Kelantanese.

But what really inspired me was a short story he wrote in the school magazine. The title was "The Vegetarian", about our world being attacked by a group of leaf-eating aliens in 1968. Funny? I thought so, so I thought nothing of it when I first saw it, I mean, I'd had enough problems with my meat-eating school mates, why bother with tree-loving aliens. But when I read it, I read it again. Man, it's so good. The English was crisp and the plot was tighter than any Jack Palance movie.

I'd started reading English books before that, but this alien tour de force reinforced my shaky belief that reading and writing wasn't a waste of time. I was high on Sherlock Holmes, and  he noticed that and wasn't too happy. One day he dropped by and handed me a copy of  "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie. Try this, same stuff, but richer, he said. He's right, Agatha Christie was fuller and sexier. I still keep some of the twenty or so titles he gave me, with his name "Fabima" inked on every copy. Of course, I never got to be like him. I didn't want to be the best science student and become a scientist.

I certainly write better now than I did in form two. Fadzil went on to become a very successful (and very rich) psychiatrist (yes, a shrink). All along his plan was to be a doctor, and he had no plan B. Occasionally he'd write on his Facebook, mostly about his travels and golf flings. The flair is still there, but that alien invasion is better.

7. Ustaz Arshad Ahmad

You may skip this one. You wouldn't know Ustaz Arshad. I didn't know him. I only knew that he was the imam at our USJ 2 mosque. I also knew that he's a part-time imam because he had a day job at UIA.

I liked him because I liked the way he read the surahs. He didn't showboat with the holy verses. He read with no tone, no tune, just tajwid and tartil. His lectures (tazkirah) were short and straight, with no jokes, no Hindi songs, no cheap, petty politics. Dull and dreary by the standards of today's crowd of ustaz-rockers, his old-school and minimalist ways impressed me as unique and most fulfilling. He's exciting in the way that door knobs are exciting.

My interaction with Ustaz Arshad was limited to formal salam and smiles. I promised myself that one day I'd approach him and tell him that I was his number one fan, and he shouldn't change his style. I kept pussyfooting until 2011 when I saw somebody else lead the prayers for one week, then two, then another person. Apparently Ustaz Arshad was very ill, and this reinforced my resolve to meet him.

He never recovered.

  

     

Why Manchester City (And Not Liverpool) Are Champions.

   
The English Premier League season has just ended. And what a season, a nail-biter right to the death. For those who watch only Liga Super Malaysia and Tiga Ustazah, let me break the news: Manchester City were crowned the EPL champions. Liverpool, despite all the media hype and histrionics, crashed. Chelsea were third. Or turd. The other Manchester team got found out and bombed big-time. Arsenal were Arsenal.

The "Oops, we did it again" banner flown by City fans at the Etihad was a deliberate misnomer and a dig at detractors. There's no oops or accident in City's triumph. It's a clever campaign contrived not only to storm the league, but to inflict the deepest possible pain on pretenders. It's easy in hindsight, you'd say. But how else can you explain it. Wenger's swagger and then Jose's ruse and finally Brendan's orgasms, all wilted under the weight of Pellegrini's poise and composure. City won with two points and 100 goals. Not much, you say, but that's the pain part.

I'm just happy that City came out tops  A gross understatement, of course. It's like saying Congo is corrupt. I've been passionately following Manchester City and Kelantan since my early Tiger Lane days. For a very long time I was the only supporter of these two teams at the same time. In 1983 this one-man fanbase jumped 100% when my eldest was born. Life around these underachievers hasn't been easy with a season of false dawn followed by another false dawn and the next false dawn. So there's plenty to savour and ponder over this victory. I'm no pundit, but here's some lessons and take-aways:

1. Class and history are fine rhetoric. But football is more serious than that. Money brings titles. So splash the cash. Buy players who can't speak English. Wenger whinged and dithered, then boasted that he's close to signing Hazard. He's also close to buying Suarez. And Maradona. Obama. For God's sake, just buy, Wenger, buy. Manchester United have been buying players and titles for the last 100 years.

2. Don't count the kittens. Rejoice only when you really, truly, absolutely, genuinely win. Win means win. An EPL team has to play 38 matches. Liverpool celebrated their EPL title when they won the 34th match, against, ominously, Manchester City. Daily Mail and all sex tabloids were all over darling Liverpool. The feelgood frenzy swept across the entire Merseyside, the whole House of Commons, and half of Uttar Pradesh. Then cometh Crystal Palace. This bout of triumphalism led to the colossal collapse.

3. Patience pays. Forget mind games bullshit. Big horses, small horses, dead horses. Liverpool can score 23 goals against Newcastle. All of Everton love Liverpool. Andy Carroll will hit four past City. Total tosh. City strode on, without a whiff of an attempt to wind up Liverpool, not even after Palace flop. Pardew was right about Pellegrini being an old c....His heavy hair-do is annoying. His post-match interviews are exciting if you watch only weather forecasts. And then the persistent and understated "title race isn't over" soundbites he bandied right into the last game. With no weight on their back, City easily nutmegged Liverpool to the title (picture below).

4. Manchester United are mortal. Just like Norwich are mortal. Old Trafford meltdown was one reason for City's flourish. Nothing motivates like a flailing neighbour. City's loss of league title to United by 11 points last season was a difficult joke. This year Man U fell apart and finished seventh, 22 points behind champions City. Remember the columnist at the Guardian (newspaper, not pharmacy) who'd suggested that City's defence of the title was worse than Brad Pitt's defence of the title "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"?  The lazy journalist was promptly sacked last week when he showed up with four fake reasons for Man U's title failure (Ok, I made up this one).

5. Now repeat after me "Yaya Toure is the best player in the world".

What's ahead of us? City will keep the cup, score 200 goals and beat up Barca for good measure. For all the brave talk, Liverpool will never, ever recover. The spot where Steven slipped will be declared a World Heritage site.  Manchester United and the sexy Dutch manager will buy the whole German national team and move to Bundesliga. Chelsea will be an attacking beast, with two big strikers and one big bus. Arsenal will be Arsenal.

            

   

The MH Mystery: A Glossary of Troubling Terms and Expressions

My youngest, Sarah, has just started her form four. She came home today with a confession: she likes Chemistry.

Something's wrong with her. But let's leave her for another day because we now have something more urgent: MH370. When I was at Petronas, I'd to do things which were urgent and important first, which admittedly were not that many. We'd paid BCG good money for this highly complex idea, shown in a proprietary perfect square. I know it's hard for you to believe that things can be urgent but not important. But let's not argue. Let's agree that MH370 is urgent and important.

I was glued to Astro Awani for the first two days, keeping abreast every half-minute. Then my tendon tore and my spine sored as little progress was made. But what really broke my back was the sight of a general, or maybe a field marshal,  trooping in, his chest decked out with military medals and ribbons. A curious onlooker would easily mistake Malaysia for Managua.

You could feel the all-round confusion and discomposure. I know jet planes don't disappear everyday, but it's scant excuse for turning a crisis management into management crisis (quoting a clever reporter). The flight turn-back was confirmed after six days. Pilot's last words were modified after three weeks. A goal-line technology used by the English Premier League can decide whether the ball crosses the line in less than half a second. Little wonder Singapore air force parks all its non-hostile foo fighters over our airspace.


As with any crisis or disaster, there's a lesson or two. The management school calls this trick "failing forward". Meaning, we succeed by learning from mistakes. Of course it's a lot nicer if we just succeed, without first making a mistake. This tragic episode has truly challenged my intellectual and cognitive competency, or whatever left of it five years into retirement. The outlandish theories and hypotheses springing out of this unfortunate event are truly disturbing. But I'm also struck by some of the elegant and extravagant terms and expressions bandied about by the experts and the media. Here's nine. I've listed them in a glossary format for easy reading:


1. Assets. The Minister said "all our assets are now being deployed.......". I came across this word "Assets" in my first accounting class. It means, quite simply, what I own. What I don't own is a Ferrari. Seriously, I'm not sure why this dull, catch-all word had to be flogged and glorified to include just about anything used to find the missing aircraft. All sense of urgency and gravity is lost. Assets now includes equipment, ships, men, women, shaman, technically anything that moves, except our two eBay-class submarines.

2. SAR, ACARS, ELT, PC, PSR, PK. Abbreviations are inevitable in any disaster. When Titanic sank, the only abbreviation was SOS.  SAR is not singular of SARS, the deadly flu strain. PK are local university professors coming out of the woodwork to talk tosh. PC is now press conference, personal computers are now called personal computers. 

3. China. Not an abbreviation. How we wish it were. China is Chinese, only worse. They harried, they hounded, they bullied Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian artistes. They kicked up and complained at every turn, alleging cover-up and conspiracy. Lucky thing our government is well prepared, thanks to years dealing with similar tactics used by PKR. I'm not trying to defend Malaysia Airlines, but no airline that carries nuts can promise a zero-accident flight. And the flight was a code-share with a Chinese airline, which quickly disappeared after the plane disappeared. To be fair, all those Chinese relatives wanted was information. You've to understand, these people were so used to getting all accurate information from their transparent government.

4. Corridor. I lived in a hostel hell for eight years. The narrow space outside our dorm is a corridor. Now a corridor means just any space, anywhere, onshore, offshore, airborne. In this case one corridor covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and 15 other countries with "tan", except Canada. Another corridor consists of only Australia. The search team quite rightly plumped for Australia after British spies secretly calculated the plane's location to anywhere within 100,000 km of Perth. They also secretly calculated that it's easier to spell Australia than Kyrgyzstan. The icing is, of course, Australia's maritime skills and know-how, after 100 years of chasing Afghan boat people.


5. Ping. I know what you're thinking: a Chinese Dynasty. That's Ch'ing and Sing. Ping is a signal sent out by a satellite. A dozen signals equals twelve pings, not thirteen as in bread and pastry. You might also detect a faint ping when the army chief opens his mouth to speak.

6. Pinger, Pinger Locator, Chinese Pinger Locator, Towed Chinese Pinger Locator, Chinese Towing Towed Chinese Pinger Locator. A clever wordplay of the words ping and Chinese.

7. Turn Back. It means turn back.


8. Dari masa ke masa. This is an eloquent and poetic expression mercilessly mangled time and again. One newsreader concluded with "kami akan menyampaikan maklumat terkini dari masa ke masa". Another one used "dari semasa ke semasa", and he switched to "dari masa ke semasa" before I switched off the TV. I'm angry because this is not French. I used to hate Baru vs Baharu bollocks, now this. Please, Perkasa or somebody similar, fight for Malay supremacy and settle this issue now. 

9. H. As in MH. Malaysian Malays are a polyglot lot. A Durex survey found that an average Malay speaks three languages and watches at least three episodes of Tanah Kubur. But most Malays and most Malay professors seem to stumble over the letter "H". A pretty Malay TV3 newsreader easily got away with "M Hatch" because she's a pretty TV3 newsreader. Another one repeated "M Hetch 370" 370 times, where "e" rhymes with the famous Imalah in verse 41 of Surah Hud. There's H in Hud. There's no H in H. I think only the Minister got it right, which proves that this country has at least one literate Malay minister.

Pray for MH 370.   

 

All Those Years Ago (Part 2)

My mother didn't know that I'd left the bank for Petronas. She wasn't aware that I'd worked in a bank to begin with, so there's really no point in telling her that I'd switched jobs. Anyway Petronas was still new and unknown. It’s not yet a household name. So when I finally told my mother that I'd joined Petronas, she thought I was joining the Royal Malaysian Navy.

I think Petronas in 1979 was smaller and slimmer than modern-day Petronas Dagangan. Total headcount was less than a thousand, with an Executive Chairman (Tan Sri Abdullah Mohd. Salleh) and a Managing Director (Dato' Rastam Hadi) at the top. The whole company was organized in a vertical, text-book structure: Board, Divisions, Departments, Sections. Nothing complex and convoluted like it is now: Business, Business, Business. Staff titles were downright old-school: MD, Director, GM, Manager, Section Head, Management Executive. And only one MD, and head of Carigali was a mere GM. (Compare that to 120 MDs and 1560 GMs in Carigali now). Presidents or Vice Presidents were quite unheard of in our country. The only President I knew of at that time was US President Jimmy Carter. And President Suharto, of course.

My young and restless heart was all set for a rollicking life among the masseurs and gamblers in Pudu area, only to find out that I'd to report at the old Domestic Marketing Division (DMD) at MIDF building, right behind Ampang Park. If  you're interested, my job title was Management Executive. Not very inspiring, I know, but nobody complained. My starting salary was RM1060. One thousand and sixty. No car, no driver, no girl friend. It's a lot actually  if you compare with my friend in the government. He was paid RM 750 (Don't laugh). A link house at Bangsar Park at that time could be had for about RM80,000 or less. Now it's RM1.2million. A purchasing power parity based on this property alone means my salary was RM16,000 in today's money before GST and toll. Tell me how much is Petronas paying a chartered accountant of England and Wales now?

DMD was actually one of the two Divisions under Marketing Division. The other one was International Marketing Division (IMD). I didn't know a lot about IMD, but my impression was that IMD people were mostly overseas graduates and their parents were ambassadors. On average they dressed and spoke smoother and sharper than the DMD mob. You'd easily mistake IMD for a modelling agency.

Don't get me wrong. IMD guys were a lovable lot, and they're all pleasant, spirited and as confused as we were about where Petronas was heading. One of them was a certain Shamsul Azhar Abbas.

As the name suggests, DMD was largely domestic, you know, Kelantan and the stuff. Under DMD, there were three departments: Sales and Planning, Supply and Distribution and Engineering. No Finance, no HR. The head-office provided the services for free. You're right, life was certainly more fulfilling without Finance and HR in your midst.

As you already know, DMD would later grow and evolve into PDSB and finally PDB, while IMD became Petco and finally (still) Petco. With a shared history and office space, it's only natural for PDB and Petco to strike a very healthy and friendly and lifelong business relationship. Until today Petco continues to supply PDB gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet fuel, and probably jets, all at higher-than-market prices, pocketing plenty of profit. Not bad for a one-time fashion house.   
 

Back to DMD and 1979, Sales and Planning was by far the biggest, and the busiest, department. It had four Sections: Retail, Industrial, Home Fuels, Lubricants and Fertilizer. I was placed in, you've to believe this, Fertilizer Section. Understandably I was initially confused about this fertilizer thing, I mean Petronas had hardly started its oil business and now we were going into farming. Apparently Petronas was planning to build a urea fertilizer plant in Bintulu or somewhere and we were supposed to handle the marketing part. I found out later that urea was (and still is) gas based, so there was indeed a connection. 

The Head of Fertilizer Section, Mohd Sarit Hj Yusoh, was a fun guy. He warmed me up with jokes about Kelantan and Kelantanese. We hit it off  in no time. I was his only staff, so he'd no choice but to like me. Three more guys in bell-bottoms joined me two months later to give him more options. But he left afterwards to start a business and finally found his true calling in politics. Fertilizer and politics, you can only guess which one is more fun.

It's not just our section that got bigger. Scores of rookies with heavy hair-do came in the following months to fill up all Sections.  We had new faces every other week. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before the whole floor would cave in. But this recruiting rage just went on and on, and I'd to quickly learn some man-name matching skills. I said "man-name" because I can't recall any new lady executives coming through, which led me to suspect that the Manager and all the Section Heads were chronically anti-social. 

Before I forget, the Manager was Abd Rahman Abdullah, who lived up to his unimaginative name by being constantly serious and studious and ahead of us. It's a good strategy for an upstart like me to avoid him. I figured he had all the authority to extend my probation to ten years,  so why take the risk. Later I found out that he's a Colombo Scholar (meaning he was really  serious and studious) and he's my secondary school super senior (meaning  he was actually not serious and not studious).
     

Retail Section had the biggest share of the new staff. This was pretty much where all the action was, if you consider drawing imaginary pumps and non-stop talking about service stations as action. The Section was crowded and rowdy with shoulder-to-shoulder jumbo-jet sitting formation. Once you're behind your desk, you couldn't get out. If you wanted to go out to the toilet, everybody in that row had to go to the toilet. 

The Retail Section Head was one Ismail Kamari, who impressed me as a no-nonsense and go-to guy, and a perfect ruler for the Retail empire. Born in boomtown and bilingual Batu Pahat, he's all passion and little patience. Soon enough Retail began to dominate the department. The Section Head was the de facto deputy department manager. And, you know what, he also had a de facto deputy. This de facto deputy to the de facto deputy department manager was a clever-looking LSE alum named Anuar Ahmad.  I heard he was previously a hard-tackling rugby player, so I'd to really choose my jokes when he was around. The rest were, well, just functionaries and foot soldiers like me, mostly local graduates with minimal meaningful experience. We talked and thought mostly in Malay or Javanese but wrote in English. It took me one full day to draft my first memo. My boss thought it was a poem.
 

One major upside about the open-plan office was that there's no communication barrier across the department. The whole staff gelled and joked around freely like one big family.  We took the old mini buses to work and had to endure a full-blast Anita Ward’s disco monster "Ring My Bell" throughout the morning commute. I needed exactly half an hour every morning to clear my head and unlearn the lyrics. I later discovered that only the Manager and Section Heads were married and had cars, which probably explains that anti-social bit.

For the first time in my young life I came across a Float File. It was an evil incarnate and a devil's workshop rolled in one. We'd know what everyone in the department was doing well or not doing well or not doing at all through a "Float File" that was passed around the department. This vile file contained every memo that everybody wrote. The language and tone varied wildly with the writers, and your heart must be strong to read them all. Through this Float File system you'd get found out quickly if you were from Kelantan or if you had Javanese genes.   

Computers were a long way off, everything was either handwritten or typed or plain memorized. You could hear typewriter chatter almost non-stop from end to end. Typists were in great demand and we'd have to jockey and jump queue and beg them and flatter and fete them everyday. The first week, I could hear typewriter chatter in my sleep. Things settled down pretty quickly, all made easier by the now-defunct human right: freedom to smoke in office.

A boss and his boys huddling and puffing away was pretty standard those days. Cigarettes were so cheap with more than fifty brands competing in the market. Smokers in our department decided to buy only Benson & Hedges to minimize supply interruption. The non-buying smokers were unhappy with this one-brand policy which they saw as unfairly restricting their choice. The non-smokers were just unhappy with smokers, whether they were buying smokers or non-buying smokers. It was complicated, those days. 
 

Whoever or whomever or whomsoever had given the name "Sales and Planning" Department must be celebrated for his ambition. There's very little sales to talk about. So it’s planning and more planning days on end. Everybody was busy dreaming up or scratching up something (and smoking, don't forget). The domestic market was firmly controlled by global brands: Shell, Esso, BP, Mobil and Caltex. Shell was the market leader and all service stations were called Shell stations. An Esso station was a Shell station. It's no secret that one of our missions at DMD was to break this foreign stranglehold. Only nobody knew exactly how.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
I've been trying to recall the names of the 79ers, those who were in Sales and Planning Department in 1979. Due partly to time lapse and partly to memory lapse, I could only manage this partial list. I'll update as and when I stumble on new (lost) names:

1.Abd Rahman Abdullah. 2. Ismail Kamari 3. Hamzah Bachik 4. Padzin Ahmad 5. Maram Mohamad 6. Leong Chung Thad 7. Anuar Ahmad 8. Ibrahim Marsidi 9. Ismail Harun 10. Abd Rahim Ismail 11.Rusli Zakaria 12.Mohd Sabir Harun 14. Syed Izhar 15.Mohd Razali Moksim 16.Shaharudin Bujang 17.Mohd Sabarudin Mohd Amin 18.Ahmad Abdullah 18. Raja Abd Halim 19. Che Yusoff Che Omar 20. Mohd Johari Ismail 21.Awang Osman Awang Jaya 22. Azman Dewa  (Allahyarham)23. Rahim Kamil Sulaiman 24. Baharin Raoh  25. Zulkifli Mohd Ismail 26. Mohd Mazlan Sharudin 

My Chiang Mai Moment

When I proudly proclaimed early last year that we'd be going to Chiang Mai early this year, my two girls Sarah and Aida were less than impressed. I know why:

1. Chiang Mai is not Rome (Italy) or Ottawa (Japan).

2. They still had to live in Subang Jaya.

3. (For Sarah) The trip is after PMR, not during PMR.

But one day before the trip, they're suddenly upbeat. They'd been ploughing the internet, and something's firing them up. The hotel I'd booked had a ritzy, puffed-up name, including the word "boutique". The way the world is organized today, "boutique" means exactly the opposite, or worse. My worry was that these girls had fallen for the hotel website and its clever shots of non-existing swimming pools, smiling Swedes, and airbrushed beds.

We'd to wake well before 4 to catch a 6.55 flight. Anywhere in the world the cheapest flights are the early morning flights. It's airline's revenge on skimping customers. Ryanair is now offering a winter early-bird flight from Maastricht to Milan for 10 Euro (RM 40). Problem is, you don't know where Maastricht is. 

It's one big let-down for the girls as soon as we touched down. It's technically winter in Chiang Mai and they'd expected a cool 20 degrees. It turned out to be only slightly colder than Kg Pandan. But taxis were cheap, plenty and pleasant here. I guess taxis are cheap, plenty and pleasant anywhere if they're not connected to UMNO. Only 120 Bahts (RM12) to our hotel. Hard to believe because, if you're a tourist in KL, it's RM200 from Pavilion in Bukit Bintang to Sungai Wang in Bukit Bintang.

Chiang Mai literally means "New City" or "Kota Baru" because it's only 700 years old. It was once a walled city, and its main entrance was Thappae Gate, which still stands as a  tourist trap and an easy GPS address. The wall had mostly crumbled and its main function now is to separate the old "New City" and the new "New City". If you book a hotel in Chiang Mai through any of the online booking sites (at least 100 of them now), it would indicate the hotel's distance from either Thappae Gate or the night market. If you can't find it, you should panic because you've mistakenly booked a hotel in Bandung.

Our hotel, TJR Boutique Guest House, was in the old city, about 50 m from Thappae Gate (ha,ha), and this area boasted more tourists than locals per square foot. It felt like Bali, but without the dreaded sea. Our rooms were surprisingly spacious and clean, with working aircond and toilet. I guess it's "boutique" and "guest house"  because it had only 13 rooms, it had no lift, and it had a fat receptionist.

So what did we do in Chiang Mai? Nothing much, to be honest. This time we decided not to have a plan. Many empires and enterprises had plans and fell, so why bother. Leaving what's left of our good country for the easy and ancient pace of Chiang Mai should be rewarding enough. We'd be back reenergized to face the toll and tariff.

The most practical mode of transport here is the red tuk-tuk. Only 20 baht per person to anywhere in the city. We took tuk-tuk for sightseeing. It's safer than most taxis in KL.

The night market was, well, a night market. It's massive, almost 2 km long, with the normal night market stuff i.e. handbags, haggling and ugly Manchester United shirts. But it's still worthwhile evening-out for us because at the end of the market, there's a mosque and a "halal street" and halal restaurant. You know what'd happen whenever Malaysian tourists see a halal restaurant.

Elephants and tigers were a big draw in Chiang Mai, especially for tourists from Sweden. Since we're not from Sweden or near Sweden, elephants and tigers were just elephants and tigers. Another tourist hit in this part of the world was the long-neck. To see the long-neck in the flesh you'd to go north, around Chiang Rai, another old city about 200 km away.

We hopped on a Chiang Rai tour for 1000 baht each on the third day. It's a one-day guided tour on a 13-seater minibus. We're the first to board the bus, and it's full-house when another six people joined us. Ah, the Swedes, finally. No, actually I didn't know where they're from, but they're all Caucasians, meaning they're not from Kelantan. The guide was a Thai girl who spoke fluent Thai-English. Her name was Sisi. I knew it's never her real name. My Thai friends all have two names with 24 letters each.

It's a two-and-a half hour toll-free highway and she tried her best to fill us with well-rehearsed jokes, like, she's the most beautiful Thai girl in Chiang Mai. That kind of jokes. There's a casino in Laos, and so it's now Laos Vegas. She went on to explain, in jest, the virility virtues of "tiger pinas" and "cobla" whiskey. It pained me to think how many times she'd to repeat these jokes in the course of her career. So I weighed in with some silly banter to liven up her sad routine. My two girls were visibly upset with me for plugging away with my "jokes", which they thought weren't funny enough and wouldn't go down very well with the (purportedly) cultured Caucasians. Why should I care. For all I knew, these Caucasians could well be Kardashians in deep disguise. 

I'm not sure why it's called Chiang Rai tour because we didn't tour Chiang Rai. We cruised past Chiang Rai on the way to the Golden Triangle, where we took a Mekong River boat ride into the Myanmar waters before crossing over into Laos, where we landed for 20 minutes, more than enough time to decide that Laos is.... louse. Nothing here except for some makeshift outlets peddling Prada and local whiskey. You could buy these fakes in RM. Laos is the second country that accepts Ringgit Malaysia. The first country is Malaysia. Another low-brow joke, sorry. Ringgit is illegal in Myanmar. More joke.

For all its reputation, the mighty Mekong, at least this part, was no more intimidating than Sungai Kelantan. I first heard about this river in my standard five "Ilmu Alam" class. A few years later the itinerant poet-painter Latiff Mohidin eulogized this river in his surrealist masterpiece. "Sungai Mekong, kupilih namamu, kerana aku begitu sepi, kan kubenamkan dadaku ke dasarmu..." and so on. Not sure what it all meant, but it sure took the local literary scene by storm, spawning forgettable river-themed copycats like "Sungai Pahang", "Sungai Ujung", "Kuala Kangsar". Face to face now, it's hard to fathom all the fuss. Anyway, the boat ride was quite an experience, I mean, three countries in less than one hour, epic.

 
On the way back we stopped at Mae Sae, Thailand's northernmost town, right along the border with Myanmar. Somehow I liked this town and its roaring roadside trade. We'd to weave through fresh fruit, foodstuff and the heavenly smell of toasted chestnuts. If there's ever a need for poetry, it should be about Mae Sae. The guide warned us no less than five times to steer clear of Myanmar. Whatever's going on between her and the government of Myanmar, reminding fully-grown and fair-minded tourists five times  in five minutes was certainly over the top. The Caucasians laughed and really loved this "don't go to Myanmar" skit.

Finally, yes, the long-neck. We're taken to a small show village or settlement where the long-neck lived. They actually belonged to the Karen tribe from Myanmar, brought here by the Thais for tourist money. They all had valid visa, just like our Nigerian students. All women and girls here had metal (maybe brass) rings around their necks for good. Their necks certainly looked longer and narrower than my neck. I'm not sure what these people had in mind. It's quite heavy, easily more than a kg when I held it. When I saw a lot of children running around, it just struck me: how they did it, I mean heavy rings and all.

The Caucasians all seemed happy enough to see the long-necks. Nature, culture, whatever.

We spent our last (fourth) day in Chiang Mai seeing the cottage industries. Umbrella, leather, silver, jewellery, porcelain, and silk. We skipped cotton. (The girls' mum who'd been dormant for three days was suddenly inspired). They're all located in one area, just outside the city, quite unlike Malaysia where we have pewter in Ampang, illegal dvd in Subang Jaya, illegal turtle eggs in Trengganu, and politics just everywhere.

We flew back 7 January (Tuesday) morning. It's a sweet three-hour flight, and I was mostly half-awake, pondering back and forth what would be the singular moment, I mean, the one stand-out thing that defined this Chiang Mai excursion. Not easy, because it'd been an improvised affair rather than a seven-sight-a-day tour. In no time we're already at LCCT. I knew she's waiting for us, my little granddaughter Diana. There's a thick crowd as usual. But when she saw us, she just knew. She almost jumped out of his father's heavy arms with pure joy. This had to be my Chiang Mai moment. 

        

This monk can really talk. A used-car salesman turning over?

    

 This is a.........Toilet. It's big, it's beautiful, it's toll-free.

Prada, Prada and More Pradas. Where are the fake devils? 

Despite their long neck, those two guys are not long-neck. They are Caucasian.

A long-neck calling another long-neck. I swear it's a 5s.

The girls smile because they don't like my jokes

Atok, next time you go off without me, I'm gonna sing Glory, Glory Man United.