Leaving USJ - Part 1

After twenty-seven years, I finally decided to leave USJ  

No, it didn't take me twenty-seven years to decide to leave USJ. All I'm saying is that after twenty-seven years living in USJ, I decided to leave. I don't know whether I should wait another three years to make it thirty, which is a nicer number. It's not an easy decision either way. The process was long, painful and unscientific. I wish there was an apps or something to help me through. 

It all started from an idea I'd been mulling with myself since the day I retired way back in 2009. Why do I have to continue living around KL when I no longer work and walk and pay tax in KL? I could, as a concept, move along and relocate to Arau or Alai (Melaka, if you've never heard). When I first floated the idea loudly, my wife blamed my sugar spikes.

Just last week, six months after we'd left, Sarah asked me, maybe for the third time, why we'd to leave USJ. Sarah is not my wife, she's my youngest, and she's away in college. Sarah is in college, not my wife. Sorry to confuse you so early.

I still can't conjure up even half a reason for leaving. I've tried the old reliable like "There's only me and your mom (my wife, yes), while our knees are coming apart and we can't walk up the stairs without losing half of oxygen", which is not entirely fictitious. All of the above are fairly accurate. Just the two of us, we need only one room and one toilet. In fact, we need only one room if we could use a neighbour's toilet. It's difficult to convince your kids these days unless they see it on Shopee.

Anyway, leaving a place you grew up with can be fragile and fraught with remorse and hindsights. People leave a place for many reasons. They'd normally move to a bigger house, which makes perfect sense because a Malaysian household needs at least six toilets. A friend moved to a smart dual-key duplex around his office for a life free of tolls, traffic jams and flash floods. Some people with some sociopathic malignancies may even want to move out to a locality with no Kelantanese or Kelantanese-speaking neighbours.   

But, seriously, this is not the best of times to move and migrate, however compelling is the reason. You can't even breathe, let alone think and decide. Covid is rampaging and changing its variant every other week while our government is flailing and also changing its variant every other week. The only logical option amid this whole mayhem is to isolate and isolate productively. Long retired and hitting seventy, I should busy myself with contemplating and soul searching instead of looking for transporters to move my twenty over years' worth of junk. 

Six months on, most of the old furniture and fixtures are still strewn about our new house, looking for the right corner or new owner. My two boys didn't even pretend to look enthusiastic when offered free with transport thrown in. There's a thirty-year gap between us. I'm stuck with Semangkok and wrought iron while they're embracing dressing down and minimalism, which is actually watching Netflix. They'd drive all the way to Ikea to buy what remotely looks like a sofa because they actually want to buy meatballs.

I'm all strung up and I'm leaving everything to my wife to sort things out. She's many years younger and, thank God, she has no coronary complaints. God has also gifted her with a unique talent for hanging pictures, mirrors, lanterns, bells etc, if you can call that talent or unique. But I still have make myself useful by taking care of the household logistics like switching off the lights and waiting for Grabfood. 

Am I sad to leave USJ? Yes, if I'm honest. And I'm taking along with me some gorgeous memories. I'm serious. Most people think it's not possible to be emotionally interrupted if you part ways with people or places because you're still digitally wired to each other. Wrong. There's plenty of affection and memory lingering long after I left USJ. Agreed USJ is a routine and uncomplicated place. It has nothing to offer in the way of culture, character, history or winery. The stand-out architecture here is an LRT station. You can find a stadium but not museum. Leaving USJ is not like leaving Paris (Unfair comparison, but you get the idea). 

But believe me, USJ had its moments. Like what? Like when my wife delivered our first daughter Aida in 1995 after waiting for ten years. And when my two sons got married and became faithful husbands (These people didn't wait for ten years). And when my first grandchild Diana was born in 2012 and I started sleeping with a grandmother. And when my (late) parents came over to brighten up our monochrome home. Despite all the geriatric challenges, they looked happy and upbeat every morning, and it rubbed off on us. They were quite impressed with our automatic gate.

And how can we forget the lush and bright-red bougainvillea just outside our fence which had over the years become a landmark until Waze took over. My wife planted it as our contribution to a sustainable ecosystem. It bloomed all year round and distracted every passer-by from the more spectacular uncut grass and the ugly peeling paintwork. Chef Wan featured it in his video and you can listen to him gushing and drooling at the sight of our bougainvillea (I leave it to your imagination). This cranky cook is crueler than Cowell and it took our humble plant to break him. 

And many more memories, if you'd just believe me.

But nobody should come out of USJ without the glorious memory of the world-famous USJ water cuts. I'm not sure how the system works, but the supply to USJ 1 all the way to USJ 27 will stop completely even when the contamination is somewhere in Johor. No less than ten agencies with tell-tale names like Span, Syabas, Splash, Lemas are involved in the straight-forward task of supplying plain water. It's almost impossible to nail the culprit.        

We moved into USJ 2 in 1994 when the township was just breaking ground. I really thought the name USJ was only a contractor's code for a construction site, and the name would be changed later to something more imaginative and poetic like Puncak Alam, Jebat Derhaka etc. My two sons were in primary school. Now their daughters are in primary school. McD and Mydin were still a long way off, and life was joyless without these celebrated institutions. Neighbours mostly triple-locked their homes so I couldn't just walk in without two weeks's notice. No, they were all fine, tax-paying citizens but break-ins were rampant so about everyone were up in arms, quite literally.

USJ just kept expanding, relentlessly and eventually transforming the whole place into a massive traffic gridlock. The Federal Highway jam started right at my gate. On a clear day, it would take me one full hour of anxiety to reach the Petronas Twin Towers and another hour to calm down before the boss called and started the whole cycle again. 

Carbon footprint wasn't yet in fashion, so Sime UEP just kept on building until they breached the Puchong border where squatters were also building their new houses and new Umno branches. I thought  they were really making lots of money. I mean Sime UEP, not the squatters. But let's not be too philosophical about this. People need homes and shelter to become productive and useful. 

Anyway USJ has really come good, from a sleepy sanctuary to a vibrant city in a record time of thirty years. It took London 2,000 years to become a city. USJ is now officially a City, with its own mayor,  new colour and new song as a cover for upcoming tax hikes. I'm sure that's the purpose all along. For me this city status racket doesn't add and motivate all that much. I can't see what all the fuss is about when odd and joke places like Kuala Trengganu and its glorified keropok lekor is also a city.

I'm sure Sarah and Aida are still unhappy to have to leave their friends and their schools and Sunway Pyramid. I know most of their friends by name, Aleesa, Alia, Aina, Aisya and other uneventful names. They had this undernourished look, and the way they dressed up and their twisting English, I knew they'd just jumped out of Instagram. 

Five or six of them would crush into a Myvi and when they passed me they'd all wave and  frantically scream "hi uncle" and I'd to wave back, also frantically, to avoid being thought as deaf or dead. Thank you, girls, for making my day. When I was their age I'd hardly talk to people of my age, let alone wave and scream like that.  

Leaving the people you've known for twenty-seven years comes with a sense of loss and sadness.  Our neighbours are all generous, upstanding people who'd invited my family to their kenduris or receptions and I'll remember their good food for a long time. One of them passed away just a few weeks after I'd left. He was a constant gardener and I can still picture him in his garden weeding or watering or doing something I'd never done in my life. He knew I was leaving but it never struck me that he'd also be leaving us. It's life at its fullest fragility. 

And, of course, the fellow old timers and late bloomers I met at Al Mu'minun, and most days we'd stay on for lively prostate updates and aimless banter. Often the discourse would veer into the familiar theme and territory, you know, the well-founded idea rooted in the Quran and practised by our Prophet. But with this crowd, it's all talk and no walk. Nobody took the plunge, if you know what I mean. 

And my great teacher Hj Tahib. I can still recall him wandering around looking for students and roping me in probably because I looked lost and uneducated. We were late and slow learners but he encouraged us all the way with an aircond classroom at his house, complete with coffee, kuih and all the kind words after each session. In my book people like this will go straight to heaven. We lasted two years, which is a long time in this industry.

And, before I forget, Hj Salleh, my morning-walk partner. He's from Tawau, but what a guy. He travelled widely and even visited Tel Aviv but still speaks with touches of Tawau tongue. We hit it off  the day we first met more than 10 years ago. I like his way of seeing the lighter side of things,  even the nasty ones. He once tried to correct his wife's Quran reading, and his wife snapped "Awak bukan Ustaz". I tried my best to mitigate the impact by suggesting that all wives are like that, I mean, no wife would believe that her  husband is an ustaz. He seemed happy enough with that.

On a typical morning, we'd walk the same route and talk on the subject of urology for two hours and 10 km. We'd meet again the next typical morning and repeat the route and subject. Our combined age is about 140 years. Let me know if you're inspired.    

So long, boys. Good luck and just go for it. Don't forget Wajibul Ghunnah, mandatory dengung dua harakat, no more, no less.