Listening To The Wind

Ever so often you’d find yourself lost in the wilderness of a concrete jungle, one that you have chosen to live in. Some of you may have wandered off from your small suburban cities where the local provision shop is a stone throw away and the football field is no larger that the corner house’s yard. Now you live a 5-minute drive from the local 7-Eleven and the football field consist of electrons slamming on a 15” phosphorous screen. You walk aimlessly through an unforgiving city like zombies whilst seeking treasures for Lords and Kings you offer no loyalty to. Your noble quest for the Holy Grail is no longer noble nor is the grail holy. You sweat and toil everyday like slaves for pharaohs of a post-industrial age. You become part of a new history of humankind building an empire for a society of walking dead and while you take your seat in the halls of a Valhalla built by Vikings in designer suits, your friends and compadres become a distant memory. Yet others choose to live their lives feeling sorry for themselves spending every extra Ringgit on the 4-digit lucky draw hoping hopelessly for that strike of a lifetime. Beggars on the sidewalk become more common a sight than birds on the wire. The smells of the city fills your lungs until you become immune to it – immune to the smell of carbon monoxide and uncollected garbage. The graffiti on the wall sometimes remind you of crayons but before you get carried away reminiscing the past you turn to greet a vending machine.

And when the silvery sheets of the moon has risen, you paint the town red in a disco or a pub or any other place of relaxation that neither gives you peace of mind nor rest. You dress yourselves with Dolce & Gabana, Calvin Klein, MNG and the sorts with a spiff of Ralph Lauren – Kent & Barbie’s night out. You will feast like Kings of old and drink mead to your heart’s content and discuss pressing matters of the New Kingdom with the sensibility of a drunken monkey. Sometimes you will plot like senators and play a game of chess where the city is your board and your colleagues are the chess pieces. This is the hustle and bustle of everyday life in a metropolis of the Neo-Roman Empire.

You mentally plan your day ahead and realise that you have not had time for yourself or for the people that you would like spending your time with. You find yourself staring at that digital clock on your dashboard, wondering what time it is. You wanna smack that stupid radio deejay that you listen to every morning and evening on your five thousand Ringgit car audio system. Then right there in the middle of rush hour traffic, caught between a crazed driver of a six-wheels public service bus and the impatient zipping of mosquitoes on two wheels, you say to yourself, “I’ve had enough!” And you’d decide that things must change. From tomorrow onwards you are gonna do things different.

Tomorrow morning arrives and before the cock can sing the song of dawn, the alarm clock rings. You drag yourself miserably away from Elizabeth Hurley just as she was about to unbuckle that black lacy bra and before the hour is up, there you are again caught between that lunatic bus driver and the motorcyclist from hell, listening to that same stupid radio deejay.

So what happened?

What happened to change?

What happened to “I’m fed-up! I want things to change!”?

You probably told yourself, “Not yet. Let me make my money first and then I will live happily. I’d settle down, have a couple of kids and I’d teach them the right things. We’d never have to worry about money anymore.” Or maybe you decided to wait for that promotion in June, and if that doesn’t happen there is still December to look forward to. Caught in the middle of rush hour traffic, you console yourself with pleasant thoughts of owning the latest gadgets and designer clothes, and let’s not forget that fancy dinner at La Bodega.

It’s not that easy. No, Lucifer has a price on your head and he ain’t letting you go. He’s gonna squeeze your juices dry before you ever realise that you have sold your soul to an forgiving, self-centred railroad tycoon named Eddie.

Does it ever bother you?

It bothers me. Sometimes it just wears me out.

It was 2002 – the year of the Horse. I was sitting at the coffee area during lunch one afternoon when I overheard a conversation about the Malaysian economy and how it is affecting the company. Here were two typical colleagues who were about to dive into a bitchin’ session about some unsubstantiated hearsay concerning the company’s status and the effectiveness (or lack of) of their immediate bosses. So I eavesdropped on their speculations of the country’s future economics and their two years British educated solution to the company’s apparent mismanagement. It was rather interesting listening to the two of them go on confidently about things they sparsely knew about. They seem to have derived their conclusions from the expert speculation of people who took no real notice of why certain things happen. Like why would a certain person in upper management make an unjust decision to lay off a couple of employees who have been in the company for too long and are as productive as two stray dogs sniffing at each other’s butt. Not that anybody will miss them anyway. Or what about the reduction of company privileges such as free parking or mobile phone allowance.

But there I was sipping on a cup of hot coffee, controlling myself from asking them, “Why is it that you never suggested your evidently sound solution to management and maybe save us from the unavoidable economic onslaught?”

Several days later I received on the company’s email a somewhat important message from upper management to all employees. Management has decided that we needed to make up for the several hundred thousand dollars our clients have slashed from their budget cuts, by saving up on coffee and electricity (duuhh!!). And so there was not a day that went by that we weren’t overworked or over unappreciated for the efforts that were forced onto us for the benefit of a company that we had not a penny’s worth in. Much to my surprise, those two colleagues of mine continued to play a minor part in the company’s battle with economic uncertainty. To this day they’d have their weekly ritual bitchin’ sessions. The company’s mentality have neither deteriorated nor improved since they have not yet made any severely damaging loses and have re-employed their faithful butt sniffing relatives of the wolves. It does make me wonder about what it is that makes my colleagues and my slave-driving employers tick?

I realised that the most of us spend all our time complaining about how rotten things are. We wonder, “Why don’t somebody just realise that if they’d use that God forsaken gift called a brain, we could just find a solution to all our woes.” If you were at all listening to what I have been saying, then you’d probably have realised that each of us are waiting for someone else to do the job. It’s like listening to the wind - you stick your head out of your window on a windy day but you are not sure what you are listen for. If you see the problem and choose to wait until someone else sees the problem (who’s probably going to do the same as you are) then what’s the point in bitchin’ about the whole affair. We cannot expect different results by doing the same thing all over again and again. So one day while I was sitting at the coffee area in my office, sipping on a cup of hot coffee – I asked myself, “Who else is gonna change my life?”

Guess what the answer was?

First published on Friendster in September 2005.
Written on the 8th of January 2002