All I wanted was a glass of teh tarik.
The stall under the ketapang tree on the sidewalk at Medan Tuanku was nice and shady in the late afternoon sun, and looked clean and tidy too. There were three other customers who obviously had been there for quite a bit judging by the several empty glasses and plates.
Having ordered my teh tarik, I settled down to wait. The three gentlemen were in earnest discussion over something, with their hands freely and actively helping to drive home their points. And they were seated just two tables away, close enough for me to hear everything they were saying even without trying, given the high excitement. “This is going to be really interesting” I thought to myself – embarrassingly nosy, I know!
As I had strongly suspected they were talking politics – centered heavily, it would seem on the likely outcome of the forthcoming elections. I was starting to get really plugged-in into the discussion, which at that point was about the sins of the ruling party, and why they should be given their performance evaluation through the ballots this time around.
To my disappointment, it was at that point that they had to break up – perhaps, come to think of it, I might just have caught the final summing up of their total discussion. As they were getting up to go, I heard the smallest of the three asking the fat one, who was doing most of the performance analysis, that since he had identified so many major sins of the ruling party how he was going to vote. The fat one laughed out loud, adding “Itu hang tak boleh tanya – hang sendiri kena pikiak habis-habis apa yang betui, apa yang tak betui – apa kita kena buat. Hang tak boleh Tanya aku sapa aku nak pangkah!”
I wished I had arrived much earlier – it sounded like a really lively discussion, with some really interesting perspectives of this coming week-end elections. Made me wonder if we might actually be in for some really big surprises.
And all I wanted was a glass of teh tarik!
The stall under the ketapang tree on the sidewalk at Medan Tuanku was nice and shady in the late afternoon sun, and looked clean and tidy too. There were three other customers who obviously had been there for quite a bit judging by the several empty glasses and plates.
Having ordered my teh tarik, I settled down to wait. The three gentlemen were in earnest discussion over something, with their hands freely and actively helping to drive home their points. And they were seated just two tables away, close enough for me to hear everything they were saying even without trying, given the high excitement. “This is going to be really interesting” I thought to myself – embarrassingly nosy, I know!
As I had strongly suspected they were talking politics – centered heavily, it would seem on the likely outcome of the forthcoming elections. I was starting to get really plugged-in into the discussion, which at that point was about the sins of the ruling party, and why they should be given their performance evaluation through the ballots this time around.
To my disappointment, it was at that point that they had to break up – perhaps, come to think of it, I might just have caught the final summing up of their total discussion. As they were getting up to go, I heard the smallest of the three asking the fat one, who was doing most of the performance analysis, that since he had identified so many major sins of the ruling party how he was going to vote. The fat one laughed out loud, adding “Itu hang tak boleh tanya – hang sendiri kena pikiak habis-habis apa yang betui, apa yang tak betui – apa kita kena buat. Hang tak boleh Tanya aku sapa aku nak pangkah!”
I wished I had arrived much earlier – it sounded like a really lively discussion, with some really interesting perspectives of this coming week-end elections. Made me wonder if we might actually be in for some really big surprises.
And all I wanted was a glass of teh tarik!
3 comments:
guess the anxiety is over... The rakyat has made their choice....
Yup - let's see what happens after this. It can get better, if the right course is aopted and if the lessons are well learnt - or it can just continue to slide further in which case the country can end up in some really difficult and complicated scenario...
Theorectically, there will be a better "check & balance" system...
Don't know why, a few websites such as malaysiakini, malaysia-today, & lim kit siang's blog are suspended... can't get some updates from the "non-official" channels...
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