Profiling YBLalat
by YBLalat

Let us take a break from all this crazily-themed writings and entries written in parts of three, eh?

Currently, I am helping someone on her profile essay for her class assignment. She chose me as the subject for her profile essay for undisclosed reasons. I think it’s pretty obvious what the probablity of getting an A is when you decide to write on some weird freak asshole, compared to writing on the life of an average Labu. The following is my email to her on my granddads’ and parents’ influence on my personality.

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howdy there,

i think that more of the below details would assist you in the profile you are doing.

[YBLalat]

p/s: if you have questions, email me, or msg me if i am online, or phone me up if it's desperate (near due date).
p/s/s: other than asking/interviewing me, why not ask others who have known me quite well, or over a long period of time. people like mamat (high school comrade), or my roommates, or any other malay students here at the U who was in PPP ITM with me, or my petronas peers? they could provide you with the changes (or none) that they see in me before and after arriving here at the States.

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[my mom's side of the story]
tok mat (my mom's dad) got married to my grandma (name: nenek kamsiah) when he was 14, and she 12, and between them, they have 16 kids (7 boys and 9 girls). my mom is the third child and the 2nd girl in the family. Tok mat and nenek kamsiah's marriage was an arranged one, and it was part of a debt-paying agreement between the two families. tok mat's family was in great debt (i think it had to do with a purchase of a piece of farm land) to nenek kamsiah's family, and since both families were relatively very poor by that time's standard (around 1920s); so, they decided to end it off with marrying tok mat to nenek kamsiah.

nenek kamsiah was chosen to be married simply because she had a younger sister who was going to get married soon, and not wanting it to become a "melangkah bendul" humiliation thingy (i.e. younger sister marrying first than older sister), she reluctantly agreed to the marriage-debt deal. tok mat was forced to the marriage because of his family's debt to nenek kamsiah's family, which explains why in the few early years of their marriage, he treated nenek kamsiah so badly (as told by my mom).

he was basically a wife-beater and all, and i think that if this girl-hating thing is something of a gene thing, maybe i could have gotten it from him (although throughout those childhood years that i spent in his house, i never saw him behaving badly to my grandma, other than the usual 'gaduh rumahtangga' stuff.)

[my dad's side of the story]
haji salleh (my dad's dad) was married three times, not in the polygamy fashion, but each separately. all in all, he has 14 children from all the three wives.

wife #1
my dad came from haji salleh's first wife, whom he married when both of them were 18, and whom i forgot what her name is, and from that first wife, haji salleh got only 2 boys (my dad being the 2nd child). my dad's mom died due to a 'santau' (i.e. an old malay witchcraft voodoo thing) done by the jealous family of another girl who haji salleh was enganged to when he was younger (believe me - this is no bullshit). they -the jealous girl and haji salleh- was enganged to be married but then he called the whole thing off when he knew that the girl's family was an avid fan of Satan (i.e. does sihir and santau), and then he immediately married my dad's mom (who was his distant cousin).

oh yes, forgot one important point: haji salleh was a successful young business man then; so, girls (and their families) at the time went ga-ga-crazy over him (and his money). he had acres of farm land and paddy field and cocoa plantations.

when haji salleh was away in mekah doing his hajj (another proof of how rich, and at a young age, haji salleh was), my dad's mom was suffering from the sent santau and soon later, she died. once he came back from mekah, he was shocked to know of the death of his first wife, so he decided to move to a place far away from his then hometown of sungai air tawar, selangor, to the pekan of sekinchan, selangor - where his paddy fields and main business operation were. there, he met his second wife, jamaliah, and the future third wife, jaimah (pronounced: ja-e-mah).

wife #2
jamaliah was a widow, with 2 girls from her previous marriage, her late husband (who was her first lover) died from a tragic farming accident (got horn-stabbed by a paddy-field bull). haji salleh did not marry jamaliah immediately after the death of his first wife. my dad told me that the long courtship between the two was more than 3 years, but neither of them was eager to be married once more. but then people started talking badly about them; so, they decided to tie the knot anyway. from this marriage, haji salleh got 4 children, all girls. they were relativelay happy together, although both were still haunted by the deaths of their late spouse.

wife #3
jaimah came into the picture only after the marriage of haji salleh and jamaliah was in its 5th year. jamaliah was a very fashionable anak dara pekan at the time, years younger than haji salleh or jamaliah. she was, compared to the other two wives, very beautiful and very modern (i.e. fashion-conscious, trendy, popular among the local jejaka kampung) - i.e. one hot chick. my dad said to me that jaimah had literally "...mengorat atuk kau dari nenek jamaliah sampai diaorang bercerai". i have no idea how she managed that, but haji salleh later divorced jamaliah and instantly married jaimah. i guess haji salleh had the same 'weak knees' problem that i have, when in the presence of a younger, more beautiful girl. fearing the wrath of jamaliah in sekinchan, jaimah convinced haji salleh to return back to his sungai air tawar home once more, and to this day, they are still there. from his marriage to jaimah, haji salleh has 6 children, 4 girls and 2 boys.

[effects upon my mom and dad]
mom: mom's humorous/sarcastic personality was derived to counter the hardship of growing up in a very poor and chaotic household. tok mat was always beating nenek kamsiah, and they were poor and my mom has always felt that she is responsible to cheer nenek kamsiah and ease up her burden. the hardship of the family drove her to work and study hard for her future and for the bettering of her siblings, and immediately after high school and her exam, she applied to get into maktab perguruan klang and towards becoming a teacher. at the time, the need for english and math teachers was high, and since she was the best in her class in those two subjects, she got in easy. she didn't apply to get into a U at the time because of her financial shortcoming and also her personal desire to always be close to her siblings and to help nenek kamsiah to manage the household. from her, i got my weird sense of humor, imagination and creativity - all were her own childish escapism from her family past.

dad: dad is a very shy and quiet person, not because he was born with such personality, but more in response towards the absence of a mother figure all his life. his real mother died when he was 3 and his only and older brother was 4. "when in front of a mak tiri, you don't express your true emotions, your dissatisfactions, or your problems - you just stay silent and obey orders. even if you voice them out, she won't give a damn, she doesn't care about you - you are not his son", he once told me. although nenek jamaliah was good to him and his older brother and treated them like her own children, my dad felt awkward and uncomfortable with it. nenek jamaliah's daughters didn't like my dad and his brother that much, maybe not willing to share their mom with some other boys. from this silent exclusion and awkward love from someone else's mother, my dad applied into an orphans' hostel and went to a teknik school in a nearvy town 30 miles away from sekinchan, and his older brother joined the army and left for a perak military camp. when haji salleh divorced nenek jamaliah and got married to nenek jaimah, my dad was already on his way to UM Bangi (actually was doing his Form 6 studies). all of his effort to get to UM and to further his study was from his own sweat alone. haji salleh was a rich man, sure, but he also had dozens of his other kids and family members of his ex-wives and his own family to take care off; so, not much financial or emotional support was channeled to my dad's future. from my dad, i got my bad habits of being so reserved and quiet and keeping my thoughts and opinions all to myself, and also his strong will and determination, and my berdiri-di-atas-kaki-sendiri and i-am-okay-being-far-away-from-family-for-a-long-period-of-time.

[effects from my granddads upon me]
tok mat: he doesn't smile. period. he is very abusive and hostile towards the opposite sex. that was why i jokingly told you during our long walk that if i were to get married, i would probably be a wife-beater like him - not that i like being one, it's just a probable thing. he never uses the word 'perempuan' or 'wanita' to address the opposite sex, he refer to them as either 'betina', or 'jalang'. always serious, and likes to critic other people and current issues, and disliking change (he used to still watch black and white tv, although color tv was already in popular use at the time, arguing that the vibrant colors from the color tv screen would "...rosakkan anak mata kau"), i got from tok mat a whole basket of negative things. compared to haji salleh, tok mat is by far the more conservative of the old generation.

haji salleh: he is a very calculated and detailed person, since he was so good with numbers and doing business. he is also a very religious man (now he is the kampung part-time imam masjid) and very strict when it comes to teaching religion to his grandkids: praying, fasting, doing tarawikh, etc..when he heard that i was to go to the US to do my degree, he strongly objected. "Amerika tu negara Yahudi, negara bapak Syaitan, apa anak kau nak buat kat situ? Nak jadi kafir? Jangan!", he scolded at my dad. i didn't spend a lot of time when i was a kid at haji salleh's place, only annually for hari raya celebration, for several reasons (i) my dad is not close to nenek jaimah and her children, and nenek jamaliah's children (ii) there is just too many mosquitoes at his place (very swampy area) (iii) he would force me to do solat subuh berjemaah at the nearby surau (hey, i was just a small brat then).