[The Midwest Adventure]
by YBLalat

I never thought that I would end up actually meeting somebody who reads my online journal as faithful to it as reading the newspaper. Mamat introduced me to a fellow friend of his, who claimed that my journal is - to quote him verbatim - ‘a more interesting reading than [online] Utusan’. Funny. I never considered Utusan as an interesting reading. His name was Zaheed if I remember it correctly, although I did not bother to check the right spelling from him. In the Midwest Games, he was one of his U’s soccer team forwards. From that incident, several issues surfaced, relating to the reaction of that soccer-playing reader and the consequences of him knowing me, and sometime along the trip back to Minneapolis, I had the chance to delve into them, thoroughly and one by one.

When I first started doing this online journal page, I wanted it to be a secret’s secret. Of course, it is a personal journal. I did not feel intruded when I noticed that some people that I know of (and that they know me) read this page regularly, as long as they keep the knowledge of this page’s existence and its contents solely to themselves and not a word out. I believe in the freedom of expression, and being in the States nurtured that belief further, and a material worthy of quality and praise is always the most original and truthful. If you have been following this journal’s posts since day one (the previous server deleted my archives, damn!), you would notice that I did not hold back any of my thoughts, no matter how hideous it is, no matter how vile. I write as I think; I do not plan prior and I am not afraid that what I write might hurt somebody else’s feelings.

That was what I actually wrote to blueicecube when I emailed her a long time ago, expressing my deepest concerns about the breach of privacy and range of self-expression issues, relating to the pages of her and mine. I asked her the number of people, whom she realizes, that actually visits my page faithfully, either via the link on her page or the travel of word from mouth to mouth and probably, how many of them that I know of. She did not give me an actual integer, but that she too had had the same problem (and still) and was aware of the worrying matter and even shared her sense of empathy with me. Although it was not necessary, she even informed me that she received two emails (from two separate female readers) concerning my newborn journal, saying that they love it. Ok, maybe not love it, but like it, a lot. I think they actually liked that one particular piece of Malay poetry that I penned down while I was waiting for dinner to be served. The one about an unexpected Post-It love note on my desk when I arrived back from class. It hooked a lot of female readers to my page, I guess, giving them this misleading impression that I am a romantic fool. Hah!

[Given this opportunity of space, I would like to officially express my sense of gratitude towards the writer of Confusing Stage, for the initial inspiration behind the making of this page of mine. I stumbled upon her journal when I was browsing through the IE History folder, looking for the Princess Charlotte Casiraghi URL. One of my roommates is an avid (but secret) reader of her page.]

I did not utter a single word to the soccer-playing reader whom I was introduced to, all along the duration of the Games. It was not like I despised his guts or anything, in fact I should feel flattered that he confessed his admiration to this page, but I felt very uncomfortable knowing my readers and them knowing me. It was against the whole idea of this journal. I felt strangely suffocated by attention and weakened by appreciation. Acknowledging the existence of this personal journal in an open and public event, to unaware acquaintances and familiar strangers is an act of privacy-suicide. I am sorry, but I had to keep my mouth shut the whole time. All of that was for the sake of months-to-come of writing good journal posts and sincerely, I feel responsible for the interest of the readers, each time they stop by at this page.

The finale of the Midwest Games was a grand dinner event at the Radisson Hotel, called the Ambassador’s Award Night or something similar to that. Everybody that attended the buffet-style dinner was dressed formally for it (except for Mamat, he was wearing his white sleeping tracksuit and the notorious ‘Engineering UMKL’ jacket, garnished to a last touch of a pair of brown sandals); the girls in luxurious dresses and excessive make-up while the boys in corporate attire with ties and belts and striking sport shoes. Only halfway through the night that we started eating something (appetizer salad and square buns) and before that, every officials from the MSD or the Embassy wanted a piece of attention, giving I-am-grateful-to-the-host speeches that no one hardly listens to. Other participants were busy making themselves look handsome and macho and sexy and gorgeous, snapping ‘coupled’ snapshots with sexually-suggestive poses and quasi-attractive smiles. Only a few stay put, sitting on their respective seats and paying attention to the speech-giving bald officer’s mumbled words, while the majority of others were whoring from table to table, saying a hypocritical “Aren’t you getting handsome?” or “You look beautiful tonight” while actually displaying their six-pack abs or accentuated bosoms to the sight of obvious muhrims.

The food was outright horrible, not that I am an ungrateful bastard, but it was true. The only thing that I enjoyed chewing was the salad. There were fried rice (which tasted more like greased paddy), fried noodles (which reminded me of Fathi’s Rastafarian hairdo each time it went down my throat), an unfamiliar chicken-and-fish delight cooked in thick but salty gravy and sauté-mixed vegetables which barely resembled the one that I know of. Other than that, the desserts (various kinds of cake and pie) were too sweet for my sensitive teeth and thus; to assist me cleansing the unpleasant taste of the main course down my throat, I drank more than five tall glasses and broad cups of black coffee and sugarless iced tea. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, the same night of the Radisson event, going to the toilet several times to take a leak that seemed like it would dry up my body’s liquid by dawn.

The host scheduled a number of stage performances during the dinner and in between the prize-giving ceremony and in between the two of that, there was this chic DJ spinning familiar Malay and Chinese songs using a not-so-appropriate dance club’s sound system. It worked, but not well enough, considering that the hall the dinner took place was actually at the bottom floor of the hotel. You could see the ventilation and plumbing pipes crisscrossing the ceiling and hanged buckets used to hold leaks from the sewage pipes. My table was obstructed by this huge foundation pillar that holds the base of the building from collapsing and I thought, “Hey, this is a blessing in disguise”, because I could not see the poorly-lit stage or the terrible performances on it from my seat. However, it was one of the nearest seats to the buffet table, although the food was not that great.

(to be continued)