Going, going…

I have just realized that I have exactly one week, more or less, left to spend on this little island I’ve called home for the last seven years or so. And my week promises to be a very busy one: I’ve clothes to buy (Jack tells me that Survey has lots of cheap clothing there), toiletries to buy, ATM cards to apply for (the campus has ATM machines), dental appointments to attend, a car workshop to snore through, one last church service to go through…I don’t often quote, but right now C. S. Lewis’ opinion that ‘there is a “rumness” [strangeness], a ghostliness, about even a Windsor chair when it says, “You will not see me again”’ is quite applicable to me. (He wrote it about the time when he was leaving his boarding school; he strongly disliked it.)

Wolf just got back from Singapore, if I’m right. At any rate I first saw him online yesterday afternoon, and within five minutes he was accusing me of wealth, which I denied quite decidedly. He’s rich, if you like; he’s gone to Singapore and back (I haven’t) and is probably going to some posh school on a scholarship. If I’m right it’s from some oil company or other.

The thought just came to me: what if I really do get the room-mate from hell? Of course, ‘room-mate from hell’ has a different definition for me, as opposed to yours. My room-mate from hell would be some huge, muscular and good-looking (one thing I can’t stand is someone who is handsome, knows he’s handsome, and keeps asking everybody to tell him he’s handsome.) moron with an addiction to sports of all kinds and strong-smelling perfumes (the Pig used cologne—in school!—until I tried to cure him of that), possessing an endless string of arm decorations and rubbing it in everyone’s face, rich beyond measure and stingy beyond comparison, lazier than a gweilo on summer vacation but finds some way to make everybody around him do his work for him, someone with a love for rap or heavy metal and persists in singing those tunes at the top of his voice, off-key with a huge guitar and amplifiers, along with twenty other friends or hangers-on with their own instruments.

Not at all likely that I’ll get that particular nightmare to come true, is it? I thought so until I looked through the school yearbook. (They spelled my name right in the class picture: a miracle!) Everybody in my form (not to mention other forms) looks like they ate nothing but steroids since they were one day old except me and one or two other abnormalities. It’s positively worrying.

And then of course, there’s the stress of adapting to new environments. I know I’ve said that I lived in KL for eleven years; what I didn’t say is that I led a very sheltered life! I hardly know my way around on a bus; I couldn’t navigate my way through the traffic to save my life; and I don’t even know where I’m going to get my food! (What, do you really expect me to live on cafeteria food for one-and-a-half years?)

At least I won’t have to look for a cheap hairdresser for about two months or so; I got one this morning. At least, I got something that looks reasonably like a haircut but has made me look like one of those Chinese mushrooms with the really big black umbrella. I don’t know why. All I told the woman was: ‘Cut it thinner, please.’ (I have been afflicted since birth with unusually thick hair resembling electrical wire; if I ever let it grow naturally I’d end up with an all-natural Afro do, complete with tangles and curls.) I suppose she heard: ‘Make me look like I got hit by a 20-kilotonne warhead, please.’ (So sue me. My Chinese has gotten very, very rusty.) So she did. I was about to protest when the warhead hit me and I lapsed into stunned unconsciousness.

Sorry, I’m just kidding. She didn’t really hit me with a 20-kilotonne warhead, but I do look like one just hit; the sides of my head are very nearly bare except for one or two nanometers of hair that the trimmer couldn’t get, and the top of my head got tortured into a center parting. My mother says I look like a Penan, whatever that is.

Fortunately, hair grows. In two or three months’ time, I’ll look as bushy as ever, and by then my naturally-produced wire will be the trouble of another hairdresser. (I think I just heard the scissors and trimmer breathe a sigh of relief.) Of course, whether I’ll find one who only charges eight bucks per cut is another matter.