Therapy?

Problem: I crave duck rice.

Solutions:

In KL:

-Dress up (don’t want to look like a slob in the capital).

-Get out of the house before 1030am so there won’t be overcrowding in the LRT. BUT cannot take the LRT before 9am because of the morning (c)rush hour.

-The LRT is crowded anyway. Lots of love from Rapid KL.

-You give up your seat to a nice old lady because the bugger next to you pretended to be asleep.

-Interchange at Masjid Jamek station. In Singapore and Hong Kong, interchanging is a matter of walking towards a parallel lane 10 steps away. In good ol’ KL, it means climbing a flight of stairs, getting out in the hot sun, following the crowd across the street, up an overhead bridge, 500m of walkway, past a flea market, (praying hard before) going past a zebra crossing, buying another ticket, and finally arriving at the "interchange".

-Realise you’ve just got onto the train that goes the opposite direction, trip delayed 10 minutes while you exit the current train and wait for the one that goes the right way. LRT staff mumbling the next stop in another language through the PA did not help.

-Arrive at Hang Tuah station, walk 1km to Sungei Wang, unless you’d like to pay RM1.20 for a 5 second monorail ride that takes 10 minutes of waiting. Includes all the risks of the previous step.

-An hour after leaving your place, you finally arrive. Order and eat. Duck, yay!

-Realise that you took all the trouble to get here, and spend the day shopping instead of heading back home so soon. And all the more you’re dressed up!

-Realise you’re RM100 poorer. (It was on offer! Now I just have to get matching shoes!)

-Mental note: must get back to LRT station before 5pm. Ramadan month, before 4pm. Otherwise a deadly cocktail made of irritated workers’ sweaty armpits and tapau-ed chap fan await you gladly. Or take a taxi and risk daylight robbery, figuratively or literally. Sometimes both.

-Arrive home 7 hours after you first craved duck.

-Curse yourself.

In KL (alternate route):

-Take the car.

-Leave house before 1030am but after 9am, the same rules apply.

-Pay 4 kinds of toll. Lots of love from Samy.

-Realise you don’t really know the roads that well, and stick to the main roads. Jam. Jam jam jam.

-At least you have Mix.fm. They sound so bloody chirpy you want to cekik them.

-Road signs point to the same destination in TWO OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS. Is blue the highway or is green the highway?

-Take the wrong exit. No U-turn in sight for the next 15km. Bye bye fuel.

-No more road signs. Much later you learn that the road signs were stolen by metal thieves.

-Refuel at Caltex. RM50 gone. Ask for directions. The two staff inside argue over who’s right.

-Both gave the wrong directions. You are pissed and hungry. You head home after finally finding a familiar road sign.

-Arrive home. Hungry as hell. Call for pizza.

-30 minutes later, pizza boy is confused by your address. Jalan and Lorong makes a humungous difference you see.

-Another 20 minutes later, pizza boy arrives. He got your order wrong and your wrong pizza is soggy.

-You realise you are too pissed and hungry to care anyway, and slam the door at pizza boy’s face.

-You eat. Yay! Who craved duck in the first place?

-Consider taking public transport next time.

-Curse yourself.

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Back home in Ipoh:

-Take car.

-Drive to Yeong Wai’s 5 minutes away.

-Eat.

-Come home in time for Top Gear.

Lesson of the day: You might have your Chili’s and your TGIF’s, but my eyes will only start to wrinkle 50 years later.

Another lighthearted session brought to you courtesy of today’s fine lunch. In Ipoh of course.

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Epilogue: You crave for duck rice in Batu Pahat.

-Take car.

-Drive around for stalls that sell animals that look like duck.

-"It’s a pet shop? Sorry."

-Found one 5 minutes later! Success!

-Eat. Not all that good, but at least it’s filling.

-Enjoy your diarrhoea the next morning.