I clear the last customer’s file and place it back on the second row. This customer is perhaps a potential victim of the financial crisis. Placing the files on the second row is a mark that I am forecasting that these companies would suffer from the same fate as the American companies. Oh ! I better tell you that these companies will not have the fund from the local central government. Malaysia now is suffering a lot of troubles. The local government cannot act as a superman, rushing in to aid the needed.
May is the first one to push open the office door still with her giggling trailing behind her. This young lady is the female who does not have worries written in her life. Even when tears are dangling on her eyes, she still can laugh the sorrows away. Many a time, I envy her very much. At a certain time, even complain to my mother, why she did not give me some DNA of May.
‘Hey, are you on diet again ?’ Rahman casts a glance on me.
‘ Well, I don’t feel like to have lunch.’ I close my eyes, trying to the components in the sleeping pill.
‘Aha, is he bothering you again ?’ Rahman comes to me as if to inspect the traces of the yelling last night.
I push him away.’ Let me have a nap.
‘OK OK.’ The perfume on his body wakes me . But I have to pretend that my nose is having some problem. Otherwise, he will explain to me the why he uses the perfume. What brand it is and where he has aquired it. This is not enough, he might most probably show it to me, at time, searching fanatically from the many bottles in his bag.
The office door is pushed open again. I know my nap is being robbed off. There is another 20 minutes before my afternoon break is over. I do not mind to start my round of phone calling to my customers. I am in the credit department. This is the department most people do not like to be in. I act like Ah Long, putting my best smile, telling my customers that the credit term is over. It will be good to issue a cheque at the fastest speed as possible to get away from the compounding of the interest.
The sun is strong outside the office. I do not know where to go. Lunch time. All the eatery places are full of people. What I dislike the most is the dust that floats in the afternoon air.
‘Aiyo, where you go ?’ the Mamak stall helper, Naidu calls out me while his hands are emptying the rubbish.
‘Don’t know-lah.’
Naidu, one of the national from India, is always dreaming to be a writer. But he did not go to school. He self-taught himself some basic Tamil writing. He could read simple paragraph. When he came to Malaysia, he decided to learn English. His English is like the Malaysian English, oh, they say Manglish–Malaysian English. Though it is not as famous as Singlish, it is still eating out the hearts of the English language teachers in the schools.
‘Come and have teh tarik-lah.’ He invited me.
‘Oh, no-lah. I had it already.’ I know my English language teacher, Mrs. Lingam, in the high school would give me a big F when I speak this type of English. She might even punish me to write 50 lines of the correct English.
‘Oh, like that-kah, then you come tonight, I have something to tell you.’ This thin young man seems to have endless stories to tell me. He told me one yesterday. But the story of his from the day before was nothing different from yesterday. It may be that the Indonesian lady, his co-worker in the mamak stall was telling him he is a good man. He will get a good wife.
Good wife. Yes, I did not hear it wrongly.
