The Island.... part 2

A ship with no heading.

.... Possum and his words and me with my reaction. The whole misty indulgence of pointless ideas suddenly stopped and zoomed into the Island. We were mad with one fixation, the island, we were to venture on something we will remember and the Island was the answer. Another round of Dunhills, and we were off to our supposedly primary objectives in life, Possum to his cockcroach, and me to Uni and whatever relationship which was left to savour with Kang Kang.

Evening soon came and the other members of the pact made our communion in Dauds. There was Ular, Marry & Manipal, of course the usual masterminds of all mischief Possum and Me.
We made ourselves comfortable, exchanged customary greetings and gossip with Daud, finally the plans were laid out on the table for our sinister perusal. The response was of course a smirk and one long pull on the ciggie. Possum and I, did not let up on drilling the idea to the three dungus. The idea was to build a raft out of 4 x 200 ltr oil drums, bind them together with bamboo or planks, binding was with indian rope. "But the three of us can't swim for nuts!!" murmured Possum, Mary and Ular... no worries, we would prepare those gallon canister(which we so often our saviour during the great Malacca water crisis 1991) as floats, furthermore the salt water would keep you from sinking. * we and our ideas... tsk tsk tsk* The proposal was mat with a 50/50 agreement. There was a flame, but I sensed it would die unless someone found fuel, fuel in this sense was the daunting task of gathering all material, choosing a proper "workshop", a scantily sketched general plan and a little bit of money.

To get these fools to come to a 50/50 agreement was an achievement in itself, for our plans thus far has always been without any forethought. It was not to be planks but bamboo, and the source was nearby the mangroove juggles of Ujong Pasir, the owner of the plant was some housewife who was clad in her batik sarong, and mind boggling juggling t shirt (start thinking) who figured 50 cents was enough for one "stalk", and based on our miserable ways with maths, 4 was just about right. The indian rope, was of course from the narow back alleys of Bunga Raya, here was the mother of all shopping areas in Malacca. From clothing, cars and cunts, this was actually the one stop shopping destination for most who were well versed on matters of cost. Ropes cost us 15 ringgit, but a sad face and an act with an empty pocket goes a long way, at the end of our pathetic pleas the rope was ours for 10. Now for the more herculean task, those 200 ltr drums. Where la?

As much dreaming as we did, we always had a sharp eye for the useless but useful objects. Back to the island, with a large percentage of materials procured, Possum and I had noticed some drums lying nearing the contractor's container. We figured we could talk away with this, instead of choosing to do things the easier way out, steal ; ruffians but with refined virtues. We saw some lost workers loitering by the site, and we made our inquiry. They guided us to their boss, some mid 30's fellow who was baffled with our presence. Another show was in the making, and we masqueraded as scouts from the nearby school, and we needed to fabricate some barbeque pits and create a huge bond fire for some camp fire. * on a slightly differrent note, this is probably one of the better things of Malaysia, giving with a heart is embedded unlike our southern relatives, whereby giving comes with a price.* Anyway, we were so good that he bought our idea, and offered us 4 drums for free (used of cource, which meant there had oil coating the other layer of the drum).... you actually could see the Nissan squirm in disgust!!
Pic left : trusty Nissan
The collection of all bulky materials were to be place near our launch site, which was the deserted construction site ....Padang Temu mangroove jungles. We all knew well the occupants of the area, addicts, illegal immigrant, thief and all the lovely snakes and mozzies. But with youth comes arrogance, we felt invinsible, untouchable due to simple fact that we never had the privilege of meeting these problems.

"Strange that we defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights" K.Gibran