KL

A number of things have happened since Sunday night. Namely, I flew down to KL for a nearly-blind-date. I won’t get into the specifics of who introduced us and the months of none-too-exciting correspondence up to the time he started calling himself her highness’s humble servant; but perfectly out of the order of things- as much of my life is- a week ago, he suggested meeting in KL. I think it must have been right splat in the middle of the whole Martine ordeal, and it didn’t take me two seconds to consider. I thought it would have been great to do something I’d never done before. Something exciting, and –for me- had a certain amount of risk.

Of course I had a back-up plan, and I’d called my uncle on Sunday night to tell him I’d be in town. Although I had sever doubts as to whether he knew I was his niece when we hung up. There was a rather odd tirade on being drunk Saturday night and not being able to take me out for drinks anytime soon. I’m still wondering if he’d thought I was one of his ex-girlfriends. Which is something like very many, and then some.

So I found myself on an SQ flight Monday morning, sitting beside a Yank who started talking about the inherent fear in American society and anti-Bush porn (Bush has prettier girls so it’s more sellable); and for some strange reason, I was absolutely confident everything would turn out fine.

I reached the new Hilton about half an hour earlier then he did and it was only then, when I had to fill in my personal details into some form that came along with registering yourself at the reception, that I started to wonder, oh no, what if this was all a really mean joke. It would be such a hassle. Namely, there might have been some service cost I would have had to get someone to cover (pertaining to the room he’d booked) if it got all botched. Probably my uncle, or I could have attempted to get the Yank to switch accommodations from the Le Meridian (which was adjoined to the Hilton). I was so very nice in recommending him the fastest means to the Sentral station anyway. Heh.

But all was fine, and he turned up. The conversation might have been awkward for something like 3 minutes, and it was allright thereafter. He was a little fatter then I’d expected, but it wasn’t a big deal, he was easy to talk to and that was way more important in the scale of things. I didn’t want to spend the next 24 hours feeling god-awfully discomfited, oh, certainly not.

Dinner was a mildly amusing affair, and I can safely swear that the sort of service you get in even one of the better restaurants in KL can be absolutely incredulous.

‘So what’s on the mushroom sandwich?’
‘Normal mushrooms.’
‘Uh, okay. How about the grilled vegetable sandwich? What’s on it?’
‘Normal vegetables.’
‘I Know it’s normal vegetables, probably GM-ed, but what are they?’
Guy thinks for a long while.
‘Grilled vegetables?’

Oh we all know what the ‘normal mushrooms’ are.

Aside from the fact that it had a horrible potential to go very badly wrong, the date itself turned out to be perfectly tame. The whole thing really served to reaffirm my belief in the fact that most people in the world are sane, humane and not out there to play horrid jokes on other people. I mean, even terrorist ostensibly can release their prisoners on nearly purely altruistic terms.

We drank far too much coffee, talked too much and slept too little, so it’s quite a wonder I’m still awake and trying to string a coherent sentence together. I thought it was altogether a very tame event, and it was nice, in a sort of chill out way. I didn’t expect anything to begin with, I’d just wanted something different to do then when I’d agreed, and it was pleasant getting to know a new person. That’s really the most fantastic thing about having nil expectations beyond expecting the date to turn up, that’s for sure. Oh, and that he isn’t a psychotic murderer or prostitution mafia lord.

We had flights at about the same time, and he was most unwilling to switch on his phone because he knew it was going to be filled with messages from his wife. And I thought about how funny it all was. Like how when you’re a kid, you got pesky messages from your parents all the time, and then you got married, you’d start getting them from your wife. Moral of the story: Get married as soon as you decide you don’t want all the freedom in the world. (Responsibility does have it’s own rewards, certainly.)

I’m glad I’m female, I don’t suppose guys do that all the damn time. And at any rate, they mostly never make a big deal out of it when you do have a vague reason for not doing so. And I never make it a point to annoy anyone by not replying promptly if I could have helped it. SMS games are oh-so-lame. Absurdly though, I have received complaints about being perfectly indifferent to whether or not they called or didn’t. And they said women were hard to understand! I’d always thought guys hated clinging and leeching and all that shit. Of course I was never indifferent, it’s nice to get calls and sms-es, but you can forget it if you want me to black-mail for them. Because I know it sure makes you feel powerful, absolutely desirable and the king of the hill, doesn’t it.

xoxox