Maksiat

If, at all, the moon is at its brightest and its fullest yesterday, it would just explain our complete lunacy on a Wesak Eve.

I was forced to attend some temple proceeding at 8pm plus with my family which include praying (like hey, nothing beats praying because you’re forced to and everyone else is doing it) and mindlessly chanting in an ancient Puja language, and listening to an enlightening Wesak Eve talk from Uncle Vijaya, who was apparently a lecturer at Taylor’s.

It was enlightening (if you don’t know that I’m being sarcastic, well, you know now) because I was reminded yet again that we mortals are suffering because we are born. So to stop suffering, end the endless cycle of rebirth by attaining Nirvana. Like, hey, sure. We may have materialistic attachments as happiness, but I kinda prefer it that way. All the endless cycle of troubles and challenges we have to go through - it either strengthens us or destroys us.

I personally don’t believe in the idea of rebirth. I personally don’t believe in any faiths in the world.

But when the same dude talked about Buddhism being the only peaceful religion that doesn’t have extremists and terrorists within its midst (a Buddhist terrorist? rofl), I think everyone else who takes their religion to the extreme should be a Buddhist. Ya, I’m probably biased because I was a Buddhist prior to my aiyo-ma-kattavale-why-so-confusing-wan exit from all religions. Although I’ve also accepted Jesus Christ into my life like three or four times by now.

I think I should stop before I tread on anyone’s toes.

So after finally ending the whole hullabaloo of Wesak Eve (there was still more to come, but my family cleverly chose not to participate further), I phoned Suet who told me ‘they’ were all at Jess’ house. So I went.

To my surprise I saw Esther, Shawn, Jess, Suet and Sarah sitting on the floor of the walkway with a deck of cards, laughing and speaking in BM. Apa benda nih? It turned out that they were playing some game I know not the name of, and basically whoever has the J card could impose a ruling which everyone has to follow, and if you do not, a penalty is imposed. (Esther was the one who imposed the ‘speak in BM only’ ruling.)

Malas lah wanna divulge more info on this game, where every penalty requires you to drink a gulp of plain water, and drinking enough could make you want to puke (like Esther).

So finally, three other new rules since I came were finally set down:

i) Use a Mandarin phrase/word at the beginning of each sentence we make (Sarah’s ruling)
ii) Use ‘aku’ instead of ‘saya’, use ‘kamu’ instead of ‘awak’ (Suet’s ruling)
iii) Stand up each time we need to talk. (Jess’ ruling, on Shawn’s suggestion.)

It was bloody funny, if you can imagine the situation with all the above rules we had to adhere to.

Shawn: Zhou zhie lun, apasal dia tak minum air?
Esther: Ni hao ma, aku sukalah. (Ni hao ma was one of the very few Chinese phrases she knew, haha.)
Sarah: Ni ben tan, blablablabla.

We had to disperse when a guard came to us and asked if we could play/chit-chat in the house instead, because got someone so free nothing to do complained to the guard personally that there are suspicious characters hanging around in the walkway. Never mind yet, Jess jokingly said something about we don’t look like robbers, then the guard said something about us doing maksiat, according to the complainant’s suspicions.

Waliao, wtf leh. Drinking plain water/playing a card game also can considered maksiat. If you roll over your mouse over the maksiat word, that’s what my lousy dictionary’s definitions are. But you commonly see the word maksiat being used especially in the newspapers when you are having an illegal sexual affair, prostitution, etc.

Like, maksiat is something like this:

COURT 10: Empat orang gadis muda dan two orang lelaki remaja telah ditahan oleh pengawal Court 10 kerana disyaki melakukan aktiviti maksiat. Mereka didapati berkeliaran di beranda tempat tinggal rakan mereka Jessica, dan saksi yang tinggal berhampiran berkata bahawa beliau ternampak dua orang lelaki terbabit mendekati keempat-empat gadis tersebut sambil melakukan perbuatan yang tidak diingini.

Menurut saksi tersebut, dia berasa hairan ketika menjamu mata dengan kehadiran gadis-gadis tersebut, apabila mereka mula merokok sambil berjudi di depan tempat tinggal mereka di sini. Saksi tersebut juga menegaskan bahawa dia hanya melakukan kewajipannya sebagai seorang penghuni yang keji serta kolot, dan adalah dikatakan bahawa hobinya adalah meninjau perbuatan orang muda di luar tingkapnya.

I figure that the word ‘stupid’ won’t completely describe the complainant, so I’ll leave it at that.

We went off by Shawn’s car to Shawn’s house, then.. well, chit-chatted a lot. Mostly about problems the girls were encountering, and Heng who arrived shortly after was supposed to be the counsellor.

Shawn and his new chef uniform.

Us occupying Shawn’s living room.

Suet camwhoring.

Jess making a face to the camera.

At one point, we started talking about ghost stories, etc, then both Esther and Jess started to freak out and Esther jumped onto the sofa near Suet and Sarah.

Pamela, Shawn’s sister came back, then went out to mamak and came back again, bringing in tons of delicious food and drinks, like the murtabak, garlic naan.. manyak sedap wor. It was terribly, awfully generous of her. We being the hungry youths lapped them up.

We fetched back Sarah with Shawn’s car (a ride-out, Shawn called it) at about 1am, all 5 people squeezed into the back seat. Finishing that, we went back again to Shawn’s house and chit-chatted outside the house as Pamela was sleeping on the living room’s sofa.

When Mickey the dog began barking boisterously and started to get too naughty even when he was let out of the cage, we had to get inside Shawn’s kitchen to do out chit-chatting instead.

We played choy dai di for a while, all the while looking bored.

Then we decided to camwhore - compare these two pictures and notice the resemblance that we purposely did.

Haha.. the girls and the guys, mirroring each other.

The girls posing with the odd-looking fruit which I’ve no idea what it is.

More posing with totally random objects.

The guys posing with random objects.. looking nonchalant, haha.

The girls (and Shawn) looking very excited about this new job prospect.

We talked and talked.. actually, well, the girls did most of the talking. When they got around to talking about the future, their eyes, especially Esther’s, was especially shining with enthusiasm describing about the weddings that they want, the gowns they want to wear, bridesmaids… etc. So far into the future. >.>

The video (at 3.45am) above shows part of their conversation about the wedding.

Conversation also got around from nightmares, to weddings, to funerals. We were all particularly quiet when we got around to this topic (we could only hear Esther’s voice most of the time, haha), because, deaths are very real and most of the time, in the midst of whatever we’re doing, we’re oblivious to it. Funny how I listened to a Wesak Eve talk just hours ago.

Shawn’s dad came down at close to 5am and was understandably shocked at how we were all still awake and chatting away. lol. We went back at 5am plus.

It’s something unplanned, unexpected, it’s probably something we’d do so impulsively once in a few months. Jess and Heng are going for Form 6 next Monday onwards, the rest are already in college, Esther’s working, and I’m probably the only one in the group still bumming around at home.

We talked about our childhood (what sort of punishments we’d get from our parents, etc), our past, present and the future, and it’d be funny to look at this entry again 10 years into the future and see if our guesses were correct. Like to the question who among us would marry first, names like Sarah, Geok Leng and Suet were thrown around. And as to who’d be the good father who would bother to take care of the kids, we collectively agreed on Andy.

You people better invite me to your wedding. ;P This would be our Time Capsule, in a way.