Some Hallucinations

I don't think I made a very good journalist. I mean, journos are these hard bitten newshounds, you throw them into any situation and there they are, cool as lemonade that's been in the fridge for a month, notebooks out, pens poised, hair unturned.

Try throwing me out of my context and I flail around, gaping awkwardly, looking for someone to come save me. Huh! Like real oni. No one ever did, of course.

Case in point: I used to cover power, you know, as in electricity and the fuel that goes into creating it? Well, I had just met Dr Amory Lovins, was terribly impressed and decided to adopt energy efficiency as my cause. Yes. I was fighting the good fight. Anyway, I did a series of stories on it, for my dinky little newspaper, and then a friend from the mainstream one said she would like to do one too. I gave her some phone numbers, she made a few calls and voila, her story was out in a few days, to a much wider audience (but who cares, I was fighting the good fight).

She received a phone call from a nuclear physicist the next day, saying...geez, this is what I have been telling these bozos over here for a long time. If you want the real dirt on energy efficiency in Malaysia and the four-fuel policy, come see me. So she called me (it was my story to begin with, after all) and asked me to meet her at this guy's house at 11 in the morning (any warning bells going off yet?).

So there I traipse bright and early, to be greeted by said nuclear physicist. Except that he is wearing a sarong. And no top. And he has a white mop of uncombed hair. OK. I shall not be shallow and judge by appearances. Said friend hasn't arrived, so I am ushered to a seat in the garden where I park my fanny gingerly, feeling a little nervous.

Then, this guy starts talking. Oh boy. Does he start talking. He doesn't say much about power or energy efficiency, although he does thrust his badly spelled and yellowing PhD thesis into my hands. He talks instead about how he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. And how he was PERSECUTED and CRUCIFIED for seven days and seven nights when he wrote a letter to Mahathir (Dear Uncle Mahathir, we should import five million Chinese from China and five million Indians from India to even out the races here...) and got chucked in the loony bin as a result. He talks about how his wife is actually the Hindu Lord Shiva (they were both Malay) and how they would go to temples to gather cockroaches to let go at home. Apparently temple roaches leave behind a sort of medicine, if you let them run wild in your house having first dibs on all the food.

I was beginning to be a tad uncomfortable. I was no longer alone, because the photographer had shown up, but instead of making things better, the photo guy turned out to be as wacko, staring at mad guy intently, asking his opinion on stuff (should I divorce my wife and marry my girlfriend? I really really want to) and all but making obeisance at the cuckoo's feet.

Then my friend showed up and scary topless guy in sarong was obliging enough to repeat all he had told me for her benefit. When he came to the part about the roaches, she lifted both her feet onto the rung of her chair (she being a tad more afraid of the suckers than I was. Incidentally we were both glad that a third friend who has an out and out phobia was not among those present. She would have rushed into the street, screaming hysterically and maybe collapsed in front of a speeding car. We would have rushed out after her and thrown ourselves in front of car. Result: absolute carnage. So you see why we were glad). Friend kept throwing horrified glances my way, as she listened to creepozoid with dawning comprehension.

We managed to hustle out of there after he had repeated for maybe the tenth time what it was like to be crucified, and how all the Christian bishops and Hindu priests had met with him and his wife, and paid their respects, and how the old UMNO had collapsed because he spit on the side of the building.

Oh my.

During the drive back, friend shaking her head: "I'm sorry Jenn, I'm so sorry Jenn, he sounded so sane on the phone."

I sighed.

They always do.