Monday, January 31, 2011

The Mats and The Daks of My Land

In the Malay or Muslim community, the name Muhammad or Mohd (which sounds the same as Muhammad) or Ahmad are very common to embrace the sacred name of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. The short form of this name in Malay community is Mat. Not religiously preferable or correct to say the least, but people have been using Mat since forever. If your name is Mohd Tarmimi, the chances that people will call you Mat is very high. If your name is Mohd Jais, yours will be Mat Jais, that’s normal, even though the name Jais will make you get beaten at school. Don’t expect people to go by your long name in the village, it’s almost abnormal. But the funny thing is, my village people took this Mat name-calling to another level of ‘sophistication’. Let me give you a few examples: 


Mat Keneneng – Keneneng in Malay language means giddy or dizzy. This Mat Keneneng is not a fictional character; he exists in our village. Really! I’ve seen him twice. I am not quite sure whether he had a Parkinson disease or what, but his head kept on shaking when he talked to people. And because my village people were a creative bunch, he got a lovely name of Mat Keneneng carved on stone for him. It’s MEAN, people!


Mat Bangkang – Bangkang means to rebut or dispute. This guy was very popular for his disconformities to public opinions. He always tried to go the other way, believe the other side of the story almost all the time, which landed him this name. What would be the wife’s name if the husband were called Mat Bangkang… it’d be Bini Mat Bangkang for God’s sake. Bini means the wife, not a stretch at all. 


Mat Cabang – Cabang means branch. I don’t exactly know why people call him Mat Cabang. He liked to fish with my father, he had a very kampung face, dark (burned) and full of pimples. Maybe because it’s got something to do with his character because in Malay there’s a saying “Lidah Bercabang” which means Two Tongue – someone who likes to say one thing to one person, and another to other person. I am not really sure but he’s my father’s fishing buddy and still rides a bike, never got promoted to a motorcycle after all these years. If you spent more time working and less time fishing….. 


Mat Lalak – Lalak means wailing. I pity this guy because he’s stuck with the name since he was very young. But his wailing technique was legendary. Crying is his forte so the villagers made fun of him easily by calling him this name. And they didn’t actually being subtle about it, they called you Mat Lalak in front of your face. Haha! And I don’t think Mat Lalak minds. 


Those are the 4 most popular mats in my kampung. The other shortform that the villagers used to call someone is Dak, a shortform for Budak (Kid). When I was small, people called me Dak Ana, meaning budak Ana. I would say it’s exclusively Southern of Malaysia, Johor and Melaka kinda slang. And for the Daks, I want to present to you 4 of the most popular Daks of all time. 


Dak Husin Kelepet – This name giving was mean but again at my kampung, it can be quite appealing. When people care about you, they called you names. Haha! Isn’t that ironic? This unique name came about because of the shape of his ears, it looks like a flip at the end of book page when you pause reading. And the name continued until he had kids and all. The kids were called anak Dak Husin Kelepet, the kids of the Husin Kelepet. 


Dak Achim Beruk – The name of the person is Hashim. Decent. But the villagers found a way to make it even cuter by calling him Achim. Beruk is monkey. Who ask him to have a monkey as a pet? They put two and two together and you have a perfect nickname, Dak Achim Beruk, that kid Hashim who has a monkey. Isn’t that creative? Haha! 


Dak Usop Cathay – This is so funny, you have to have your LOL moment for 5 seconds at least for this one. This guy was a normal guy but the structure of the house screwed him up. His father built a house that looked like a Cathay cinema from the front. Cinema was not very common in the 80s in my village and his father’s uniqueness landed him the name. His name is Yusof, by the way and he had a tendency to dance like a moron in weddings, massaging his crotch at all times. Eeeeww! 


Dak Tijah Kentel – The only woman that’s my list today. She’s legendary. She walks miles everyday. She smokes like nobody’s business. She insults people as she pleases and she always wanted to sell my mom her duck eggs. Her name is Katijah which in English would be called Cathy but in Malay, it’s Tijah. Kentel if im not mistaken means fondle. She likes to fondle tobacco and puts it in her mouth until the mouth turns red. She’s the opposite of a lady, so to speak. 


There you go, the most popular Mats and Daks of my land and I remember them because of their awesome nicknames! So, if you were to be called Mat or Dak, which one would you be?

Reminiscing My Childhood

My childhood was not filled with Toys 'R' Us moments like my Tia's. It's more like, Ben 10 without the costume and the omnitrix, so to speak. For a start, I was born without any spoon in my mouth...haha! Life wasn't easy but it was definitely fun! I learned to climb trees at a very early age, something that I'm proud about because you actually need SKILL to go up a ciku tree that's taller than my house. My mom would scold me once in a while but she knew that every of her children needed to conquer that tree. That ciku tree was my source of income. Everytime I would earn 10% of the proceed, though I did all the job by myself. I gave 90% to my mom, she needed it the most. 


Our house was surrounded by rubber trees. And in school, teachers would ask us to collect those biji getah (rubber seed) for maths and daun getah (rubber leaves) for arts and craft. Quite fun! I spent hours collecting those biji getahs even though the teacher only needed like 20 from each of us. I figured if I bring more, the rests could use mine as well. Haha! We had to go through the kebun getah to get to school, to go to shops and to wait for the bus that went to town. The most popular shop in my village was the shop we called Kedai Dak Piang, a.k.a. The Piang (the name of the owner) Shop. The shop was boxy and it's made of wood, it didn't have metal shutter, instead they used wood planks and a few latches to close the shop. Amazing! Every plank had a number so they knew which one should go to which place. It opened very early like 7am and closed around 9pm. 




This shop offered almost everything the villagers needed. As a kid, I was most interested by the display of biscuit variety in large containers with transparent windows.  Every time I drooled seeing those biscuits. You could buy them in kilos or grams. It'd be such a pleasant treat if my mom would agree to buy some. The thing about my mom, she loved those hard biscuits, particularly the one we called biskut tongkat, the cane biscuit or biskut lutut, the knee biscuit. DO NOT imagine candy cane! This biscuit is evil! It's so hard, it could make your gum bleed. Dunk it in hot black coffee, that's how you eat the e-biscuit.




And this shop also offered credits to the people. You could take as much provision as you needed, pay a bit of money and the rests were recorded in your 555 book. They were very efficient in calculation (using those chinese sam-pua calculator) and I'd never seen one time that they became angry if the people couldn't pay them on time.  Mr Piang always gave me one sweet whenever i came visit. Such a nice man! I always sat on a bucket of rice and waited for my mom to finish shopping. When my mom ordered for a kilo of dried chillies, Mr Piang made a triangle container out of paper, put the chilies in and tied it with raffia strings. Awesome use of recycle materials!  One thing I wish this shop never had was the smell of rubber. Urgh! It was truly truly stinky! But that's the villagers source of income those days, who was I to complain.  Once the shopping was over, we (the kids) needed to bring all those heavy provisions home. Mom always told the others to let me take the lightest one. I'm the youngest, mah!




My house was not that far from the shop. If we were to take the regular road, I would say half a kilometer. But, we always took the shortcut across the rubber plantation. The house was big, Limas style with stilts and attap roof. It's not easy to maintain the attaps because they needed constant changing, I think every six months or so. One advantage of attap roof in comparison to zinc roof is that it's cooler. The main problem with attap roof is... water  leaks after sometimes! My mom would buy around 100 attap every half a year to change the ones that were ruined. It's a tough task I'm telling you because we needed to carry 100 of those back and forth around a distance of 2 miles. One mile go and one mile back. I hated it when it's time of the year. My additional job, started when i was 10 was to climb the roof and changed the attap. It's not that hard but it was quite dangerous for a 10 year old girl, wasn't it? Haha! That's why I became so angry when a 32-year old guy told me he didn't know how to drive to KLCC. Such a wuss!




My childhood activities built my character. I didn't have Barbie dolls, I made my own dolls using hard paper. I didn't have board games, we use empty cans to play policemen and thieves, I didn't have television, I spent my free time on top of a tree or under the house imagining things. The world is changing and I'm happy that Tia has a chance to have a better childhood than me but I wouldn't trade mine for anything. :)