April 15th, 2008 gier
I have a friend who is a member of UMNO, from the Puteri branch (a.k.a. Blonde UMNO). I used to offend her a lot, I am not proud to say. Occasionally, I’d offend her enough, that she’d call me “babi”. This obviously upsets me, since most other people that I offend would usually offer longer curses, e.g. “gier, your mother sucks cock in hell!“, or “you’re a fat fuck, and God would send lightning to strike you down and we would all cheer!”. It upsets me that I apparently have not offended her enough to elicit such similar curses from her. But that’s by the by.
Once upon a time, a bit too long ago for my comfort, a couple of friends of mine and I were having a chat outside the classroom. We were contemplating the ban on babi and babi by-products imposed by our religion. One of my friends, in what can only be described as genius of Dr. Moreau proportions, suggested that genetic engineering be applied to change the nature of babi. His reasoning was that lembu is halal, while babi is haram. Now, by mixing the genes of both animals, we can then produce a hybrid animal, which he called cowbi – and the cowbi should be engineered in such a way as to be lembu in nature, but babi in taste. This elicited appreciative nods from me, until the other friend decided to be a spoilsport and gave the opinion that a genetically engineered hybrid cowbi would still be haram, since the multiplication of a positive (halal) and a negative (haram) would still result in a negative (haram). The smug little bastard was just regurgitating what we had recently learnt from Puan Lam in Matematik Moden class. Not being satisfied with the mathematical proof, we decided not to ponteng the Agama class and ask the Ustaz as to the edibleness of a hypothetical cowbi. According to the Ustaz, a cowbi would still be haram, since any derived animal or product from the babi would still be haram[1].
The cowbi inventor is now a bean-counter in a GLC, last I caught up with him. His is a great loss to science as a whole, and to genetic engineering specifically, I am sure.
Time passes, and in spite of my truancy in school, I managed to become a Bumiputera student, sent on a study loan to our former colony, England. I stayed there for a goodly number of years, incredibly passing all my exams. For most of my stay there, I stayed in accommodations provided by the universities that I went to. Because I felt that it was important to gain experience of other cultures, I always opted to stay in co-ed accommodation[2], and refused to accept board in flats or houses reserved for just Malaysians or Muslims.
So, in these shared accommodation places, we would generally have to share the kitchen, the fridge, the oven, the everything lah. And this one time, I discovered a babi loin cut placed next to my chicken[3] in the freezer. Upon discovering the owner of the babi loin, I, naturally, confronted him.
“Oi, Nassem! Why’d you put that piece of pork loin next to my chicken,” I demanded.
“Well, it was the only space available, man!” Nassem retorted.
So, I replied back, “Oh! That’s okay then. But try not to squash my chicken next time, yah.”
“No worries, mate. I’ll be more careful next time.”
Nassem was a postgraduate student in his 40s at the time. From Iran. I think he was a Shi’ite, but fell in love with some English totty and turned Anglican. Oh well, such is life.
Time passes some more.
This one time, on a job assignment, I ended up in Shenzen. I was staying in a hotel near the main shopping strip and in the morning of the first day, went down to the coffee shop to have breakfast. Looking at the menu, I decided on having the English breakfast, which consisted of 2 sausages, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 eggs (scrambled), 2 pieces of toast, half a tomato and baked beans. However, I informed the waiter that I would like to have the sausages replaced by hash browns, and the bacon strips replaced by another 2 eggs. Please. Because I don’t eat babi, you see. Waiter smiled, nodded, and left.
My breakfast arrived. I saw 2 hash browns, 2 pieces of toast, half a tomato, a lot of baked beans and almost a mountain of scrambled eggs. Feeling happy, I tucked in … and discovered small little pink squares of processed meat which looked suspiciously like ham. I called the waiter over, and pointed out the square pieces to him. I asked him whether those pieces are ham, and he replied in the affirmative. I said to him, “But I told you I don’t eat pork, man!”
He looked at me like I was a moron, and said, “Ah, but sir, that is not pork. That is ham!” He then added, “Scramble eggs only without anything not nice, sir. So, the cook put in some ham. It’s not pork.”
*sigh*
So, I pushed aside the egg mountain and ate the rest of my breakfast in disappointment.
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[1] This rule is similar to the GNU General Public License for Free Software.
[2] In the hope that I can meet some hot gweilo chicks.
[3] Which I bought at Sainbury’s supermarket. Sainsbury’s is owned by Jews, and because Jews are ahl al-Kitab, I assume that their chicken must be kosher. So, can eat lah. Verrry nice too, made curry chicken using Adabi serbuk kari that my mom sent using Pos Malaysia to me.
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