Incident 1
1115am, at RPS, where I spent two years of pre-U learning what independent study meant. Simply because half the teachers never bothered to show up most of the time.
Reason for the trip: I wanted to collect my sister’s and my STPM certificate (yes! I haven’t gotten it! and I’ve gotten my university admittance, scholarship and current job without the cert .. ) .
I was dressed in a sleeveless purple top with white chinos. As I stepped into the general office, I saw the same annoying man who manned the reception desk back in 2000/2001. He looked at me, and I noticed that he was chewing gum.
Fine.
In my (admittedly) haltering Malay, I explained that I was a former student and I was here to collect my STPM cert from 2001.
He then started to look at me up and down with an *eeee* look of disgust, while repeating what I had said, and continued to chew gum. I tried to get that out of my mind and tried to, y’know, smile, despite him being an a** even when I was in school.
Then he decided that I was dressed too obscenely to even speak to him. He suddenly burst out with, "You pakai macam ni mana boleh masuk pejabat? Pergi pakai lebih la!" (How can you enter the office dressed like that? Go and put on something more!) while continuing with the gum chewing and the look of disgust.
I was dumbfounded. All I could manage was a "Okay, fine!" before I stepped out of the office.
What pissed me off was:
1. The gum chewing.
2. The LOOK as if I were some slut.
3. The fact that I was not treated with courtesy based on what I was wearing, which was not even a tube top nor a spaghetti top. Even if I were wearing anything like that, I would not have deserved such treatment.
As I related the incident to Justin, he told me to tell that guy about Erra Fazira who wore sleeveless clothes all the time. To him, Erra would probably represent the immoral woman who of course, deserved the love triangle that she was purportedly caught in. The perfect chaste woman would be Dato’ Siti who always covered herself up and look, she married well into a rich family!
And the best part was? As I left the school, I noticed that they had just competed a ceremony celebrating themselves as "Sekolah Harapan 2007" (School of Hope 2007).
I say, Sekolah Harapan Gemuk would be more like it - Fat hopes.
Incident 2
So in the afternoon, Justin and I went to buy our bus tickets for our trip tomorrow morning. As the bus company we wanted to buy from was unoccupied, we found ourselves at the Plusliner counter. Just casually, we asked the man at the counter if Plusliner busses stopped at Kelana Jaya by any chance, since another bus company did. He replied us very rudely with his head tilted high, looking AWAY from us, "mana ada bas yang henti kat kelana jaya punya? tak ada la!"
So we tried to just let him know that well, Perak Roadways does.
Then with his head continued tilted high, looking AWAY from us, he went on and on with his responses.
I left the counter as he was talking.
50th Merdeka celebrations, Malaysia.
Your people are still not MERDEKA from sexism, judgmental-ism and plain rudeness.
