I have been suffering from dementia lately. Why? Because of the massive traffic jam all over Penang. Since the school holidays ended, I have resumed my chronic cussing habit on the road.

I don’t understand, why would the parents get so paranoid about their kids going back to school. I know, they are concerned with their kids’ safety and shit, but come on… they’re only going to school… right? Not to pubs or discos. Why can’t they just drop their kids off and get the hell out of there?

Thousands of anxious parents would throng the streets… and half of them are housewives. When a housewife drives anything that moves on the road, the traffic would be damned for the whole day. Some would drive 20 kph looking for a place to park… some would hog the road by driving right in the middle of 2 lanes. I’ve seen some even left their car by the roadside (blocking 1/3 of the road) to help his sleazebag kid carry a schoolbag. And some really extreme ones would stand outside the classroom for the entire day.

Thousands of road users would waste shitload of money and precious time getting caught in traffic jams induced by these paranoid parents. All because they’re worried.

But ironically, these paranoid parents aren’t that paranoid when their kids went to sleep over at some friend’s place - which could a zillion times more dangerous than going to school. Who knows what those little bastards might do together with their cohorts in a confined room without parental supervision? watching porns? learn how to smoke? there’s no boundary of what they could do.

Instead of worrying about all that, the parents choose to scope their kids AT SCHOOL. Yeah right. Like, those teachers are so useless and can’t take care of their kids. I wonder why they would bother to send their kids to school then.

Just relax… let them go to school in peace… let them learn how to be independent…. get them on a schoolbus or something. Give us road-users a break.

I wonder if excessive consumption of wasabi could cause any side effects to our health? Like a temporary brain damage or something like that?

I was harassed by a 3 - 4 years old kid during my lunch at Sushi King today. And for what I believed to be the ill effects of consuming too much of the edible green plasticine, I did not waste him up for disturbing me.

I thought of scaring that little booger with my horrific look (tears and phlegm from overdosage of wasabi) but, I was not in the mood.

That damn kid was sure lucky today.

Yesterday, while I was munching away my double cheeseburger, my eyes were fixed to a bunch of noisy kids playing. I was observing the way they enjoyed themselves doing things that adults (like me) would consider as ‘absurd’.

There was this particular kid inside the bunch who was especially stand out - as I noticed. He was like the leader of the pack or something. And his gang were running around with their mouth full and I could see pieces of half chewed food dropping all over the place. I was imagining how shitty the janitors must have felt seeing these little monsters messing up the place like nobody’s business.

After having their session of indoor Olympic run, the kids then switched to another pattern of frolic. This time, the leader of the pack started some marching shit, and the rest of the trolls followed his lead. The marching commotion suddenly made the food court area looked like a WWII Nazi death camp. They were marching here and there; with that faux-Hitler shouting some made up military terms (which they probably learned from TV). Their plays were becoming more exciting by the minute and I was watching diligently while munching on my dinner.

Then, when the moms shouted for their kids back to the table, Hitler was left alone to march by himself. Finding no fun to do the marching alone, he creatively switched his pattern again. This time, he became the world renowned martial arts star - Bruce Lee. He’d flail and kick around like he’s neutralizing some hostile ninjas from the outer fucking space and even mimicked the sharp cry that Bruce Lee did. Nobody dared to go near Bruce within the radius of 6 feet or so. Even his kid friends were looking at him in horror while their parents were force-feeding them their colder-than-steel dinner.

He was desperately seeking for attention. His kungfu moves were dull and nobody seems to be interested to look at him (except for me and the bunch of the horrified kids, of course). He would sometimes roll on the floor, spin himself up and even tried to do some acrobatic stunts. Seriously, he could have injured himself easily. I was wondering, why would his parents stay static and not doing something to calm their seriously screwed son from getting injured.

And then, just as I was wondering if it could get any worse than that, Bruce stopped. He was too freaking tired and I could tell that he had ran out of energy to fool around. He was standing there looking derisively at his bunch of friends who wouldn’t want to join him romping around. He then shoved his hand into his own ass and started to scratch his own butt crack HARD. I mean, real hard. It was a sight to behold.

Man, I can imagine that if I happened to have a videocam to record the entire event, it would have been an incredible masterpiece to outdo that Star Wars Kid blooper video. I can then sell the clip to the boy’s parents to let him see himself when he grows up — how spastic he was at one point of his life not long ago…

This is Michael Ooi reporting about an inane observation while he was having his dinner last night, from inside a boring lab, at his workplace.

Ooh.. the kids finally gone home after messing my place up for the past 2 days. I can finally switch on my PC like I used to… without having to worry about them nosing here and there.

I used to love kids… you know… I loved to play with them. I would talk to them from day till night and I was always so happy to see them around. But that was when I was a kid myself ler…

Thinking about how my nieces and nephews behaved, I have to admit that they are actually waaayyy better than me when I was a kid. But like any other human beings, I have changed. Into a finicky perfectionist. I expect everything in my life to be as close to perfect as possible.

And I expect kids to behave. And since I designed the apartment myself, I kinda developed an indescribable love for my work. I set have strict ground rules to follow to keep the place clean - eg: no food within 5 meter radius from my sofa, permanent ban on kids who fail to comply the rules. Things like that.

I just do not know why it has to be like this. I don’t know how to take things easy when it comes to tolerating kids. I know I should have just cut them some slack and let them have their fun. But no. I couldn’t seem to be able to do that. I can imagine how the kids dread the very sight of me.

But then strange enough, none of the kids are actually scared of me. In fact, they love and admire me. Things would have been easier if they hate me because, they would have resented coming to visit me in the first place… and I’d get less chance of seeing them. But things doesn’t always seem to go the way I want it to be… so…

I woke up feeling like shit all over this morning. I felt so darn sleepy. Actually, I felt pretty much the same every morning except weekends, but today was exceptional. Why? It was because I knew I’m not going to have a good night sleep frin tomorrow onwards.

Emily’s sisters are coming to Penang tomorrow. Well, her sisters are actually ok for me, but it is their kids that are not ok. That’s right, 2 sisters, 2 nieces and 2 nephews. I will probably be thrilled to have so many kids around if I were Michael Jackson. But this is Michael Ooi here. This Michael, isn’t too fond of have little people running around.

Tonight will be for me to do some major housekeeping around. I will have to keep all my harddisks… cables… modems … and other computer gadgets. You can imagine myself like preparing for a war, everything will have to be stowed away for safety. Not those little bastards’ safety but, more for my stuff. My floor will also be littered with rice and pukes… and I’m also in for a risk of having my sofa wrecked again. Like what Charles did months ago.

And then, I also will be worrying about my car. Emily will be driving them around the town with my car. That’s because our family only owns one car. I already started to imagine the kids jumping up and down inside my car and stress my absorbers to the limit. And they will not hesitate to practice their footprinting art work on my cushions and screens. My car will be stressed to its mechanical limit and over, like there’s not going to be another tomorrow. And without the car, I will have to stay at home by myself… no clubbing, no movies and plenty of worries.

That’s why I am feeling like shit all over. It is because I know I am fucked for the weekend. [sigh]