Nasi Lemak, Coffee & Cigarettes

My nasi lemak this morning brought back a lot of feelings, mostly of disenchantments.

I remember the days where I used to eat nasi lemak every morning. It is a habit started seven years ago when I was a broke and struggling student studying for an impossible national exam. My best friend The Queen, who is a broke and stuggling working fresh grad, always insist that I have a full 'nutritious' breakfast so that my brains won't die from overworking. In the mornings before my classes, she will drive me in her beaten-up nissan sunny with no side-mirrors (our dear Fabio) to Bangsar mamak to eat freshly cooked indian-style nasi lemak and kopi-kao. We will finish off with a round of cigarettes before we depart for our daily routine.

A year or two later, I entered the workforce. Then, I will tapao my RM1.50 home-made malay nasi lemak from the makcik downstairs and enjoy it in the privacy of my office-room. My tea-lady usually do her coffee rounds and my secretary (sweet sweet Rafeah) would pop her head in my room to ask, "Nak minum kopi hari ini tak?". After my nasi lemak breakfast, I will light up a cigarette (the partners allowed smoking in our rooms, bless them!) while leisurely signing letters.

Well this morning, I am eating nasi lemak sitting in a minion cubicle across the causeway. Today's nasi lemak taste like plastic because it was bought from a chinese franchise kopitiam. Instead of kopi, I'm having a SGD4.50 cuppucino from Spinelli because I want to collect points to redeem another cup in near future. After nasi lemak, I will be walking down 16 flights of stairs (because there is a fire drill happening in the building so the lifts are not working) to stand in a yellow box specially designated for smokers in Singapore.

Our lives progress in ways we can never anticipate.....

But when I think about it from a macro point of view, neither of the described lives above is better or worse. Just merely different.

My favourite Czech author, Milan Kundera, said in one of his novels that our lives are and will always be based on the same set of bricks. This means that no matter how far we go or how much we try to change ourselves, we will always end up creating, more or less, the same lifestyle. What you think is a complete change of your life is just a variation - you are merely shuffling your bricks around. But mind ya, they are the same bricks.

So as can be seen from the examples above, the common bricks in my life are nasi lemak, coffee and cigarettes. You can place me in the middle of Doha desert or the top of Eiffel Tower, I will still be eating my nasi lemak with extra sambal, drinking whatever local coffee is available and smoking my dunhill lights.

The quality of these three bricks may be compromised or the circumstances where I am consuming them may be changed - but wherever I go, there they will be.

Amen