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2002-05-03 - 8:38 p.m. Emek: Yah, I know, I've been hooked for along time. Last time when the police did a raid at our kampung, everyone would run and hide in the back forest. There was a time when I hid in in a toilet for five hours. At that time, none of the toilets had a flush system. The smell of shit went all the way up to my brain. That was last time, in the 70's. Each time I come back to this kampung, another house has been torn down. The house of Mak Ijah the masseur, the house of imam Haji Sha'ari, the house of Pak Habib ten cent-twenty cent, who got the name because of the pockmarks on his leg. But I look around and the kampung looks so clean now. If you slip and fall, you won't get chicken shit on your bum. They say it's always a sad thing to have to move. But look around you, everyone's taking it all right. A flat is a house too, right? Kampung, flat, henhouse, birdcage, they're all houses. Just yesterday I saw them tear down my house. I asked, 'Eh, what are you going to do with all the wood?' They said they were going to sell it all in Johor. 'What for? You're going to build a new kampung in Johor?' I remember my old bedroom, on the wall there were these big posters of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, 'Stairway to Heaven'. My mother made a lot of noise, but what could she do? I was her only son. I still remember, when I was small, I took my grandma's powder, Cuticura powder, I emptied it all over the floor. And then I put on a pair of socks, and I started slipping and sliding all around. (Laughs). Because I'd just watched ice-skating on TV. After that, my late father caned me. I couldn't sit down properly for a week. Yesterday they were digging the place around my house, and they found a spring. Last time that spring was used to hold up my sarong cradle to the ceiling. When I grew up, I used it for exercise. I'd pull it, stretch it (Laughs). Wanted a big body, a tough one. Wanted muscles. Last time I was number one at beating people up. All those Tanglin boys still remember who I was. You've heard of 'Graveyard 1887'? What about Kamal Hendrix, heard of him? Have you ever heard about our Malay boys, those terrors, who played their guitars using razor blades as picks?
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