All pieces written by Wilfrid Wong ([email protected]).
One
Late Afternoon (At McDonald's) February 17, 1997
"Love"
Friction December 15, 1996
Go to Wilfrid's eHome front page
Have you ever wonder how much
detail we have missed every day, every hour and even every
minute? And have you ever wonder how we could have constructed a
larger picture by gathering possibly every scene that ever
happened around you? You can treat human being as one individual
unit, or if you can and if you are mighty enough, think about all
the interactions between each individual and try to expand your
thought. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.
Welcome to the new world of detail observation. Expand your
imagination.
One late afternoon, one man walked into a local McDonald's with
one rose in his hand. Late twenties, I would say, with a neat and
pleasant look. Nobody walked into McDonald's and announced his
name so we just called him, Romeo.
It was a small town and not many people were around in this time
of hour. Romeo walked to the cashier and ordered a Pepsi. He had
no problem in finding a seat right next to the window. To his
left sat two middle aged men. The one whom he could not see the
face kept muttering, and occasionally shouting in some
unintelligent sentences. His poor eating partner simply ignored
him throughout the whole meal. Romeo was annoyed wondering why
that man kept spoiling the good music played in the background.
He gently placed the rose to his left, sipping the Pepsi slowly
and let his mind drifted.
Meanwhile, one poorly dressed mother walked into the restaurant
with her not more than ten years old son. If you were sitting
near the entrance, you could possibly sense that faint stinky
smell mixed with old garment and body odour. The Waiter, tall and
thin, stood nearby tried hard to hold his breath while wondering
how they could afford anything in here.
Poor Mummy ordered a kid's menu for her little boy and just a cup
of hot tea for herself. It was, after all, her boy's birthday.
She chose a corner table so as to stay as far away from "them"
as possible. Self-consciousness as one would suppose. The man who
kept shouting unintelligently soon caught Poor Mummy's attention.
She was directly facing him and it took less than a second for
her to recognized that that man was mentally retarded. Poor Mummy
had seen a lot of them on the street and she looked at Mr.
Retarded with immense sympathy. She always mentioned to people
that those who were retarded could be quite intelligent, provided
that if you looked into them close enough.
Poor Mummy smiled at Mr. Retarded and that had somehow set him
wild. Waving his hands aimlessly in the air and sang in high
pitch. Romeo was deeply disturbed for he would never imagine that
Mr. Retarded was indeed, retarded. Romeo remained, not interested
in what was happening around him.
More people started to filter in, probably because of the end of
a late afternoon show at a cinema a few blocks down the road. And
the restaurant got a little bit liven up. People were chatting
louder and louder and we seemed to have quite a happy atmosphere
here.
Then one man walked in and changed the atmosphere of the whole
restaurant. He was old fashioned. Dressed in a 19th century
costume and was wearing a magician kind of hat. The Hat Man was
in fact, kind of frightening. He could be well over seventy or
could be more. The Waitress stood nearby, slim and pretty in her
own way, was shocked as she had never seen such a pale and
wrinkled face. He ordered a meal and sat at a table near to the
counters.
The Hat Man turned and looked out of the window and he spotted
Romeo. It was not Romeo himself that attracted Hat Man's
attention, but the single stalk of rose resting on the table. Hat
Man took his time in finishing up his meal and found that Romeo
continued looking out of the window aimlessly. "Don't waste
your time son, she will never come", thought Hat Man. After
discovering that his wife had cheated on him some fifty years
ago, he had remain single ever since then. Hat Man lived with no
love and cursed Romeo quietly for his stupidity.
Poor Kid got out of the table, carrying an empty McDonald's fries
box and walked straight towards the counter. "Can I have
more fries, please?" asked Poor Kid in his innocent and cute
voice. The salesgirl did not know what to do (this sort of thing
didn't happen all the time) and consulted her manager. Her
manager came by and explained to the kid that if you wanted more
fries, you needed to bring some money and we would give you more
fries. Poor Kid, did not understand the concept of modern
currency, only realized that his little request had been rejected.
He rushed to his mum and cried, "I want more fries."
Everybody in the restaurant was quiet, including Mr. Retarded.
The manager had no choice, but to pose an "I am sorry but it
is real life" look. The same way as he caught everybody's
attention when he first walked in, Hat Man got up and headed
towards the counter slowly, but steadily. He said in his low but
strong, coarse voice, "I want to buy this kid some fries".
"Certainly, sir", replied the salesgirl happily. Poor
Mummy whispered something into Poor Kid's ear and the kid ran
towards Hat Man. Our hero bent down, leveled up with the kid and
gave the warmest smile that an old man could ever give. Poor Kid
was about to reach for the fries, hesitated, turned and looked at
his mum. Poor Mummy nodded her head and the kid took the fries
and thanked the old man. Poor Mummy expressed her thanks by
smiling warmly at Hat Man and our hero slightly nodded his head
with a faint smile on his pale, wrinkled face.
During this warm act, no one noticed the departure of Mr.
Retarded and his partner. Not even Romeo who had constantly
starred out of the window. In fact, our dreamer here was
indifferent to what was happening beyond his mind.
Gradually, the crowd returned to its normal atmosphere and our
hero left the restaurant, still thinking of how stupid Romeo was.
Love was just an illusion and dreamt on, signed Hat Man. Just
when Hat Man stepped out of McDonald's, a gang of youngsters,
boys and girls, made their grand arrival. Swearing in foul
language, those kids did not seem to have no money at all. Just
took a look at their outfit and you knew they were utterly spoilt
by their parents. Maybe they had their source of finance
somewhere else, nobody knew. They had chosen a "cubical"
seat right at the corridor and smoke heavily. You really had to
shut your ear in order not to hear those dirty provoking
conversation between Bad Boy One, Two and Three and Bad Girl One
and Two. Nobody seemed to care in the end as we had plenty of
these "garbage", as one might refer to, lying all over
the country.
Poor Kid finally finished his birthday meal and Poor Mummy
quickly rushed themselves out of the restaurant. Although they
were poor, she would not want his precious little boy to be ended
up like those bad idiots.
A fat black Bus Ticket Seller bought a cup of coffee and sat near
to those Bad Boys and Girls. You could tell he was a ticket
seller by his ticket machine hanging from his neck to his tummy.
A young athletic man with a cap, let's called him Sport Gear,
dashed into the restaurant, seemed to be looking for someone,
accidentally ran into Poor Mummy (who was in a hurry to exit),
spotted our Bus Ticker Seller (you really couldn't miss such a
face as you saw him every day at the same spot), could not find
someone he was looking for, and dashed out of our restaurant.
Our Bus Ticket Seller took a sip on his coffee and suddenly
wanted to visit the washroom. He then asked one of the fellow
siting right next to his table to look after his drink. That guy
answered briefly and left the restaurant shortly after our poor
Bus Ticket Seller disappeared into the washroom. Our same Waiter,
the tall and thin one, noticing the restaurant was getting
crowed, was busy resetting the tables. Thinking that our poor fat
fellow had left the restaurant, he threw the nearly untouched cup
of coffee away.
When our Bus Ticket Seller returned, he was furious when he found
that his cup of coffee had vanished. Behind him, the Bad Boys and
Girls were getting louder and louder. Those spoilt kids had
basically turned our restaurant into their playground and started
to throw burger wrappers and pickles at each other. Our Waiter
apologized and promised to get Ticket Seller another cup of hot
coffee. Bus Ticket Seller cooled off a little bit and was about
to sit down. Bad Boy One intentionally or unintentionally swung
his arm while holding an almost finished Pepsi. Bad Boy Two
reacted fast enough and made a dodge to the right, excused
himself to give Bad Girl One and Two a big hug. These ice-cube
asteroids with a hint of sticky Pepsi had finally made a full
strike at our Bus Ticket Seller. Oh poor guy (and hoped that his
machine still worked)! He was speechless for a second and began
to scold at them. The kids just burst into laughter. Our
sensitive Waitress quickly arrived at the scene and tried to
clean up our Mr. Unlucky and the floor. The coffee arrived
shortly and Bus Ticket Seller sat heavily onto his chair, cursing
the day.
Just when everything began to settle down, Sport Gear returned to
our restaurant with his partner (also in sport outfit). He
noticed our Bus Ticket Seller and was surprised that the cup of
coffee was still as full (and hot?) as before. What so
interesting here was that he had just missed our Bus Ticket
Seller's double disasters. He waved at Ticket Seller, bought the
drinks and left the restaurant.
While Sport Gear had missed all the events happened to our Bus
Ticket Seller (who had now finally finished his coffee in peace
and left the restaurant, in peace), there were two around sixteen
years old girls, sitting at one quiet corner, witnessed
everything. One of them was fair while the other one was
relatively darker, so lets called them the Black and White Twin.
They were both sweet and attractive for their age.
McDonald's always had promotion and this time, they had scratch
cards. Very simple. Three boxes covered in silver mat paint and
you could scratch the paint off using a coin. There were whole
lots of prices to be won, they claimed.
Black and White Twin winked at our Waiter and somehow managed to
attract him to their little quiet corner. Flirtatious charges
sparkled in the air and they exchanged the phone numbers and so
on. The Waiter really thought he was lucky and as a token of
friendship, he was asked to hand them a deck of scratch cards.
What could our Waiter do as his mind was filled with all the
hallucinations on what was about to come true tonight.
Apparently our Bad Boys and Girls had enough sense to find this
whole business (Black and White Twin) distasteful. They left with
one disrespectful look at our Black and While Twin, who were at
this very moment, busy scratching the cards. As they headed for
the exit, they saw a family of four just about to consume their
meal. The kid was trying to open the small ketchup packet and oh,
he squeezed once too hard and spilt a line of red stuff onto his
daddy's white shirt. Good O'Daddy pretended to get angry but
managed to smile to his son in affection. Bad Boys and Girls
laughed at him on the way out.
Today was definitely not Black and White Twin's day as they
failed to win any price even with a second, even bigger deck of
cards. One thing led to another, we did not think it was our
Waiter's day either. And they left.
Three hours had passed since our Romeo stepped into this
particular restaurant, in this particular town. Romeo did not
born in here and he did not belong to this town. But he was very
patience, awaiting for something to happen.
And nothing had happened. Another minute had slipped just like
the past hundreds of them. Romeo hardly touched his drink and
eventually looked away from the window, which he had kept
starring for the past three hours, and rested his sight on the
rose.
Impossible. That was impossible. But, nothing had happened.
A young lady, dressed in bright, simple yellow dress, stepped
inside our friendly restaurant. A lady who radiated youth and
sweetness, like the faint scent of spring flowers. A lady who
reminded you of an angel from nature with a warm, gentle summer
breeze. You might be able to hear an orchestra played by the wind
and the movement of plants of all kinds, the whisper and song of
morning birds and the wonderful beauty of nature.
She smiled at Good O'Daddy and couldn't help but made a quiet and
polite comment about his ketchup stained shirt. She was wondering
why Good O'Daddy was so careless. Good O'Daddy, who had never
seen such a beautiful innocent smile before, just smiled in
return.
Effortlessly, our angel appeared right beside our Romeo, like a
Goddess from Heaven. Romeo slowly raised his head.
And their eyes met.
No word. Just silence. In fact, the whole restaurant was silence.
With Romeo sitting motionlessly and Juliet standing closed to him.
Time stopped.
They drew closer to each other and still no word had been spoken.
Just feeling and moments. Without losing eye contact, Romeo
slowly moved his hand and reached for the rose. When he was just
about to touch it, Juliet stretched her arm and rested her right
hand onto his trembling hand, bringing herself even closer to
Romeo. Not a word, not a sound and without a warning, they locked
each other with the most romantic and passionate kiss. Memory
flooded with pain and joy. They first met each other during a
holiday tour and promised to meet up when everything was settled
down. Apparently, they had fixed the place and date, but not the
time as they preferred to be that way.
Imagine, you as one individual just stepped into our local, one
of its kind, restaurant and observed the couple kissing by the
window. What would you think? And your memory of your own event
in this restaurant began right now, right in here.
What a pity as you had possibly missed quite a lot of moving acts.
But it was kind of possible to trace the whole lots of events to
the moment Romeo just stepped in. If you chatted with Good
O'Daddy (who was mesmerized by the presence of Juliet), he might
tell you that there were a group of kids laughing at him on their
way out. And if you managed to find Bad Boys and Girls, they
would tell you all about Black and White Twin. And since those
kids would not tell you about their encounter with Bus Ticket
Seller, you had to get that information from Black and White Twin
who would happily tell you everything you wanted to know. From
there, you might wish to comfort our poor Bus Ticket Seller (who
could be easily located) a little bit and he might tell you
something about Spot Gear who had appeared twice and waved at him.
Perhaps you could find Spot Gear and he might just be able to
remember he had ran into Poor Mummy on the way out. And you
approached Poor Mummy (who was somewhere in the street), promised
to buy them a decent dinner and she would tell you her encounter
with Mr. Retarded and Hat Man. To see Mr. Retarded would not be
much help so I suggested you should go and see Hat Man. Just be
nice to the old man and he would tell you his love story. And of
course, he remembered Romeo and you might just tell him that he
was wrong. Juliet did arrive in the end.
There was an alternative though. Looked around you and you could
see one tiny fellow sitting alone reading a novel. No? Just came
closer, he would not bite. He should be the one you wanted to
talk to. He might not be very talkative today but he would talk
if you approached him. He happened to drop by this restaurant
even before Mr. Retard had arrived. And nothing had escaped his
eyes, and his mind.
TO THE READERS
Have to admit that all of the above incidents did not happen on
the same day, but they are all real events. The observations are
real, the inner thoughts are also real (talking with random
people) but some of the links are pure imagination. All these
happened in different McDonald's around the world. Different day,
different place, what's the difference? They are linked somehow
and time flies by. As I said, these are the gems I picked up
along the way (8 years). Don't you agree?
This, "Love Fiction"
has nothing to do with "Pulp Fiction" and it's my
personal observation in the past few days.
#1
Midnight, I was on a train back to the hotel. Sitting in front of
me was a French couple. Initially I did not pay attention to them.
Usually the French lovers' impression on me is that when they sit
together in a train, they (1) look at each other, then (2) smile
and then (3) kiss. The whole process repeats again until the
destination is reached.
But this time was different. (1) The man looked at the girl but
the girl tried to look somewhere. (2) The girl was about to burst
into tears but tried very hard to hold back the tears. (3) The
man comforted her and whispered a few words. (4) They hugged each
other. And again, the whole process repeated.
After a few stations, the man took out FF20 and a few coins (SGD6)
and gave it to the lady. She refused initially but let the man
put the money into her pocket.
The first impression to me was that they were going to miss each
other and the man had given her with all the cash he had.
Unfortunately there is no known ending to this tale as I departed
before them. If we actually take in all the observation, it is
still very difficult to guess what the real story like.
So with my wild imagination (being affected by movie overdose). (a)
The guy has a wife and this girl was his mistress. The mistress
realized she would not be seeing him after tonight, hence very
sad. (b) The man was a bad guy and he was about to have a duet (fatal
one-to-one) with his enemy. So he might not live to see the
sunrise. (c) He was a murderer and was currently running away.
Hence would not be seeing her for a long while. (d) The girl just
got dumped by her boyfriend and the guy happened to be her best
friend. (e) The guy actually broke up with this lady, apparently
his girlfriend, and he was sending her off the last time.
The love of man, the tears of woman.
#2
One sunny afternoon when I stepped into the hotel, I saw this
beautiful dog standing right in front of me. I am not a dog lover
but have to admit that she is very beautiful. Very big and
sparkling pair of eyes. She was the small type with a body like
sausage. Dark brown skin.
At first she was in the hall. Obviously her owner was not around.
Then she began to walk out of the entrance. The two porters (one
French, another North African), aged around 50, were immediately
tensed up. Both of them tried their best to attract her back but
she just seemed to be uninterested. They dared not touch her as
dogs do bite.
And the dog ran out of the door. All of us (me + 2 porters + 4
tourists) rushed out of the entrance. Then the two porters
shouted at each other. I guessed they both asked each other to
chase after the dog. You should look into the North African's (P1)
face. He was in total concern and I could see P1 was about to cry.
And P2 was just standing there like all of us, did not know what
to do. P1, short and fat, ran after the dog (D0). Poor chap. And
D0 was about to rush into the main road.
This time, P1 seemed to be able to get the attention of D0 and
slowly, P1 guided D0 back to the hotel hall. All of us was in joy.
The love of dogs. As the nature calls.
#3
We can definitely find a formula for world peace at last if we
figure this out.
Always, the White hates the Black. That is called discrimination.
One day, there was this Black mother carrying her baby (black).
There was a White lady siting next to the Black mother showing
immense affection and envy toward the baby (black).
At that very moment, I saw the breakage of the wall of
discrimination. No color boundary. Why we always love babies no
matter what color they are in ? If you loved me 20 years ago, why
do you hate me now for I am of a different race ?
The love of baby. World peace, maybe ?
#4
This is a visual experience. Use your imagination.
Once again, I was in a train. The train was at the station and
door was opened. Stationary.
Suddenly there was some noise outside the train. Someone walked
passed an Indian, who was selling some peanuts, overturned the
Indian's "table". The "table" was made of
paper box and all the packets of peanuts were on the floor.
All the people on the train were very concern, and some were
curious.
The whistle was blew and the doors were closed. The train started
to move away from the station.
Then I saw another Indian (20 steps from the first Indian)
shouting at the guy. Obviously his "store" had been
overturned as well.
As the train moved forward, I saw all the people of different
color, who were at the station, shouting at the that bad guy.
Finally, I saw that guy. He was a Black walking proudly with head
up.
And the train gained it's speed and it was once again, in total
blackness.
What is hatred ? What is love ?