About Nude Not Naked

A satellite is any object that orbits another object (which is known as its primary). Satellites can be spacecraft manufactured on Earth and sent into orbit on a launch vehicle. They may be naturally occurring such as moons, comets, asteroids, planets, stars, and even galaxies, or they may be space debris. (taken from wikipedia)


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Where have all my friends gone? I am not sure. I woke up one morning and discovered that they have all disappeared. I am not talking about the sort of friends you meet in your coffee shop, say hello, ask for the latest news, find out what they are doing, pretend to be interested in what they actually do and then you quickly excuse yourself after you think you have done the social niceties.

The sort of friend I am talking about here is the one that you can trust your life with. You can trust your RM1000 cheque with and the one you can trust to come pick you up when you are stranded in Kulim or Jerantut, car-less and cashless. This friend is the one who would stand in your place for you in your weakest moments. The one who would take up your responsibilities (feed the cats, wash your car, accompany your parents for an errand etc) when you are not capable of managing your routine.

And for me, such friends include PY and MiniBoyFriend R. PY helps me run all my banking errands when I am away in the UK. She drops cheques into my Ezy payment account and shops for clothes that she swears I would like. She is away on a company trip this morning and while she is away, I am her daughter’s surrogate mother. I pick the girl up from kindergarden and return her to her grandparents’. I send the five year old to the kindergarden the following day, if her grandparents fail to send her.

When my mother asks me when did I buy the latest dress she sees me in (this is the most frequent question!) I will always say that PY gave it to me after she grew bored of it. And guess what? PY does the same. She tells her mother that I bought her the clothes, if her mother nags her about spending too much.

So basically PY and I cover each other’s asses. We were friends since 16, when she wore her purple pair of Reebok while I contended with my father’s form of punishment; a pair of black and white zebra print canvas shoes. The strangest thing happened one day when we decided to go for a walk in a park together and our fathers tagged along as bodyguards. Our fathers were highschool friends too. Therefore our fathers chatted while PY and I chatted. How often do you see that happening these days?

The very first night MiniBoyFriend R and I met, I heard him peeing a few metres away. I don’t know about you but I consider that a strange introduction. He painted a portrait of me with his drunk fingers the very first night and the next morning, he found himself slurring saliva on his security pillow, portrait in hand but the girl was gone. And since I am still around, I am sure MiniBoyFriend is comforted to know that the first night we met was not a product of his vivid imagination under the toxic influence of alcohol (say with me, readers: VODKA), some pills and a box of fag or two. I was real and I still am.

Together we have laughed, cried, painted, fantasized and regretted. We flew for the Rain Forest Music Festival before it became a hip festival. We sat in the bathtub drinking vodka and pouring out our emotional waste on each other. And if I am not mistaken, the last time we went to Lola together, we sweated sleaze as we drank and danced.


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Where have all my friends gone? I don’t know where they’ve disappeared. One day I woke up and they were gone. Waking up to find the people you have hung out with for years have suddenly disappeared can be likened to waking up to a nightmare. It isn’t pleasant.

I wonder what I have done wrong to deserve so many public holidays. I stare at the ceiling wondering what fuck am I going to do now that it is ANOTHER PUBLIC HOLIDAY? I have watched CSI reruns so many times, I can remember the characters’ lines by heart. I have read Haruki Murakami’s books that I dream in Japanese and I cannot possibly go to the cinema again. I have been on holidays and I swore that I would save some money to make up for the RM10k overspending I did on my birthday month. Hence me mopping about on my own.

So what am I left to do? Nothing much, to be honest. MiniBoyFriend R now lives somewhere 2 hours drive from me and he sms-s me whenever he comes out of his magic dragon cloud. Ain, my Indonesian mate has gone back to work in Indonesia. PY is away in Bali with AL. E is lost somewhere with her pack of rugby boys. BestGuyFriend and Nikki are trying to make a baby, so they are in hiding.

Girlfriends are all away with their boyfriends and husbands. That leaves the boys. True boyfriends can’t shag me, so they are searching for other girls to shag. Which leaves me pretty much on my own with a bunch of every willing sleaze buckets, including an acquaintance Mat Salleh Ah Pek who offered me an all expense paid trip to Macau.

‘You are naïve to believe that it is a free trip,’ Alex wrote in his Friday email.

I would like to tell Alex that at 31 years, I can hardly pass myself off as ‘naïve’ anymore.

I am struggling to find friends to spend time with. I mean sincere friends; friends who are truly your friends and not there for the slightest possibility of a love coitus. Where are my old friends, friends from days when we were younger and happier? Where the fuck are they? They are all but gone. And I am now stuck in a world of my own, with two more damn public holidays.


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When one time you were the sun and everything rotated around you, you are now faced with days where you are the satellite and everything rotates around your friends’ commitments and household chores. There comes a point in life when you feel like a satellite. You are rotating on axis and you are floating through space. Aimlessly floating through space.

Welcome to the world of a satellite.