About Nude Not Naked

"The most beautiful girls are in Poland," he said, then putting out his cigarette.

"The last Polish girl I knew had blue eyeshadow and looked like a Russian girl peddling flowers," I said. "Hmmm I somehow remember very short skirts and platforms..."


*

The flight to Poland was 1 hour and 45 minutes but the difference between the two cities could not be more vast. Perfect weather when we landed in Wroclaw. The boys went out for a drink the second they dropped their bags in the hostel. Ruska 51 is the best place to party as I soon discovered. You could hop from one club to another, never leaving the street. You go in at 10 p.m. after dinner and you emerge in the full sunlight at 5 a.m. Andy BB and Joe even managed to stay up all the way till 8 a.m., served by pretty Polish girls with chopstick legs.

Alex could not have chosen a better time to tease me about my miserable drumstick thighs. "Babs, you feeling fat, is it?" he purred. I felt like smacking him, which I did.

Eight boys and one girl sat at the town square, which was one of the largest in the world at midday. The boys suffered from whiplash by sight of all the hot girls in the shortest shorts and skirts. "Fuck, check that one out!" Mike said, biting his lower lip. The young woman was wearing a slim cut white blouse and a short skirt, with nice high heels. She was beautiful so beautiful. Mike adjusted his Oakley glasses and tried to flash a friendly smile.

Boys. Given half the chance, they'll hump anything mountable.


*
Wroclaw (pronounce: "row-slav") is a beautiful city, filled with green parks, museums, cosy cafes and spectacular restaurants. The whole experience is affordable, with the most delicious meals costing approx. RM120. Simple meals can be had at Kurna Charta, a hotspot for travelers looking for a cheap meal. Meals start at approx. RM10 for pierogi (dumplings) and soups.

Nightlife is amazing. Some clubs are open 24 hours. As night falls, the famous street Ruska 51 comes to life with people queuing for a spot in different clubs. The music in Metropolis was fantastic and I left the place at 5:30 a.m. Beer cost approx. RM8/bottle. I can't list the price for vodka cocktails since I have not paid for a single glass.

Somehow the Brits decided to punish Wroclaw with their awful stag and hen night parties. The nine of us shared our Ryanair flight to Wroclaw with a bunch of men who cross-dressed as nuns. Very Sound of Music. None of them shaved their hairy legs. The groom was made to wear a black latex suit, with its side laced. One evening while we sat on the town square, we watched some dude dressed in Borat's green swimwear. Some guts, I tell you.

Some warning before you click "x" at the corner of this browser and make your hurried bookings to this party heaven. The city imposes a penalty for stupidity. Misadventures are tolerated and perhaps even laughed at but disruptive and destructive drunk behaviour will result in paying a 250zl (equivelent to RM300) fine and being locked up in a tiny room with other Borat-s.

All in all, Wroclaw is vibrant and colourful city. Worth at least one visit in your lifetime.








***
Related Links

• Find out more about Wroclaw.

‘And when the music stops, you find a chair and sit,’ the lady in the hat said.

The birthday girl and twenty of her friends walked around the circle of chairs. Their tiny footsteps soon caught up with the music played. They froze the very second the music stopped and after a few bedazzled moments, they ran towards a chair. Some shrieked in delight as they sat on their chairs. Others clambered towards the nearest unoccupied chair.

The birthday girl ran for one and the moment she touched it, she lost the chair. So she ran for another, just three chairs away. Before she could even reach the chair, it was taken. By the third try, tears formed at the corners of the birthday girl’s eyes. Her mother came to hold her hands and guided her towards the side; the side where everyone stood and watched the little game.

The birthday girl stopped in her footsteps and she refused to walk away. She turned and looked at the game unfolding itself when the lady in the hat started to play the music again.



*
Ironic, I thought to myself. Sometimes life can be pretty ironic. PY, E and I were sat in our little corner in Starbucks. The two girls chatted away when my mind travelled to another day and time.

‘My husband forbids me from going out with Otto anymore,’ I imagined her saying. She was the 4th girl in our group and the four of us were good friends in the last two years of highschool. How we became friends was rather interesting. E and I sat next to each other since we were 14 and on the last year of our education, she had decided that we needed to concentrate on our studies. In other words, E decided that we should start doing homework and concentrating in class instead of exchanging notes about boys we liked.

And so one day I came to school and there sat this really tall girl with the sweetest dimples. Her name was Jane. E assigned herself to sit next to another girl and that girl was PY. And that was how four very different girls ended up sharing recess break together. We could not be anymore different but yet we were friends.

Jane somehow ended up in an accountancy course, far away in the north. PY attended Form 6. E went to work and I attended college. We kept in close contact. There were photos of us together during our 21st birthday, each of us sporting really ugly haircuts. There were even photos of us together in a toilet cubicle, taken the night before Jane left for Dublin with her boyfriend.

Education did its work on all of us. For Jane morphed from a teenage nightmare with dangling earrings (we are talking about the early 1990s, a time when even MTV videos were innocent) and tattered jeans into a beautiful and responsible young woman. She studied hard, graduated and worked in Dublin. She eventually ended up with the other non-Muslim in the course, a boy a year older than all of us.

It was this boy that turned into a man that she married ten years later. It was this boy that told her to stop communicating with me. It was this boy and her that decided that they were too matured and responsible to hang around a very irresponsible me.

Approximately four years ago, Jane and I stopped talking. It was as if we woke up one morning and decided that it was best that we did not talk to each other anymore. I had enough emotional baggage and I was quite glad to get rid of one. She said that I was wild and irresponsible as a 25 year old and I felt wronged by a very close friend. We just stopped talking.

But through PY and E, I heard news of Jane. She shared a house with her husband almost immediately when they tied the knot. They started working very hard and were promoted very quickly through two mega international companies. I was genuinely very happy for them despite all of us having gone our own ways.

You can say that I was this overgrown kid, still hanging out in the clubs with the boys. I had so many boys that I could rotate them for my meals and still had spare. Those years were spent fast and wild, sleeping only to wake up for yet another party. When the 3 of them settled down blissfully into their respective permanent relationships, I was this girl who had a new boyfriend every third year.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Otto. All the men were fine. SwedishLove was fine and she broke up with him,’ Jane lamented a long time ago. ‘And now she is going out with this new boy, Alex. He is fine too.’



*
The men were all fine. What made me wriggle uncomfortably every so often, I don’t know. But I know that I have to move on to another relationship. It was as if I had changed and grown, the men had to change and grow, mirroring who I had become.

Since leaving highschool, here are the counts of men that the four of us dated, had relationships and married:

Jane

• One permanent partner, a boy a year older than us.

PY

• One boyfriend who drove fancy cars from his 2nd hand car company.


• Currently happily married to a man 14 years older.

E

• One man she loved, married and shared children with.


• One boyfriend since her separation from her husband.

Otto

• Alan, SwedishLove and Alex as permanent partners.


• Seriously dated at least three other men (with the intention of forming lasting relationships).


• A few permanent MiniBoyFriends such as BestGuyFriend, R and Adidas Boy.

Needless to say, I was the hopeless one in the group. I was the one who couldn’t form lasting relationships and I was the one who was crazy.

‘I tell you, this is what happens when you go to church as a teenager.’ Jane said a long time ago. ‘I was doing all this partying when I was a teenager and now that I am in my 20s, I am stable and Otto is like this mad teenager.’



*
Ironic, I thought to myself. 2007 is presenting itself as a year for pregnant ladies and a year for great break-ups. Great break-ups which included Jane’s, E’s, my boy cousin from my father’s side and a very young girlfriend who called me every now and then. PY and E were talking about Jane’s divorce and how it was affecting her. Every so often, E mentioned how she was coping with her own break-up from her Muslim boyfriend.

‘No future,’ E said, clasping her hands together. Their relationship blossomed at the same as Alex’s and mine and now 4.5 years later, they broke up and Alex and I are still hanging on together. Somesort.

The girls were concerned for Jane when she returned for Chinese New Year celebrations this year. She and her one permanent partner were filing for divorce immediately after the Lunar celebration. E’s boyfriend became their appointed lawyer. This event broke more than just a vow to love one another and a housing loan. It broke Jane’s heart. PY was worried for Jane because she looked depressed and was depressed for quite a few weeks.

‘Oh tell Jane that she will survive it. Better do it now when she is still young than when she is 45 with two kids,’ I said between licking the tasty cream off my coffee. ‘Consider this as a clean start in life. Look at it this way. Now Jane can choose someone that is suitable for her NOW, than to deal with an old love that was a reflection of her when she was 19.’

My mind was far away when PY and E were talking about E’s new life. 2007 is the first year that E is truly single. She had a permanent partner since she was 15. That’s like 16 years ago. My god, she had spent half her life with a man. Now she is spreading her wings and feeling so happy and adventurous. There were all these new boys that were calling E, confessing how much they were smitten by her presence and how much they had wanted to be with her.

‘Can you believe it? 5 different messages from different men, telling E how much they love her and want to be her boyfriend,’ PY said the following morning when we were having breakfast.

‘I hope you told E never to believe the crock men say.’ That was me dispensing advice to my girlfriend. ‘Men will say anything and do almost anything, just to have half the chance to get into your panties.’



*
Ironic, I thought to myself. Now all I hear during coffee breaks is the weekend adventures for two of my closest friends. How they’ve visited the latest club and have phone numbers stuffed into their hands. With much more money and financial freedom in our 30s, these girls are feeling the freedom that only a single woman could feel. How empowering and good it felt. How you feel that you could live forever.

‘This boy asked me to go to Tokyo with him. That boy said I could stay with him in Hong Kong while I nurse my broken heart,’ E said as she pointed at the photos of boys and what they had promise her in recent weeks. Her eyes were so full of life and she was so happy talking about them. One sneak peek at the boys and you could see that they were physically good looking and had the financial freedom that only came with men in their 30s.

The world has no limits.

I walked down that path and I had the boys. I still have the boys but I am telling myself to give up. Slowly I am giving all these up. It is time for me to move onto another level. I know that it is. I don’t know where I am going but I know that it isn’t shagging in some dingy pub toilet cubicle, next to puke. Those days were wild and those days are now gone. I want something more meaningful and I seriously think that my bones can’t take the vigorous shaking in the cubicle or shack.



*
All of us are participants in a game of musical chair. Life is like a game of musical chair and each chair represents a stage in our lives. There are no two same chairs as there are no two same stages in life. When the music stops, you and I are sat on different chairs.

Do not make a mockery of your friend’s chair. Do not say that your chair is the best. Once the music starts again, all things are fair. You might just end up on the very chair you despised. Do not look at your chair and feel that the world is lost. Do not feel lost. And when you are sad, do feel sad but do not feel too sad. One day you will change your chair and you will find yourself in a different stage.

Ok, so I am frantic at the moment. I'm closing one building sales and in the process of negotiating for another. I haven't shaved my legs in more than 2 weeks. My eye brows make me look like a Chinese Brooke Shields. I haven't gone to the toilet in the last 3 days. Haven't written nor read anything in the last 2 weeks. But I somehow managed to eat fishball noodles every morning.

Will in London Heathrow Terminal 3 in less than 48 hrs time and hopefully I will be able to tick of my list of chores and start writing something soon.

*muah*

‘Do you think girls are materialistic?’ I asked him. JF and I were sat in his black car, caught in a two hour traffic jam.

He was hesitant. ‘Woah, what a question to ask’ he said as he looked at his rear mirror. I didn’t blame him. Women are not the most rational creatures and more often than not, questions asked were traps the size of giant razor sharp claws in the middle of the desert sand pit. There was never a right answer and I don’t think there ever will be right answers when women ask women questions.

‘Do I think girls are materialistic?’ he asked, as if for assurance that I was rational despite being stuck in his car for the past hour or so, with no access to any nearby toilet facilities. ‘Do I think girls are materialistic? Yes, if the girls are under 30.’

There. JF committed his neck to the chopping board. Luckily I wasn't in the mood to make his life a misery. After all, it was not often that I see him and he had taken the trouble to share a dinner table with me (when all my friends were away for holidays!).


*
What do you think people do when they ride in lifts alone? I think they stare into the mirror, at themselves. They check themselves out. Maybe for a piece of pork pie stuck between their second molar and their wisdom tooth. Girls might check their hair out or take a moment to reapply their lip stain.

This morning I walked into an empty lift. I stared myself, as if searching for a lost sister in the reflection. Maybe hoping to catch a glimpse of who she is and what she is destined from birth to do. I looked at my face, checking every pimple and bump. My new hair colour made me look different. This is the deepest brown I have ever had since dying my hair eons ago.

I looked at my bag. It was a geometric Roxy canvas bag, in the brightest blue, apple green and white. In its own right, it was a beautiful and fun day bag.

I don’t have a night bag.

Anyway I stood in the lift that took a while to reach the ground floor and a thought popped into my head. Seriously just fuck everything, I thought to myself. I am tired of chasing after things and half the time, I don’t even know what is it specifically that I am chasing!

‘That’s it! I am officially never going to buy any ridiculously expensive bag!’ I said to myself. I could not even name a bag that I had wanted to buy, other than knowing that I wanted to spend thousands and thousands of Ringgit on a bag. Because every other girl had one. I mean, even the aunty with leopard print leotard and the clerk from a supplier’s office had one. So if a nurse had one, why shouldn’t I be carrying one?

I spent 2006 hassling Alex to buy me an expensive watch. How expensive? Expensive within the range of RM5k to RM10k. Which model or brand of watch do I specifically want? I don’t know. I just want an expensive watch. Why? Because all my friends had one. From Omegas to Tags to Rolexes, you name the brand, my friends had them.

Stared at the reflection of my wrist. It was an old Titus. And in case you don’t know what Titus is, it is the brand that is endorsed by Sammi Cheng. In other words, it wasn’t one of those diamond encrusted, fancy chronograph whatnots expensive watch. It was a practical, no brand name watch that was reliable. I have had this watch for more than 4 years and it has never failed to tell me the time of the day.


*
‘I thought you said you would leave at 11 a.m.?’ I asked as I sneaked behind E. She sent me a message earlier yesterday morning to asked for details on a boutique we both shopped in previously. I was busy chomping down breakfast on my own when that happened and I realised that I could not make it in time to see her.

‘Just can’t seem to get the errands done,’ she said as she took some cash out of her black Prada purse. Her emergency errands on Thursday happened to be buying party clothes for the weekend. I guess everything becomes more dramatic once you decide to end a 4 year relationship. Which E did last weekend and now she drowns her sorrows with the rest of the rugby boys and some bottles of vodka.

In her bag, she had two dresses that looked familiar. It was the same design I suggested E to buy a month ago. She found two more dresses in exact design but with different print and colour. It felt strange having three dresses in exact design. I took a look at them and walked towards the racks again. I picked out another dress, a white with hibiscus flowers in Hawaiian styled prints. She bought that too.

In total she had 4 exact dress design in varying colour and pattern. Looking at E pay for those dresses calmed me so much. It was so comforting watching her do so. She is as lost as I am, I thought to myself. It sounds almost evil if not for the fact that I have no ill intentions.

I have always seen E as someone stronger, smarter and emotionally more matured than I. She had this great innate sense of discernment, a skill that I wished I had possessed more. Her previous partner and the more recent ex were both wonderful men. I respected her thoughts and opinions because I knew she was able to see into people.

The pass year had been a great one for her too. E worked hard and reaped material gains for her diligence and efforts. Within one year, she was out on weekends carrying bags that I had previously only seen in fashion magazines. E seemed to spend on average twice (if not more) my shopping budget, whenever we shopped together.

Watching her take money out of her recently purchased Prada purse for 3 copies of the same dress made me realise that she was just like me. E was lost just like me. I am lost in this world carrying my Roxy bag and she is also lost, albeit more stylish in her Prada-s and Christian Dior-s.


*
I rushed through the glass door and sat next to my father. It was tea break, a few hours since I bumped into E at the boutique. He had breadcrumbs on his whiskers. That is what I fondly call my father’s moustache, which made him look like a police officer. I gently tapped his whiskers, so the crumbs would fall. He helped me place my order and then we started talking about different things. Father and daughter theraphy session on a Thursday afternoon.

He woke up 4 a.m. yesterday and was excited to walk. That wasn’t the point of his story obviously. He was getting to the exciting bit. The part when he said he turned around and saw my mother, soundly asleep next to him. ‘I promised that I will love her more,’ he said.

Sometimes I feel that my parents are naïve. Naïve despite their age. Or maybe naïve because of their age. In my opinion, my father spoilt my mother with excess of unconditional love, which had led to her having the temper and tantrum of a 4 year old. But that is another story all together. Their love story and marriage deserves a book written in their names.

‘Do you remember who I am?’ a smiling man asked. He and another man, friends of my father’s came over to say hello. ‘You were so small when I last saw you,’ he said. He looked like Santa Claus, if Santa ever resided in Anhui instead of Lapland.

‘You are Uncle XYZ’s brother,’ I replied.

The mid 50s man was pleased that I had recall who he was and asked what made me remember. I replied that it was his voice, which was similar to his brother’s, an even closer friend of my father’s. Uncle XYZ visited our family home frequently and his hearty laughter is infectious. It is unforgettable.

‘What’s the difference between Uncle XYZ and I?’ he asked. He was feeling rather jolly.

‘Oh you are better looking,’ I said, batting my eyes. The three old men, my father included, were laughing. I am telling you, it is much easier to please older men. Quick wit and charm, those are the things that will win men over by the dozens.

When the laughter had settled and the two men left the table, my father and I continued talking about love and life. I was basically telling him to think differently. To accept me for who and what I am, which is in essence, different from his and my mother’s expectations.

‘I realised that I am okay,’ I said to my father. I managed to crawl out of my depression and I saw the light at the end of the dark tunnel. ‘I am alright and I shouldn’t put so much pressure on myself.’

Yes, E has all the beautiful things in the form of leather bags and cutesy things, which I do not have. However I realised that I have some things that she doesn’t have too. Each of us sacrificed something for another. She did what was necessary and suitable for her and I made decisions based on what was important to me and what I was willing to give up in exchange of another.

I never really wanted them anyway and I had no clue what bag or shoes or watch I had wanted. I just knew I wanted these things because everyone had them. Consequently I declare the 4th of May 2007 as the Die Prada Die day. This is the day that I give up my materialistic wants.

This is the day that I will no longer pursue after something that I know will never be quenched. The list is forever long and each season brings a new celebrated and most sought after thing. It will never end and I will never be happy. Now I celebrate my stomping my feet on the ground. It’s Die Prada Die!


*
There is no formula to a happy life. Each of us take our own steps, make our individual decisions and live through the happiness and sadness of the consequences rising from our decisions.

Sometimes it is easy to look at others and see everything bright and beautiful in them. And we look at ourselves in the mirror with such disdain. We push ourselves very hard and we hardly give ourselves the credit that is due.

We failed to realise that others are just like us. Lost.