Omnia Mutantur

"Handsome Boy!"

You can tell he is from Penang from the way he speaks. The way he structures the clauses and takes protracted pauses in between. It reminds Quill of his Penangite friend who would - whenever explaining anything - take ages to establish the context and get to the point. "And then you know arh, the place is very far."

People from Penang speak with a slower cadence and more circuitously than those from KL. Quill makes a mental note of this. He also seems to have an aversion to complex clauses. Seems to prefer simple sentences.

Roy's gray hair is slicked back and many wrinkles line his face. He has eyes that twinkle and that crease his tan, sun-kissed face when he smiles, which is often. He looks a little bit like an Asian Richard Gere, dressed in an expensive blue shirt and jeans. He is 70 but has the appearance and demeanour of an uncannily sprightly and energetic 50 year old. He has a habit of cracking up at his own jokes. "Joking only arh. You must laugh lah. Then it will be the medicine and then you will live forever." And he cackles hysterically for another minute, doubled over, wiping imaginary tears from his eyes.

Over the next 3 days, Quill gathers that Roy is an aesthetician, or previously worked as an aesthetician selling Israeli creams and beauty products, importing them through Singapore and then smuggling them into Malaysia. He previously worked in the airline industry as an air traffic controller for 10 years and purports to have an insight into how airplanes work, but never elaborates on this. His topics of interest are - race politics. "Malays are the stupidest race on the face of the earth." Spirituality and religion. "You must go to Israel. The Jews have no friends. Do you know why the first will be last and the last will be first? Hah. Later I tell you. You think first now lah." "You will never ever get enlightenment if you stay here." He is a very strong advocate for visiting Israel. He is full of aphorisms that make no sense. "Anything can. In my vocabulary there's no such thing as cannot. That's why you ask me - everything also caaan. You ask anything also I do. Same for your Aunty right or not? Ahahahahahahaha. Your girlfriend ask also must buy - no money then steal - ahahahahahahaha."

He seems to have no centre. He talks about his 'Girlfriends' - not ex-girlfriend. Present tense. "My Girlfriends, I bring them here to eat. They tell me - then I say to them - you know what I say?" Then he breaks off abruptly and does not continue. Quill wonders if maybe he is just making up the whole anecdote and is simply pausing to confabulate the next part. His discussions never land on a compelling conclusion but hop from topic to topic - "That's why I say the fruit. Hah. You must test a person's fruits. If you say, 'I love Israel but I don't love the Jews?' Right? Something wrong with their mentality." Quill nods and makes the appropriate noises to indicate he is listening.

If Roy were twenty years younger Quill might have ventured to challenge him gently on some of his views, but Quill refrained, thinking it would only lead to a disagreement with no victor and he would not succeed in changing anyone's mind. 

"Handsome Boy!" is Roy's chosen appellation for Quill. He has not called Quill by his name even once. Quill begins to suspect Roy doesn't know it, nor has any interest in knowing it. He has spoken about himself the whole time - never asking a question unless it's to prove a point. 

"Come. Handsome Boy! I must share with you when God shouted at me. Has your father ever shouted at you?"

Quill thinks about it. He can't recall any time his father had raised his voice in anger. Many times disappointment, disapproval, a stern reprimand or rebuke - but to Quill's surprise he has no memory of his father ever yelling at him. Not even once.

"I... can't recall him ever- I think he was very patient with me," Quill says.

"Ah..." Roy appears not to know what to do with that answer. It's not what he had expected.

His Malaysian accent is thick. Pronounced. Quill wonders if it is put on - exaggerated, like his own. Roy apparently studied in the UK for two years, then worked in Singapore selling skincare products to dermatologists. "He frus lah." "I spam him." Remnants of Singaporean slang pepper his speech.

"Handsome. Air con ok?"

"Ah okay uncle."

"You okay or I okay?"

Quill pauses to summon a diplomatic rejoinder.

"Hopefully both ok lah uncle."

Roy keeps quiet, then says half a beat later, "You okay then I okay lah." And as an afterthought squeezes out a forced giggle.

It seemed he had never outgrown the showmanship of marketing and sales, which was defined by a constitutional eagerness to both ingratiate and impress and tell meandering anecdotes designed to illustrate how trustworthy or knowledgeable or humorous or straight shooting or insightful the narrator was/is, substantiated by the interjections / praises / amazed responses of those who were witness to said anecdote at the time of happening. Quill noted that Roy seemed to naturally adopt a tone of grovelling civility, a cloying obsequiousness, while simultaneously praising himself with an indurated winking-nudging manner as if to imply that nothing he says is to be taken seriously - which is not a good look for a man of 70 years. Roy seemed to be the smile of the service industry worker made incarnate, glowing with the empty glow and fixed guilelessness of beauty pageant contestants.

Roy was now loudly lecturing him on how to tell apart different kinds of durian. "Number one. The thorn." He pronounced Thorn as Ton, with a dull, flattened T and with an exclaiming, rising inflection which ended abruptly, like the last microseconds of the word had been mistakenly cropped. The word was forceful as if he were trying to prove a point, but no elaboration was forthcoming. Instead Roy repeated himself. "The ToN!" As if that were explanation enough. "De nex wan ah. You look at de kaa-le." The colour of what? Of the husk? Of the flesh? But Roy had moved on, ploughing through his spiel he had likely delivered to his girlfriends countless times before. Look at how knowledgeable Uncle is, seemed to be the point of the lecture. Quill had by then stopped listening.

 As they cross the Penang bridge, the car is surrounded by and expanse of sky and sea; blue on blue as far as the eye can see, and despite the circumstances it is still magical. "Do you know why this Penang bridge is crooked?" "Why?" "Because our people ah, the government very crooked. Ahaha. So you see, the bridge also crooked one you know. Why never build straight. Shorter isn't it? But you build cunning ah, need more pylon, more duit. More pay ahahaha. Isn't it?"

At one point Quill's Aunt exclaims, "Roy I didn't know you're from Penang!" "Not many people know me. That's why I enjoy life."

At one point Malaysia was once the 3rd largest Southeast Asian economy, in terms of GDP.

If Singapore is alternate reality KL then Pulau Penang is alternate reality Singapore. There are old building facades with steel shutters and wooden signages faded with age. Street side hawker stalls and plastic stools and seating areas that extend onto the street. Clusters of Chinese girls who may or may not have had plastic surgery, but are all attractive in a very similar, narrow, symmetrical way, wearing blouses and short shorts, clutching their phones while ordering Occhen. It's a KL where we neglected to tear down everything and decided to keep some of the old shops and buildings, the plaster of their walls speckled and cratered and left to peel slowly. And yet, Quill notes, it feels rich and alive and teeming with youth and Matsallehs roaming about, sun-tanned and sandalled and sunburnt.

As they drive around the city, Quill notes the absence of crisscrossing overpasses. Driving along Gurney Drive, he watches as old hotels with the paint and plastered walls of old churches, made of cement and mortar instead of glass and metal, solemn, brown and with low ceilings, recede into the distance.

They visit the longest cafe in the city which sprawls its way through an open air courtyard and extends into a back room which regularly features live music acts. In the front is a fashionable delicatessen / dessert bar with a group of young Caucasian girls perched on barstools, cooing and chatting excitedly. Quill wonders afterwards how long the cafe would be around for. Back in KL, everything old was in danger of disappearing. 

In Penang, it seems there is some spell or magic cloud that slows down the rate of change. That shields the city against the tide of time. Penang was a more beautiful version of Singapore, Quill had decided. The old shop houses, the street names, the greenery, the jungle coexisting with the city. The massive malls and towering developments and coffeehouses and roadside stalls and young folk sat outside; their faces lit up by fluorescent bulbs. It felt to Quill like a festival, something dancing with life and light.

Even the people seemed to age slower in the city. They attend a dinner with a group of 60-70 year old movers and shakers who, Quill notes, still have their hair. They grew up, worked for multinational companies overseas before returning to retire in Penang. Some of them lamented the disappearance of the beach, now all privately owned by hotels. No more night time walks along the coast. 

Before heading home, Roy brings them to one final stop: a locally renowned Curry Mee stall situated between the motorway and a BP petrol station. The price has allegedly risen from 10 sen to 50 sen a bowl. As Quill stands in line he overhears Roy making manic small talk with the stall owner, a slim moustached Indian gentleman. "Your wantan mee must improve. How come after 60 years experience your wantan mee cannot improve? You know de Parable of the Talents? Ahahaha." It is then that Roy surprises Quill by saying the only insightful or measured or true thing Quill has heard him say. "Everything also changes lah - it's only change for the better or change for the worst."