The Breakfast Club

There are only three rules in the Breakfast Club:

Rule No. 1 - Do not talk about work.

Rule No. 2 - Seriously. Do not talk about work.

Rule No. 34 (a) - Everybody pays for his or her own food. No excuses.

There were other rules, but nobody followed any of them and they quickly became forgotten.

Except for Rule No. 14 (“Girls must show their tits or get the fuck out” or for short, Tits or GTFO) which is still remembered today by many, but was immediately voted off by a count of two to three.

Two votes against. Zara, and her hand slamming the table.




Zara waved her hand at the boy, as we sat down at the table at the edge of the shop.

The boy took out his pen and paper, and waited for each and every one of us to order.

It took forever.

When the boy walked away with our long list of orders, we all took turns to guess his age.

Thirteen.

Thirteen.

Sixth grade.

Twelve going on thirteen.

Old enough to smoke. Fifteen.

The boy was actually sixteen.

When Zara asked the boy for his age, his face changed.

I am in Form 4, he said, with a frown. He was offended.

Zara said thanks to the boy as some of us erupted in rude laughter.

The boy walked away, hating Semenanjung people more than ever.




“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the dark alleys at dawn, looking for an angry fix.”

Did you write that?

No, that was from a poem called ‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg.

You’re fucking weird.

No, I am not. Ginsberg is weird. I just like obscure poems.




Ricky said, We are all bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it more than others, that’s all.




Is Laksa Sarawak a morning dish?

Fuck, who knows.

But that’s what most people say, one of us said.

Rizal, who had not spoken a word, only smiling and giggling, said, It tastes a lot like Maggi.

Is that your way of saying it tastes bad?

No, I like Maggi, he said. But yeah, Maggi tastes bad in the morning. Especially asam laksa.




Rizal said, I have always wanted to say ‘Thank you, Captain Obvious!’ whenever someone says something really obvious.

But I have never managed to say it.

It’s always after the guy has left or I have walked away would I go ‘Ah! Fuck! I should have said it lah!’ You know? I mean, a golden opportunity, and you lost it.

You feel like you have wasted such a great way to make yourself cool, and then it haunts you.




You guys ever wondered why some girls fall in love with guys who look like their Dads?

I read somewhere that there’s a name for it. Some sick sex pervert thing, psychology.

What?!

It’s a Freudian thing. Subconscious. Something about your brain when you were small.

Hah! That one!

Zara said, Guys, it works both ways lah. Some guys like girls who look like their Moms.

All quiet in the western front.




Shit. All this talk about legal age is making me feel like Rule No. 21.

Zara looked at me with eyes burning with fire from PMS Purgatory.




Why do they serve ikan masin in the nasi lemak in Sarawak?

We all looked at each other for answers.

Zara shrugged it off and said, Why do we serve it with boiled eggs in Semenanjung?

Yeah, she’s right. We all then returned to eating the nasi lemak.

Ricky then postulated, Maybe it’s because the fart later would smell better with ikan masin as compared to boiled eggs?

Fuck you, Ricky! We are eating!

But honestly, deep down inside as engineers, we were all looking forward to smelling it later.




We just wasted how many millions ah? to send this moron to space--

An ASS-tronaut!
An astro- NUTS!

--and the government is now using Petronas money to subsidize gas prices!

He’s a fucking space tourist lah, bro. He did space experiments with roti canai in space. I mean, come-fucking-on lah weh. Do the experiments in a vacuum-fucking-chamber lah.

It’s not the vacuum aspect of space that they want, Ricky. It’s the absence of gravity.

Then throw the guy with all that experiment off a cliff lah! Let them freefall at 9.8 meters per second!




I mean, seriously, how would we build bridges and buildings without algebra and trigonometry?




Call me up on weekends and let's do breakfast. No wives. No husbands. No plans. The earlier in the morning, the better. Let's talk about baby names, Sarimah Ibrahim, and whitewater rafting.

Loudly.

And then we lounge and wait for the caffeine to kick in.

And wake ourselves up from a long hard week at work.

Later, we return home and curl up on the cold cement floor in front of the TV - Nigella Lawson beating up some eggs and making silky smooth vanilla cream and going ‘Uhmm, I just love the taste of cream’ - and slowly but surely we fall asleep with a huge satisfied smile across our face.

Because we have just discovered that special weekend nap time between brunch and lunch.