The 'regular'

Today like any other morning, i reversed my car out from the house porch then proceed to get down and lock the gate. In the process of doing so, i looked around to see if i could bump into any familiar faces. From far i noticed a middle age man in his 40s walking downhill towards me. He was sweaty, his hair was in a mess and his clothes looked dirty with its colours fading towards greyish or blackish side. He looked like he never bathe in years. Normally i needed 2-3 minutes to lock the gate because i needed time to apply the appropriate pressure and technique on the faulty padlock in order to lock it. From his distance, i knew i need to lock it fast. My heart was pounding so fast, my hands were disobeying me and my brain was cursing nonstop at the faulty padlock. The moment i felt the rotating disc moved, i quickly pushed up the shackle and ran in my car locking myself inside. I looked at the man and he was 5 metre away from my car. My imagination ran wild. What if he came and knocked on my window? how do i response to him? Slide down my window? Glare at him? Stoned? Or what if he blocked my car from behind? Should i ran him over? And why did my police neighbour shifted off when i really need him now? Why did my next door neighbour renovated his house leaving his and two others empty? Why did my the other neighbour shifted off too?? why? why? why? What a bad timing. In the midst of the drama happening in my brain, the man was already down at the foot of the hill. I guess i forgot to claim my brain back from the final destination back to back marathon.

There was another case of me reversing my car where an auntie out of nowhere appeared beside my window. I had never seen her before. She knocked on my window and with a blank face, she signaled me to lower down my window. I did because i don't think an auntie would harm me afterall my housemate was beside me. She told me she needed a lift to the town to top up her phone credit. Without any hesitation, i told her to get in. On the way to town, she told me about how she cant top up her phone credit at the shop nearby and insisted that there's only one shop in town who knows how to do it. When we past the ramadhan market, she told me how her husband used to visit there but not her. Now her husband had past away, she no longer had a chance to visit there. I was sensing something fishy in that sentence. Did i just gave a lift to a psychiatric patients who is too depress of her husband passing? We kept on bombarding questions after questions in order to get her busy talking in case if she don't she might strangle or attack us at the front seat. As you know its very hard for us at the front to look at what was happening at the rear without looking too obvious we were staring at her. i drove as fast as i can to her destination and let out a huge sigh of relief after she left. I guess i am too city-ish to feel at ease in such situation of close friendly kampung culture. If someone was to knock on my window out of nowhere in the city i might just sprayed pepper spray directly to her eyes and then ran her over. LOL!

Baling town is famous for its psychiatric patients lurking around. It's logical for me to be paranoid. There are a few familiar places to spot them. Everyone in town knows it. We call them the 'regular' there. They all looked the same. Messy hair, fadeaway colour clothes with inches of dirt/dust and filthy. So if you happened to be in baling, be sure to be neat and clean or you might just be mistaken as one of the 'regular'. And please don't go around magically appearing on someones side window with a blank face because they might just reported it as a case of psychiatric or worse, suspected robbery.