101st

Ooh.

Hi there. Obviously, it's been a while and loads have been happening. Some of which are completely out of my control.

Anyhow, there's been this thing that has bugged me for a while.

Now, evidently I'm single.

For some reason, most folks seem to think that I am or should be dating a friggin' farang aka angmoh. The thing is, I'm not too sure where they get this idea and quite frankly, it's not an idea I'm comfortable with. Somehow, I feel so SPGish though I know that's largely stereotypical to think so. If it had been just some random person saying so, that would be one thing, but I've had at least 5 completely unrelated groups of people who thought so. The most recent one being a friend I've not met in years.

I don't know if this was a compliment. I guess he did mean it as one. It went something like "don't waste your intellect on a malay mat." Dude, first and foremost, I'm not exactly an intellectual. I'm a friggin bimbo! Or at least, my brain kinda does the bimbotic routine pretty often.

Secondly, are all malays mats? I mean, seriously, I've been thinking about it and I've posed that qn to several people and most tend to feel that is so. Does that make my dad a mat? What about my uncles? And gosh, MY BROTHER! (ok, fine..my brother is kinda mat-ish in an abang-abang kinda way.) Aren't we generalizing it a little too much?

I mean, I've met non-mat malays. Though admittedly, most of these non-mats don't even acknowledge their malayness. Then again, what is wrong with being a mat to begin with? I mean, so what if a guy's a malay mat. What does that mean? What is a mat?

When I think of the word mat, I always think of shortfart...glen ong's malay mat alterego. All the stereotypical notions of a mat's brought to "life" through the character. His rilek-one-kornerness, the accent, the slight himboness....is that what makes a mat?

Den again, there're the scrambler biker dudes...the longish hair 80s mats with torn, tapered jeans and a penchant for sappy rock ballads. In more recent years, there's the trucker cap mats with tapered jeans (tapered never dies!) etc. But is it just the physical aspect that made a mat mat?

I get this impression that people think of mats as being rather...dumb, for lack of a better word. That's kinda sad, isn't it? I mean, being perceived as dumb? And come to think of it, is it even true? I cannot believe that I'm smarter than all the malay mats. THAT would be delusional.

So...hmmm...this has been a rather disjointed piece of writing crap but I guess, the whole thing's still rather disjointed in my head to begin with.

Oh well.

So, what is a mat?