New Friends!

Final Project: Bar-hopping.

The watering holes of Kuala Lumpur are found in every nook and cranny of the city. For this final project, I was a little apprehensive with wanting to single out any individual to relate their Kuala Lumpur to me. I wasn’t even sure about the way I was going to go about this, if it should be recorded with video, or just the voice, etc. Deadlines are forever looming ahead of us like a thunderstorm that just won’t go away. I’m fickle like that, I do realize.


Anyway, back to the topic. The project required an interview of some sorts with anyone we choose to relate their story of this city to us, either personally, emotionally, historically and I suppose even spiritually. I felt that if I chose a specific person to interview, I might be missing out on all the other stories that I would like to hear as well. And thus, I proposed to “interview” (read: make new friends) different random strangers. In bars. I heard of my classmates’ ideas where they choose to pick one person from their lives and carry that story out. But my perspective of that had to be wider and to be speaking to complete strangers on a regular basis, just so I could have material for my project, is a little frightening, to say the least.


Bar-hopping isn’t a new feature in my life, I enjoy doing so for its socializing benefits, as well as the fact that it continues to fascinate me, how people get so friendly (sometimes, TOO friendly) after a few drinks. They are also a lot more tolerant and open, therefore so much easier to talk to. The intoxication must help in some way. I like how words flow freely when you don’t have barriers to stop you from saying anything. It’s a lack of mental filter or verbal diarrhea if you will. I’ve been in situations where I had drunk people shouting at me, for reasons that can only be known to themselves. It never ends well. I’ve also made countless new friends as one drink leads to another, I hope this continues down the road I am traveling.


My point is, I’ve tried to make this experiment of mine as painless as possible, as anonymous and secretive as I can, only to escape the fact that if I were to let these participants on about what I was doing, it would lose a part of its originality and the passion and pace would be different. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, why I was asking all these questions, or maybe I’m just good at evading certain questions. Everyone involved were from different walks of life, age groups, backgrounds, and nationalities. I do try to make it even when it comes to gender. But I’m female, it’s always easier for me to talk to men. Women have a weird radar around me, maybe it’s because I don’t comb my hair. Also, I specifically went to a variety of different bars because it draws a diversity of crowds and I get to pinpoint who will be my next victim.


The parallel lines we tread here are mostly one that allows my new found friends to simply speak their minds about Kuala Lumpur in whichever way they choose to see it. For the most of it, I stuck to what’s real to me and what I think would be real to many others as well. The country in which we live in, relationships and work were my central questions. Many people spoke of the current politics, how it’s remained stagnant, where issues of racism are always at the core of any situation. My interest ignites and wanes very quickly with this particular subject. One person in particular compared this problem to his own country, where communism is the central ruling system. We talked for a long time that night and I ended up with hope alight in my head. I don’t appreciate being disillusioned but realism needs to play his role. We have voices amongst us that cannot be silenced but a solo fighter who speaks out his mind can mean more than just a night in jail or the loss of a job. It’s obvious we have different priorities. I’ve always thought politics was all about money. Clearly, I have been convinced otherwise. Instead of something material, we are ruled by something we can’t even see, the unknown power of a racial struggle. I slip and try to find my footing from time to time because I don’t understand the entirety of it and that somehow, in my small world, the situation is bigger than I am.


Others walk into bars to drown their sorrows with the heavy broken hearts and love songs in the background don’t exactly help make things easier. But they readily pour their hearts out as they pour their drinks in. You get all sorts of love stories, some are made for the silver screen, I kid you not. I sympathize, pat them on the back and reminisce about my love stories, what happened, what’s going on and think about how it’ll be in the future. People get heartbroken everyday and when it happens to you, the world comes crashing down in a split second. When it ends, all you really want is a strong drink or two and sympathetic ears. That’s how it went for me and that’s how I did it for them.

Here’s some interesting quotes, right from the lips of the dejected:

“Life’s fair, everyone gets to have their heart broken at least once.”

“Going straight gets me nowhere, maybe I need to veer off course.”


Where work is concerned, you get office politics and some drama tossed in for good measure. The boss is the boss for a reason, and many a drink has been shared over the cubicle gossip and bars become the after office hours water cooler stand. It’s interesting to hear their stories on a white collar job. Even with minimal perks and plenty of paperwork, there’s still some space left in between to include the spat with the tea-lady or something tedious like that. I stifle many laughs in between, but I’ve yet to experience my first job in a 9-to-5 circle, and I hope for the sake of my sanity and others around me, that I would never have to do so. The closest I can get to matching my own experiences is that while their jobs are the central part of their lives, I would use university and my education to somehow level them together. True, I don’t earn money, neither do I have to work for a living. But experiences with people who backstab and gossip are all a part of life as we live among people. So it is with dull experiences. I don’t go paragliding or skiing every other day, and thus the excitement can only be this much. It is pretty much the same for all our office workers who sit through the rush hour on the Federal highway every working day.


Quite simply, I made them share a little piece of themselves with me, things I’ve always faced on my own in KL. Hearing them from strangers, people I don’t know, people whom I might quite well never meet again makes me feel that little bit better about being here. It’s unfair to say that each story was the same as the next one, but in relation to my life, it’s similar. There are a few people who caught my attention and we have ended up having regular nights out to talk and it’s a good opportunity for me to practice the art of conversation. But others were purely for the purpose of this project.


I'd do this again in a heartbeat.