Indelible Election

GE13, swiped from williamnyk on Flickr.

The fifth of May was my mother's 67th birthday and also the date of Malaysia's 13th General Election. Woke up early to go vote after giving mum a kiss and wishing her happy birthday. Sent her to Sekolah Menengah Bandar Kinrara Seksyen 3 where the line actually started outside the school. And there were two lines. :S. On the other hand, my polling station was at Sekolah Menengah Seri Indah in OUG. That place was just outside the place my sister used to rent so I managed to find parking in the housing area nearby and avoid the jams near the entrance. Unlike my mum's polling station, there were no lines there. Voters just walked in, with a police officer and several EC staff standing by with a wheelchair at the front gate. Since I already knew my channel number, the EC girl just pointed me in the right direction. 2nd floor. My line started from the 1st floor. Some voters passed out tissue papers, I declined thinking that I had a bunch in my pockets. Turned out I was wrong. Opps. Took me about an hour to reach the classroom. Like the others, I had my head down, playing with my smartphone. But I did look around once in a while, spying on random cuties and lesbians. Mostly Chinese voters and even the Malay couple that I saw was as fair-skinned as any Chinese. When my turn came, I produced my IC, quoted my serial number to EC guy and prepared to get my finger inked. Although it would have been just a direct hit, the guy took ages anyway. By the time that my finger was painted, the third EC guy already folded the ballot paper and handed it to me. Did my best to keep the ink from the ballot paper. Crossing the box next to Teresa Kok's name took me less than twenty seconds. Dumped the ballot paper into the box and made my exit. Down at the canteen, I bumped into an uncle who showed me how well he had washed off most of the 'indelible' ink. Go figure.





Quickly made my exit and headed over to BK to fetch my mother. The scene there was totally different. Although there was a large parking lot opposite the school, the traffic was chaos. Reason? The throughput of voters was shit. When I walked in, the lines snaking here and there were chaotic. Was quite a wonder that I managed to find my mum in the crowd. She had just finished voting. She started earlier than me, but finished later. Something wasn't very right. Turns out that the clever EC staff there forced everyone to check their channel numbers first and they weren't doing a very good job of doing it. Bottleneck. Stupidity. Red tape. Bull-headed-ness. Having fulfilled our duty as responsible citizens, we rushed home to prepare for Sunday mass.



Saw many stained fingers at church. For lunch, ate at Restoran Lucky, SS24-- vegetarian lui cha and CKT. BIL was very kan cheong about the election results, so we had hotpot at home. While eating, we were constantly checking on FB, Astro and ubah.my. Results came trickling in and it was obvious that the MSM was only showcasing the big BN wins. Before sending my brother to the airport, brought out mum's birthday cake. A chocolate mousse creation by -Alex- that was inspired by his stint at LDG. Really loved the cake. So rich. Chocolate on chocolate. The rose design was pretty but the only drawback was that one had to disassemble the cake before serving. On our back from LCCT, we stopped at my sister's place again to get the rest of the results. Such a disappointment that the major political tsunami that we had hoped for did not happen. For me, it was such an upset that Wong Tak did not best Liow Tiong Lai in Bentong. Would have loved to see Adnan Yaakob cut off his ears and jump into the Pahang River. Better luck next time!