Saturday, August 16

on crows, pigeons and hornbills

I woke up this morning and stared out my window. Savoring the last moments of being alone in Shah Alam. Savoring independence. Savoring freedom. Savoring solitude. The early morning breeze caresses me, invigorates me.

A crow flew past me. And another. And another. Black behemoths, their discordant cries rip the gentle air. I'll never get used to them. I do not love crows, especially their cawing.

I'm a Taiping girl! A town of peace and serenity (literally) that does not have crows. We have cooing pigeons. We have twittering sparrows. We have silent kingfishers. Not crows. They simply do not belong there.

I counted 9 crows this morning.

And I wish they were pigeons.

***

The thing about meeting new people is that you become acutely aware of how ignorant and stupid you are.

In Taiping, you get to see rows of pigeons on the electricity cables. Rows and rows of them looking like this:


___pigeon___pigeon___pigeon___pigeon___pigeon___


So I asked my Sarawakian roommate if they get


____hornbill____hornbill____hornbill____hornbill____


She laughed and laughed and laughed.

1 comment:

Jamie Soo Siew Yuin said...

Geesh!

I sense a verisimilitude style of writing likened to that of Mark Haddon.

Dropping by,

In Shah Alam, you have:

_____crow____crow____crow_____

Just be thankful it isn't:

____vulture___vulture____vulture