2007.
Sitting in yet another WiFi café, a rainstorm booming outside. My headphones gently ease Regina Spektor into me. A little dampness when the newspapers all announce a drought. No disaster, they reassure us, we have almost three months’ supply of water in the reservoir. Almost. Let’s not have anyone panicking, what with Chinese New Year coming round the corner, no, everything is alright. We are not dry; what happens when we are thirsty, though?

It will be the Year of the Pig soon. Lusty, violent, brusque, greedy. And I am merely commenting on our nation’s crass consumption: Buy! Buy! Buy! How do we survive without engaging in acts of mass hysteria during the latest sales in our many, many shopping complexes?

You see, Malaysians do not need anything as strenuous as hobbies; we have shopping. We are a nation built upon its hallowed plastic bags strewn across reclaimed landscapes. We are proud, and we always can, yes, we can, we can.

1983.
“We are a nation that shouts at a microwave oven to hurry up.”

Wall Street grows hungry. We will make you eat. Bytes and googley gobbles. Buy a personal computer, every family needs one! (And less than a decade later, every single damn individual; start them while they are toddlers!)

When I watch Supersize Me and read Affluenza, I am able to self-diagnose my indigestion and constipation and melancholia and self-centredness: Yes, dear sirs, I am suffering from Consumption.

Society would scorn and ostracize me now, except they are too busy being stuck in traffic jams all heading straight to the latest ROCK-BOTTOM PRICES!! FINAL CLEARANCE!! SALES. And damn, why aren’t I in a gas-guzzling motor vehicle doing the same?

1959.
Prosperity. War is over. We are independent. Barely a baby, how do we celebrate? We’ve had our years of famine and our years of suffering; let’s enjoy ourselves now. Eat meat, may the slaughterhouses bleed. Build homes, one on top of the other; we must reach the sky, higher and higher must we scale. One day, we’ll conquer Everest too; no matter if someone else gets there first - it don’t count unless there’s a Jalur Gemilang stuck on its peak.

We’ll have our stripes also.

1935.
I wonder what it would be like to live in a real kampung? Not a minority, or worse, an oddity, but the same as everyone else. No big towns, no skyscrapers, no grand cineplexes, no fast food chains, no email, no IKEA, no iPod, no YouTube. No worries too?

This is a lie, yet still I dream about slow, green fields and a life where we would not feed on “products” like bloated swine.