When I left you, my beloved readers, yesterday, Manuel and I were waiting in his room for the arrival of my apartmentmate Matthias and his cousin Tobias. (We last saw them in the gripping odyssey Happy Criminals.)

The boys were coming over for massive downloading from the Stusta network and to burn their unearthed movies and games into CDs. Your basic pillaging and arson. Whilst waiting I got a grand total of three SMSes from Blue simultaneously, nearly unheard a phenomenon. Here are some samples:

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got much good surprise. rico like. come see. – cualdo.

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and

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still comin over? got kickin surprise. yes… come see. – cualdo.

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I was beginning to detect a pattern. Perhaps he wanted me over at his place, but I wasn’t really sure. I decided to go check.

It took me all of 20 seconds to walk from Manuel’s to Mike’s. Still, he almost couldn’t control himself and nearly sent me a fourth SMS. I knocked on his door and when he opened it, told him if it wasn’t the second DVD of Eva, I was leavin’.

(For those of you not quite in the loop, Eva happens to be Evangelion, a deliciously bloody epic anime of which we were missing the all crucial episodes five through eight contained in the second DVD of an otherwise complete set. Whew.)

He looked worried for a minute. Guess it wasn’t Eva. Then he brightened up and assured me it was even better; it was Cowboy Bebop.

(For those of you still not quite in the loop, you prolly never will be, but just for kicks, Cowboy Bebop is yet another anime series, this time space bounty hunters paired with the best jazz soundtrack ever recorded. There. It’s official: I’ve become one of those anime freaks I used to go out of my way to avoid in university. Damn.)

Grinning, I promised to return after we got the Bavarian Brothers settled down. Who were actually late, showing up with apologies and 200 blank CDs. These kids don’t fool around, do they? We decided Matthias would surf and burn in Manuel’s room, and Tobias would do the same in Mike’s with his laptop and portable CD-Writer. What fun.

While configuring Tobias’ laptop, we had a casual conversation about Enterprise. This meant the new Star Trek series, of course, Tobias being a major sci-fi fan. I mentioned that the best thing about Enterprise was the Detox Gel. (No hints, folks. Watch it and learn.)

He agreed, saying Ensign Crusher said the same thing. I went, “You read Wil Wheaton Dot Net?” and he was like, “No, I read it from a Trekkie fanzine somewhere.”

Gawd, we’re such geeks.

Fast forward a little: the Bavarian Brothers hard at work, Manuel, Mike and I watched two episodes of Cowboy Bebop, the last being their version of “Aliens.” Let’s say I’ll never leave food in a refrigerator again. (Well, at least not for a whole year!)

Dinnertime: good ol’ Tribühne. Met Hadi and Erich down there. Erich seemed all hyped up about this Bavarian coat he bought and was wearing to an opera. “I’ve got class, motherfuckers, class!” Right. You’re practically oozing with the stuff.

Mike described trying to register for an exam held the previous day. His excuse? He was American. Perfect. I suggested going further and saying he could have said he was from Texas., if he was gonna count on the dumb American vote. Erich explained to this poor, ignorant Malaysian that Texans were a different game altogether; they weren’t gonna get no sympathy.

“Chicagoans or New Yorkers, on the other hand, … Actually, plenty of your people in New York.”

“Yeah,” I smirked, all too familiar with Erich’s brand of adorable racial stereotyping, “Koreans.”

“We got them too, but I meant Puerto Ricans.”

(Har. Har. Not.)

“Right. Jennifer Lopez’s my cousin, twice removed, as a matter of fact.”

(OK, so that wsn’t exactly the smoothest comeback. Bite me.)

After dinner, Hadi hit on this brilliant idea of bringing his nargile, a water pipe, and I’m not talking about plumbing. In the meantime, Blue decided that making a lasso out of a piece of rope he found tied to a tree would be a good idea. He then approached me with the best of intentions.

Which meant of course that I ended up tying him up with his own lasso. Yee-har! Of course, he blamed my kungfu, which he insisted I acquired as a birthright. If you say so, young grasshopper…

We ended up on the roof, the other side of Manhattan, where there were no other people around. Just Hadi, Mike, Manuel and I, smoking and chatting away under a dark, cloudy sky with occasional streaks of absolute brilliance.

It’s at times like this that you feel true camaraderie and spend hours philosophising about the deeper things in life. Which meant we discussed Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk, nodded sagely at his greenness and smoked some more.

We finally left Stusta after midnight, going away with an indelible vision of Manuel flapping furiously at insects in his room with his dishcloth. (I will only say it one more time, the kid’s got a problem.)

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Copyright © 2002 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.