i hate lending people stuff.
especially stuff that belongs to me. stuff that costs more than $100. stuff that i depend on to function. stuff that i NEED and not WANT. stuff that makes my life more fulfilling and could make your life equally fulfilling too if not for the fact that i have it and you don't. stuff that..... aiyah! you get what i mean lah!!

and at the risk of sound like Days of Our Lives, i have to say that it's not you, but rather it's just me. the problem lies entirely with the fact that i have this inate mistrust and cynicism for the entire human race when it comes to lending people stuff. but then again, you can blame it on my chinky chinese genes and them being naturally stingy, calculative and selfish.

this thing about lending people stuff is especially poignant when it involves two factors, namely GUYS and ELECTRONICS. the very basic rule in lending guys your electronic equipment is to NEVER LEND THEM AT ALL. i have seen (firsthand), how perfectly new electronic equipment can end up in the repair centre just after 2 weeks of usage. and the worst part is this: owner usage is to borrower usage is 1:3!!

and here my gay little self is thinking that straight guys are naturally 'pre-installed' with a program to understand electronics. just the same way my brain can process the essence of Paul Smith stripes and Paul Frank monkey motifs (though i still cannot comprehend the ghastly rationale behind the LV Cherry motifs), a part of the straight guy's brain is wired to comprehend JAVA and hardware. i mean, i don't even understand what i'm talking about when i say 'JAVA and hardware'.

but like i said, i have firsthand experience of people wrecking my stuff and the stuff of others. sometimes, it's your buddy. sometimes a crush. how to get angry with them? look at the following case scenarios:


1) you spoilt my laptop!
my colleague who just came home from his home leave in singapore, brought back a spanking new laptop worth about $2.5K. his latest purchase was the talk of the town for weeks because it had all the latest technology of the times like Intel Duo Core processors, a webcam, an awesome graphics card, plenty of RAM and loads of HDD space (oh my god, i sound so straight saying that!). and of course, at my workplace, people are bored and they love to yap a lot. yap yap yap yap yap yap. the news spread, people started wanting to borrow his laptop to play games. and that was and is stil very typical behavior of the staff at my workplace here.

the first few weeks of my stay in brunei, people heard that i had a pretty good laptop. so of course, everyone wanted a piece of my lap. i didn't mind. in fact, i was more than willing to give of my carnal goods. and besides i was new there, i needed to socialize and the laptop made a good transition piece of conversation to sex. during the second week, the frqeuency increased (as in the frequency of people borrowing, not the frequency of sex). but it wasn't until the third week when 3 different people in one single day asked whether they could partake of the products of my loins. that was the last straw that broke the camel bareback. from then on, i would give sarcasm-marinated remarks to people who keep wanting to borrow my laptop for lame reasons like 'i want to surf internet' or 'i want to transfer photos into my thumbdrive' or 'i want to borrow lor'. but back to my colleague's laptop.

from what i observed, the latop seemed to be more in the lap of others than the owner himself. it wasn't until about 3 weeks of lending and returning and installing loads of junk games that suddenly the laptop crashed. something about the graphic card and incompatability with one of the games somebody installed (for sure it wasn't my colleague). the last i heard, it was being sent for repairs at the local authorized service centre. that was about 2 weeks ago. the latest i heard from my colleague, it was still stuck at some part of brunei, awaiting repairs.

the thing about repairs in brunei is that they can't do the complexed ones in the country itself. the company has to send it to one of the outlets in Malaysia instead. and given the travelling time and the general lack of a sense of urgency, i keep telling my colleague that he can forget about getting it repaired. he ought to settle down here, get married, have like 5 kids before they call him back in the middle of his mid-life crisis to inform him that the product's warrenty had expired.

result: the relationship between both parties is now relatively strained. a perfectly good friendship between brah-thurs wrecked by carelessness and irresponsibility. and the owner will never lend stuff to the world again. tragic, right? and the laptop? repaired after 1.5 months of waiting and 15+ phones calls to the headquarters. ask me the brand, i'll tell you.


2) saved games
now, the worst type of borrowers are those that take advantage of you. you lend them once, they'll ask the second time. twice and they'll eventually start hankering after you for whatever item they want to borrow. eventually, you'll feel really bad if you don't give the guy what he wants. and thus begins a neverending story (cue stupid boy sitting on a flying monster enhanced by terrible special effects).

i have this colleague who stays in the bunk opposite mine. he would always pop over to borrow my Nintendo DS. and i will almost always lend it to him simply because i do not have the heart to reject anybody that as cute as him. though in my mind, the many posters of Malaysian FEMALE pop stars adorned on his cupboard tend to shatter any chance of him being gay.

point is, he borrows my games and plays my games. and when he returns the DS to me, my saved games will generally have been tampered with. in fact, the entire saved game had been saved over by him. meaning whatever progress i have made in the game is lost. there were other games where he (and i'm guessing here) didn't want to open a new saved game, so he just used my saved game and finished the entire game with it. like, hello? it's my game lor! at least let me finish it by myself lor! chee bye.

which is why, whenever he wants to borrow my DS nowadays, i always show him 'THE FACE'. that look of irritation and a thousand poisoned darts just flashes for a split second. a split second that's long enough for him to notice it. and it always warms my heart when i can see the guilt in him when he borrows my DS. in fact, all the darts and guilt have pushed him to go purchase a DS of his own. thank god!

come to think of it, he's not as cute as i thought anymore. in fact, he brinks on irritation and hate. there's something about spite and anger that tends to uglify your impression of others. that's ironically, the beauty of it.


so you see, a friendship is somehow endangered whenever somebody lends something to a buddy. it's because of this basic principle that i am very reluctant to lend anybody anything. if an electronic equipment is wrecked, i want to proudly and blamelessly say that I AM the one who destroyed it. not my friend. not some stranger i had a one-night stand with. not anyone else.

besides, i'm saving you from a thousand darts and a really ugly image of you. i think you ought to thank me by letting me borrow your PSP lor!

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