Life is... being precise.

Mom makes her kuih and other delicacies often the lebih kurang way. A pinch, or is it two, of salt; a spoonful of soy sauce, a cup of water, just enough baking powder, a bit of vanilla essence…. Ask her to come up with the exact specific measurement and she’ll be looking at you as if you are an alien instead of her own flesh and blood. Nevertheless, I always end up asking for a third or fourth pieces of the kuih all at one sitting. When it comes to her ayam masak kicap or kuah sate, her whole grandchildren would actually go for their second or third helpings. My specialty is merely my chocolate cake or any other modern-day cookies, and I would rely on the recipe book as if it’s the Holy Quran itself. My patience and dedication, however, is sometimes rewarded with screams of frustration when the end product does not turn out to be like it was supposed to. ( Often, poor mom would come to the rescue… )

Whenever we decide to meet our colleagues, we are prone to say lebih-kurang pukul…. , leaving people with no chance of being angry should we fail to turn up on time. After all, we only said “more or less”… and being famous for our Janji Melayu ( thus, Janji Diana and other titles are born ), it is acceptable not to be punctual or precise where time is concerned. It’s okay to be fashionably late – only arrive 30 minutes after the scheduled time, even better, 1 hour later!!! A friend of mine falls for a guy who would only arrive the NEXT day and reject the one who is punctual ( strange, but true… “I don’t go for predictable guy!” She explains. ) I have students who turn up for classes one hour after it starts; I don’t blame them. Their minds are crowded with tons and tons of assignments, quizzes, tests, final papers - being precise or punctual would be the last thing they’ll consider!

Lebih kurang is also the principle that students apply in their studies or academic purposes. Getting a C or at times, B would be an achievement. D is okay but an A, it can send most of our students off to the mental hospital! Even they find it’s hard to swallow! An average student’s target is to obtain a 2.5 or 3.0 CGPA, a 3.5 or 4.0 triggers the alarm in their heads. So, they end up studying lebih kurang, completing their assignments in a lebih kurang mode or even turning up for classes lebih kurang as well. Even when they talk to each other – they will converse in a lebih kurang manner that will make us wonder whether they are lalok at that time…

I, on the contrary, am the opposite. Call me a perfectionist, a completer-finisher, “cerewet” ( as accused by Syed Ahmad Daniel ) but I could not live by the lebih kurang principle. Blame it on my high level of anxiety. My students groan whenever I hand back their assignments, merely because they spell my name ( or sometimes, their own names ) wrongly, or they have accidentally typed an IT code for an otherwise is an English working paper. A colleague once asked the student how would he feel if she were to change the first alphabet of his name into another alphabet, albeit, changing his whole name altogether! They change her name into Norhayati ( who happens to be another lecturer ); another colleague’s name is changed into something that sounds very much like a country, and mine – at time I end up with beautiful names like Jannah ( heaven for Arabic ), at times, I don’t even want to mention it here….

Every time before I travel, I prepare myself as if I am going for a war – which shoes, which tops, which toothbrush! Often I find myself staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning just because I need to pack and unpack my bags! I don’t want to turn up for the meetings or what ever functions in a lebih kurang manner. A friend laughed when he found out I actually followed the flight check-in instruction to the letter – two hours before, it says – even though mine was just a domestic flight. Thankfully, during the return journey, another friend with enough sense managed to persuade me to only go to the airport 20 – 30 minutes before departure. Little did he realize that my stomach was churning at the thought of missing my flight and taking the next bus home…

My obsession with precision can sometimes drive the others up the wall. ( Remember the students just now? ) Thankfully, I’m surrounded by others who more or less share the same cuckooness… Our drives for perfection ( making sure the printed document is both left and right justified, and that students only use certain readable fonts or certain spacing, and if you are using coloured paper as your assignment covers – make sure you choose a corporate colour, and of course, please pronounce the word ‘sheet’ correctly or else you’ll be awarded with one of our infamous stares ) can sometimes irritate the students and other colleagues – thus explains our Schindler’s List status. At home, even the living room curtains are not spared – I would not be happy if the curtain ropes are merely lebih kurang and my military-trained eyes would straight away notice that both of my stuffed monkeys reigning on top of the television set have been moved.

I understand my partner-in-crime’s scenario in Life is… a beautiful smile. Being precise is important here. We need to check the exact size, colour, price, length, width of that particular gorgeous top that we intend to buy – especially when we have to part with hundreds of ringgits for it! After all, we are the ones who will end up being scrutinized just because we go home with an uglier-than-ugly dark purple polka dot top just because we do not want to offend the sales girls / men! We don’t want to be seen pulling what we thought was an ELLE bag, when broad daylight indicates that it was BELLE and it was made in Golok. Therefore, dear sales girls / men, please have mercy on us. Please wait patiently for us – I understand your predicament. I once worked in a souvenir shop and had to entertain the likes like… my own self and my partner-in-crime!!!

Back to the issue for today… Is being precise important?

It is, as confirmed by my marketing trip last weekend. Kedah, a state blessed with its untouched beauty, serviced by highways and well-maintained roads. There is no traffic jam… so unlike KL, I thought! I was admiring the whole scenario on my way back from Bukit Kayu Hitam Duty Free Complex when suddenly the traffic came to a stand still. On the opposite road, a huge trailer stood solitarily. Crowd started forming and for a while, I thought that it broke down. The trailer status made it worse – it would take at least 20 ample-bodied persons to move it aside. Just as I was about to exhale a relief breathe, it was then when I spotted the object that everyone had been inspecting.

There, lying motionlessly underneath the giant truck, was something that resembled a human figure. A closer look indicates that it was a female body, twisted and tangled among what used to be a motorbike. A few minutes before, she might be someone’s daughter, wife, mother – and now, she is merely a corpse. A mistiming or imprecise movement of her cost her, her life. Had she waited a few seconds later – or had she crossed the road a few seconds earlier, she might not turn into another statistic. As for the driver, had he waited for a few seconds before or after the right went red, or had he driven slower, he might have managed to avoid the whole incident.

And as for the bystanders, had they warned the driver, or the rider, a minute earlier, they would have saved a life. Remember the broken ketchup in the road safety campaign? Buckle your seat belt, or helmet. After all, life is… being precise, to the letter.