East West East

In a little over 30 days, our team has now conducted three auctions in tandem with the auctioneers of Palma Housing. Yesterday's assignment, number three, was held at the rather spooky Hotel Berlin, Butterworth.

As usual, I started the day by arriving early at Tommy's house, under false pretences of wanting to be early, I proceeded to watch online uncensored-unedited streams of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Global Edition and some upcoming movie trailers using Tommy's DSL connection.

I also fired off a letter to my WWF Malaysia contact.

Guys, please! Cut me some slack, I am going to have to last THREE MONTHS without television, the Internet, and computers!

After one hour (approximately) of online videos, I shared breakfast with Tommy before we made our way to Palma Housing central.

There, Tommy pointed out a few mistakes in the database Palma sent us while I busied myself writing an e-mail to The Star regarding "unused alternatives" in light of the increase in the cost of energy.

I was pleasantly surprised when my contact in WWF Malaysia replied my mail that very morning. As you (don't) know, we are setting up a special page for the pure purpose of donating to non-profit organizations that are short of funds and resources.

Using the information gleaned from the reply, we immediate arranged a trip that very morning to Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), who were said to be in need of funds and volunteers.

A few turns later down Solok Emas, we were greeted by a non-descript rather worn down residential building (which, according to Tommy, wasn't bad) with the number nine stuck to the gate pillar.

Grimmauld's Place this wasn't, but it could be with a little imagination. About five paces from the doorway, an enormous bookshelf rising all the way to the ceiling lined with nature references, biology tomes and other stuff stood imposingly and menacingly to our left with multiple duplicates of it further to the left made its presence known.

We stumbled upon one of the employees of SAM to the right of what would be the parlour of a normal home, who led us upstairs to meet the big honcho of the organization.

On the top floor, we carefully probed the honcho without revealing our true motives as Tommy suggested because, if anyone offers cash, you aren't going to say no, right?

To my surprise, we were told SAM wasn't cash strapped at all and weren't even looking for volunteers! We found out that SAM's work was actually to represent and tie together different environmental conservation groups and to press charges against entities that have caused great grievances to Mother Earth.

In other words, they are the Malaysian environmental equivalent of the United Nations. This also means SAM is looking for activists, not volunteers.

Let's say your town area doesn't have a recycling centre, you decide to set one up for the betterment of your community and the environment - you contact Uncle SAM - Uncle SAM will then send reinforcements, strategists, and experts to help you wage war.

This brief detour was terminated and we went around to Chong Yang's house cum shop to pick up the best computer wizard Chung Ling has produced in 5 generations.

The otherwise routine wait for Chong Yang was interrupted by the largest chicken I have ever seen in my life.

It was HUGE! Even world wise Tommy conceded it was the biggest chicken he had ever seen anywhere.

Here's an idea how big it actually is: One of its drumsticks would be as large if not larger than a regular chicken breast in KFC; Chong Yang's family cat is afraid of it; the monster chicken hunts human children for pleasure.

Anyway, we soon found ourselves on a ferry sailing to Butterworth through surprisingly clean waters. The last times we made our way to Butterworth (both times on a Friday), the water was muddy brown; yesterday, it was bluish green!

It makes you wonder what shipping companies do on Friday.…

Butterworth is a strange city.

The place is on the mainland yet, doesn't have half the number of trees lining the roads to provide shade. The roads are also rather confusing as one wrong turn is the difference between Kulim and (Hotel) Berlin.

To park in Butterworth, you must also purchase parking tickets, which unlike the island, allows you to park anywhere in Butterworth. The downside, it works like a prepaid card, you must buy them in advance.

Hotel Berlin's design harkens back to the America's of the 1960's. Its outward appearance lent it an aura of a cheap motel, yet, once you stepped in through its modern motion detecting sliding doors, you were greeted with the redolent wafting of a hospital reception area.

Even the reception desks and counters reminded me of Lam Wah Ee. The toilets were situated at the end of a short maze of passageways after crossing the threshold of an imposing hardwood door. With each step, I felt more and more like a character in Silent Hill (with Chong Yang making disturbing comparisons with every step we took) instead of a run down cheap motel.

The two doors marked with BAHAYA messages and an unmarked door at the opposite end of the maze leading to the toilets didn't exactly helped to relieve us of the image of a haunted hotel.

In the hotel's conference room, an aroma highly reminiscent of a drug filled sterile clinic greeted us through two hardwood glass installed doors that wouldn't be out of place in an operating room.

In fact, the table upon which we were given to set up our stuff was covered with a smooth cloth seemingly lifted out of an episode of ER.

And to add to the spook factor, the lighting was exactly the kind you see in hospitals and the larger table big enough for a surgical procedure was accompanied by a smaller table lined with the above said operating cloth which, as we all know, is used by surgeons to place their beloved scalpels.

Who would have thought a place like this existed in Butterworth! I am definitely NOT looking forward to a revisit to this creepy institution for the homeless WITHOUT a camera or a video recorder!

As would be expected in a strange setting like this, the bidding was also somewhat surreal, with exactly one bidder each for ten out of about 45 properties on offer. That means no bidding, just buying, which wasn't much fun.

The event ended without incident. But as we were about to leave, all the lights went out and luminescent gas clouds suddenly invaded the conference room, maiming and suffocating everyone above the age of 20.

Yeah, you got me there.

It was a boring finish so I added that last part. Next time we do an auction at Hotel Berlin, I hope everyone dresses the part - if you know what I mean.

The day ended with us sailing back towards the sunset illuminated Penang island ala romantic movie, where I spent the night watching Seekers, Charmed and A Haunting on NTV7 and Discovery Channel respectively. So I got my supernatural thrills after all.


P.S. After some deliberations, punch-ups, altercations, threats, blackmail, curses, executions, abductions, and a killer chicken, the Triumvirate has decided to use catchier titles for our blog.