THOSE of us who have come from other parts of the country to live and work in KL would have been completely assimilated into the alienating ethos of the Big Durian after a few years. We are completely immersed in the local customs, or lack of it. We hardly ever think about what we have become.

On the odd occasions when we have to travel home, for festive celebrations, or a funeral, or a wedding, we get a reverse cultural shock. We rejoice in revisiting the idyllic provincial charm of far flung small towns and villages, but within a few days, we itch to get back to KL for some strange reason. Home is nice enough, but people are so laid back, so complacent, and so boring. Naturally, you cannot understand why friends and relatives at home talk about KL with such disgust and repulsion.

If you fit the above profile, then you have been displaced from your roots. You have successfully joined the millions of transient alienated restless souls that go to make up the strange population of this sprawling and often lawless metropolis.

Why, sitting at a caf outside Sungei Wang on Bukit Bintang, you may even look at tourists from your home state with amusement. They may be fellow Malaysians, but you can tell them apart from the locals, by the touristy way they dress themselves, their wide eyed incredulity, their vulnerability, and even their loud-mouth enthusiastic discussion on prices of petty purchases.

You have then probably forgotten the memories of your own first impressions of the capital city. Let me invite you to jump out of your skin, after a fashion, and try to imagine how you and KL appear to first time visitors to your adopted home town. How would somebody from your home state look at KL and her people?

This person has just checked into a hotel somewhere around the so-called Golden Triangle, say. His head is still spinning from the disorientation of time and space from plunging headlong into the exciting chaos of Kuala Lumpur. The sound and fury of this seductive city has hit him like a train. He feels like landing on a strange planet.

Adventure and fun

First of all, there is the heat, beating down from the merciless sun from an iron-grey sky, reflected off all the road and cement surfaces, and a million windows on those mushrooming high-rises. The venomous fume from a million car exhaust pipes rises to the air, forming a blanket of smog that traps the heat with immediate green-house effect.

There are so many roads and highways. The highways are stacked one on top of another. Sometimes, one drives in the sky far above the buildings and the land below. The landscape on the outskirt of KL with the criss-crossing network of highways looks like something out of a Hollywood movie. The overhead road signs reveal a dizzying array of destinations with exotic sounding names that hold endless promise of adventure and fun.

To the horror of our outstation visitor, he discovered that motorists in KL actually have to pay for the use of their roads through a series of toll gates! At these huge toll complexes, he is mesmerised by how many ways you can pay for the toll. Of course, he gets a first taste of the notorious KL traffic jam at the toll, as he sweats it out in the car or taxi inching its way through the long queue.

Finally, the KL traffic hell hits our tourist with full force as his vehicle finally joins the snarling bumper-to-bumper crawl entering the city centre. There are cars and cars of every make and description everywhere and there is not a foot of space to move them. People here in KL must all be filthy rich, buying all these big flashy cars. But what is the use of building all these beautiful roads and owning these expensive powerful cars if the drivers have to crawl at a speed of 5 KM/hour?

Here too, the worst demeanour of the Malaysian drivers reveals itself to our visitor. Where they can, they drive at a break-neck speed, overtaking dangerously, with honks blaring to boot. In a jam, the drivers manoeuvre their car in and out as if they are the only motorist on the road, changing lanes without signals, and often missing a brush or a collision with other cars by mere inches. Meanwhile, giant buses and huge trucks rule the thoroughfares, belching huge columns of evil smelling fume as they muscle their way through fits and starts.

The motor-cyclists must take the cake for being the epitome of road terrorism. Every motorcyclist in KL is but a different version of the "Mat Rempit" phenomenon. They all seem to have a lot of faith in their fellow road-users in not killing them by mistake or by intent.

Having gone through this baptism of traffic hell in KL, our first-time visitor from out-station makes a silent resolution to himself: never drive in KL.

The 'KL Face'

Finally, our novice traveller plucks up enough courage, and decides to explore KL on foot. Usually, he begins with Bukit Bintang, parading down this short but bustling strip of hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and some very weird characters.

That first thing that should strike our visitor is what I would call the "KL Face". All KL persons wear this rigid predatory expression on their face in public places all the time. It is an aggressive visage highlighted by the eternal frown, the corners of the mouth drawn down in grave disapproval, accompanied by a fearless penetrating gaze at the object of query. This is a mask of repressed impatience, as if screaming silently to the entire world that, unless given what is wanted, the face will explode in rage.

It is hardly an open friendly face. I wear it quite well after many years of dutiful practice in KL. When I go home to Kuching, I take it off and resume my friendly Kuching face. I always remind myself that this "KL Face" is merely a mask, and not my true face.

The persona typified by such a "KL Face" is one not dissimilar to a dominant beast in a primordial jungle. It reminds one of a corrupted version of a psalm in the Bible:

"Yeh, though I shall walk in the shadow of the Valley of Death

I shall fear no evil

For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the whole damn Valley"

This quintessential KL persona is complemented by a set of suitable body language and public demeanour.

The KL person walks with the swagger of a corporate CEO, imagining himself to possess the kind of electric magnetism that exudes power and success, even if he possesses none. I have noticed even pimps and confidence tricksters on Bintang Walk to have mastered this particular art of behavioural sophistry.

Infectious KL posture

The equipment for such a posture is of course the ubiquitous mobile phone with an amazing array of ring tones. It rings ostensibly, averting every person's attention on the recipient of this all important call. The proud person's plumage blossoms like a peacock. With head slightly tilted upward and lower jaw thrust out, shouldered squared, and the other hand on the hip above his wide-spread legs planted firmly on the ground, he answered in a superior greeting, reminding one of what Napoleon must have looked like as he gazed at the battlefield beneath him.

All the details of a complex and gargantuan business deal are shouted out for all to hear. Sometimes, a global travelling itinerary is discussed. The name of a prominent Datuk may even be mentioned in an unusually intimate and loud tone. The humble traveller from remote and backward Sarawak can only conclude that he has the honour of bumping into a corporate tycoon by chance.

This KL posture must be as infectious as the Aids virus. In recent years, I have discovered that even middle-eastern looking gentlemen and non-too-prosperous-looking foreign workers have adopted this peacock-like bearing.

If our freshman traveller cares to look longer however, he would discover this KL personality manifesting itself everywhere, in the sales personnel, the shop-assistants, the traders, the hawkers, and even the low-ranking employees in the tourist industry.

What this massive sea of disapproving and impatient faces creates is a general impression of a suffocating hostile and intimidating panorama to first-time-comers to KL. I have known of this nice Malay boy from Kuching frightened out of his wits on Jalan Bukit Bintang during his first encounter of the KL kind in his first hour of arrival here. He was trying to get a job as a humble waiter from the host of gleaming hotels lining that famous street. Wherever he went, he was reduced to a stuttering trembling tearful blob. Within a week, he beat a hasty retreat to the backwaters of Sarawak.

(To be continued next week)