Stand up and be counted

12/05/2003 The Star By Alex Lee-Sun

WE used to be just frogs at the bottom of the Valley. But the species is always changing, and we’ve gone up the ladder of evolution lately. Now, we’re grouped into bo-chap, and an assortment of various new species that make up the Valley jungle. 

Other oddballs, however, boast longer lineage than bo-chap, which was discovered as a life form during a survey published in this paper. Thriving long before that, we have the kiasu, kiasi, kay-po-chee and, of course, the defining Malaysian type, the tidak apa slacker. 

First of all, bo-chap has nothing to do with the English chap, though the Malaysian version is usually believed to be male. It is possible that the bo-chap is joined, at some branch on the family tree, to the American know-nothings, which splintered from the 19th century Republican Party, and gave us the incumbent president George Bush Jr. Enough said.  

Bo-chap is Penang Hokkien slang for “don’t care, lah”. Or maybe “make don’t know”. This is the sort that’ll walk by, picking its teeth, and pretend to see nothing even if you are running down the street in your underwear with an amok on your trail. 

Bo-chap comes from the same gene pool as the tidak apa tribe, which thrives on the mantra that there’s always a God to take care of things, or things will take care of themselves anyway, so why sweat the small stuff? 

The bo-chap will shake hands on that; his exact sentiments are to let things follow the natural course of events. So why lose sweat over a fire he didn’t start?  

For five minutes, I was worried that I would fall into the bo-chap category. I usually prefer not to lose sleep over nightmares in somebody else’s neighbourhood. 

Scandal and mayhem are great entertainment via the newspaper headlines or TV news, as long as we don’t feel the same pain, right? 

But my bo-chap state of bliss was interrupted at 5.30am recently, when the neighbour in the next-door apartment began banging at the wall. It crossed my mind that he might be, finally, entombing his noisy brats and, for the common good, endured the racket. 

But the noise began testing my goodwill after half an hour. It was crazy. Nothing, I decided, can justify an act of war like that.  

“Are you mad?” I yelled. “Do you know that the rest of us may want to sleep?” 

Silence for a minute. Bang, bang. Bang. I grabbed a saucepan and banged right back on the wall. Bang, bang, came the retort. Then, a truce. 

The moral is that bo-chap isn’t a cast-iron state of being. Sometimes, you’ve to stop leading a comatose life and stand up to be counted. 

Besides, it’s hard to believe that there are so many sleepwalkers in this Valley looking at the world through half-veiled eyes. This is a city that cannot hide its kampung roots; every time a chicken gets run over on a highway, traffic slows to the pace of a small-town bullock cart while all the kay po chee stick their necks out – but only physically – to look for spilt blood. They don’t want to miss the action, which brings us to kiasu, which began as a Singaporean affliction but has gotten under the skin of the Valley as well. 

Valley kiasu don’t want to lose out, and have to keep up.  

“I want exactly like that, but must be bigger, shinier, better” is the refrain of the kiasu at everything he sees in the front yard of his neighbour, colleague, friend or relative. 

But the line between kiasu and kiasi is a fine one. The status-chaser is the first to retreat into his bolt-hole at the first whiff of trouble.  

The kiasi are scared to die; whisper SARS and watch the rush for the exits.