boy i hate them inconsiderate smokers...

Unpaquete de cigarrillos, sin filtro, extra largos, por favor = A pack of cigarettes, without filters, king size, please.

i have to say, i used to be one myself, a "smoker" for 2 years when i was at university and i was always getting sinus infections. nasty. but i persevered. and then my grandma died of cervical cancer and i gave up smoking cold-turkey thinking if cancer was already in the genes, why tempt fate? i used to pick up the cigarette very occasionally when out with the bad boys and steeped in the beers. now, i can smell somebody smoking 5 tables away when sitting down to lunch or dinner and my nose just stops functioning and i am suddenly struggling to breathe. all thanks to my ex-tobacco clients and my overexposure to their smoking habits.

i had the privilege of enjoying my 38th birthday June 2006 hospitalized in Sunway and undergoing Cat Scans and sputum tests. i have obviously stopped the wheezing now and am on preventive puffers and a nose spray. this last thing-y for life, unless (as counselled by the super savvy ENT) i do a drastic life change and move to nirvana where there will be NO: smokers, drapes, air-conditioning, carpets, haze, pollutants... hmmm... reality check here. so, what happens if i skip the nose spray (or God forbid forget to take a shot up the nostrils)?? hmm, sometimes i stop breathing through my nose. sometimes i get that drippy thing happening either through the back of my throat or down my face. i start getting 'chesty' by mid-morning sitting in my air-conditioned fully carpeted office and i start finding it hard to draw a deep breath. sometimes my throat gets ultra dry and i start to act like there is a massive frog in it. and i give these deep becha-man type coughs! not attractive :)

this morning, driving to work, stuck as usual at the sime darby junction, waiting for the cops to make sense of the traffic lights, i was kinda adjacent to a Malay guy in a Honda City, and about 1.5 cars back to his right. Honda guy had a passenger in the front seat, and a very small passenger in the back one (either a very short Malaysian or a child, i am pretty sure it was the latter). he rolled down his window and lit up. i remember thinking he had a cool watch on. all cold shiny stainless steel just as i like. he took a shallow type drag, and then he let his arm hang out of his window oblivious to the mad Mat Rempits racing all around us, weaving in and out of traffic on their low CC motorbikes.

he must have waited 1.5 minutes before he took another shallow drag through his now squinting eyes, and then his arm went back down again to flop outside with his cigarette. at this point the other windows in his car start going down, and i am guessing the non-smoking passengers are running out of their fresh air ;p he then sat almost 2.5 minutes with his floppy arm (and the nice watch) hanging outside and i was just watching his ash build-up at the end of his death stick, and the smoke add just a little to our KL pollutants. he actually had to flick it hard before taking another shallow drag. now, at this point, the cops were still blowing out their arses and we were still unhappily stuck in the same exact spot in our traffic lanes. and i started recalling how i used to smoke. back in 1991/1992. i would light up only if and when i needed a cigarette. and then i wouldn't waste it. i would drag most of the cancer causing smoke directly into my lungs, leaving little to linger around me. i would never do this around non-smokers. and i would smoke fast.

i was watching his passengers move around in their seats, perhaps uncomfortably at the smoke. perhaps suddenly realizing that they were still sitting in traffic and it was ticking past 9am. and there were all these red selangor buses around him, and i suddenly wondered why he needed that "crutch" he was holding in his fingers. was he was conning himself into thinking that he needed the stick to de-stress perhaps, or that sitting-put was a good reason to smoke? but at the rate he was actually consuming that ciggy, vis-a-vie the potential discomfort he was causing his passengers, he could have just got himself parked behind a bus, rolled his window down, stuck his head out his window (and emulate his floppy arm even maybe) and just BREATHED in that damn exhaust emission already man! i reckon he would have still got what he needed in terms of the carbon and it probably wouldn't have damaged his passengers' lungs and nasal passages as much... not to mention it, but he would have also not successfully contributed to our bad air!