Kusut dan Jiwang, Inc.

…although wealth is not my sole criterion in choosing a husband.

I was driving back from lunch with some friends the other day, when we passed a row of kedai runcit (convenience shops). Then we saw a man carrying 6 10-kg bags of rice, all balanced on his shoulders, and our jaws literally dropped to the floor of the car.

Everyone went, "Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhh….".

Then someone said, "That’s one thing you’d want your husband to be able to do", which got us into discussing the things to look for in a man before deciding whether he is fit to be married (now, why does that sentence sound so awful?).

Among the criteria stated:

• type of car he drives
• ability to carry rice bags/cooking gas tanks
• size of the forearms (no, it is NOT related to any other parts of the anatomy)
• place of work

Which got me into thinking, What’s my criteria? And I came up with several:

• ability to slaughter chickens
• ability to change car tyres and jumpstart car batteries
• size of forearms (yeah, I am that shallow)
• ability to answer at least half of the questions in Kunci Khazanah
• ability to properly iron cotton shirts
• ability to distinguish between ground, neutral and live cables in a 3-pin plug
• ability to distinguish between a drill and a saw
• willingness to listen to repeated renditions of Dewa’s Pupus

Not too ambitious, yeah?