The Days of Ziad Hafiz Razak

It was a typical balmy KL afternoon as we were driving towards Mid Valley. The sky was clouded over, and there was a faint promise of rain. As I was steering the car gently towards the basement parking entrance of the Gardens mall, the entrance booth slowly came into view. I did the usual instinctive thing, reaching out to the console on the car’s dashboard where I normally keep my Touch ‘n’ Go card. Just as I was about to lift the card out of its faux-leather sleeve, I noticed, at a glimpse from the corner of my eye, that the parking terminal accepted not only the usual cashless payment of Touch ‘n’ Go, but would also accept credit card payments, including MyDebit, with its distinctive Wifi-looking logo.

“Eh. Can pay with credit card now. I wonder if I can use Apple Pay for parking here.”

“Ooh,” Kat replied. “Try lah.” My wife knew me too well enough by now to know two things. One: I hate unfair and inefficient monopolies on public services, with a level of detestation that Kat herself would normally reserve for cat torturers. Two: ever since I was able to use Apple Pay on my iPhone, I have been constantly delighted at the ability to merely double-press a button, look at my phone to unlock the Apple Pay pay option, and then simply swipe my phone over a terminal to effect payment – my favourite First World-level dopamine shot.

I tried it – and voila, it worked! There I was, happily steering my car past the parking entrance booth with a big smile on my face. Never fails.

Anyways, some minutes later, I found a parking spot not too far from the lobby entrance (another pet habit of mine, the pursuit of which can sometimes drive Kat out of her mind), and as we were heading up the escalators and found ourselves walking past the shops on the lower ground level, a sudden thought came to my mind:

“Alamak! Now I remember: the last time I used Apple Pay to enter a parking lot, I couldn’t exit. This silly building in Bangi hadn’t updated its parking system, and so I could enter the parking with Apple Pay, but the parking terminal couldn’t recognise my Apple Pay when exiting. Hmm. I wonder if I might get stuck when we exit later.”

“Oh well,” Kat said, as she normally would when entertaining my sudden bouts of petty anxiety. “If we can’t exit nanti, you just hit the intercom and ask for help, lah. You’ll be that guy, but it won’t be the end of the world.”

“Hmm, okay.” I shelved the thought away from my mind, and for the next two hours, I didn’t think much of it: the movie turned out to be much more entertaining than I had expected, and by the final joke at the end of the movie credits, the entire hall erupted in whoops of delighted laughter.

“Good movie, huh?? Jarnathan hahah!!!” I was beaming.

“Yeah!” Kat grinned. We fell into talking about our favourite parts of the movie, excitedly. It was a good afternoon.

We did some errands at the pharmacy and the supermarket, and then it was time to head back home. As we got into the car, and I was driving towards the exit, I remembered again with distaste that there was a possibility that I might not be able to easily exit. What I was really anxious about, typically, was that getting stuck at the parking exit would delay others behind me whose lives would be unduely disrupted by something I had committed. The dictum of hidup jangan menyusahkan orang was something I held very closely to heart, and I was happy always to lambast those who would break it. Now it could well be my turn to menyusahkan hidup orang.

As the parking exit booth loomed closer, I slowed down the car to a halt, and pressed the button on my right to roll down the window. (Remember those days when you had to actually wind a crank to bring the window down? Amazing.) I lifted my iPhone from its resting place in the centre console of the car, did the usual Open, Sesame gestures on my phone, waved the front of the phone near the parking console, and winced quietly as the seconds ticked, until –

The exit bar lifted up! It worked! In a fit of delight, I did a little whoop, pumped my fist into the air and yelled out with the car window still down: “Oh yeah! First world, baby!”

As the car eased its way past the exit booth and climbed upwards through the exit ramp into the open air, Kat couldn’t resist: “Hmm. If Lee Kwan Yew could crow about bringing Singapore from Third World to First, I guess we can be proud that Malaysia already has First World moments while still in Third!”

Ba-dum-tishhhh.