Busuk.... busuk... busuk....

This morning, as the elevator opened its door and I stepped on to the ageing grey carpet on my office floor my nose was stung by an awful smell. The girl walking beside me noticed it too and asked what it could be. I guessed the cleaner might have accidentally spilled a two days old Milo or Nescafe on the carpet as there was hints of stale milk smell.

Later when we were about to go out for lunch, the smell was still there and grew stronger. I was with a group of engineers who were planning to enjoy lunch to the max before Ramadhan starts. We covered our noses with our hands as it took about 3 minutes for the lift to stop at our floor. One girl asked what the smell was. Again, one of them guessed it might be stale coffe or Milo. We used the 3 minutes looking and searching for coffee stains on the grey carpet, there was none. One guy claimed the smell reminded him of Alam Flora trucks. We couldn’t be happier when the elevator doors finally opened.

When I came back from lunch, the stench became almost unbearable and I held my breath until I reached my cubicle. I quickly smelled my wrist hoping that there were traces of my cheap perfume I sprayed at 7.30 a.m.

So, I’ve logged the problem to the General Services team and hoped to see cleaning ladies doing some carpet shampooing soon.

When I went down for prayers just now the smell just got stronger, I started to suspect there’s a decomposing corpse lying somewhere. I’ve emailed the GS team to ‘investigate’ the source of the smell and solve the issue immediately.

Just now when I re-read the email I sent, I was laughing at myself. Perhaps I’ve seen too much of CSI that I started having these kinds of thoughts. If there’s an unbearable stench, there must be a dead body somewhere. If there’s a door left ajar for more than 30 minutes in the neighbour’s house, there must be a burglary. If there’s a fallen tree or lamp post along the road, there must’ve been a freak accident. And the suspicion goes on and on and on.

Well I don’t blame myself for having all these thoughts and suspicion. There was a car hijacking cum shooting case near my house a few years ago. There was a dead infant found on the hilly rocks in front of my house some time last year. There were many burglary cases reported by my neighbours between 2002 and now.

It’s difficult to feel safe when all these things are happening around us.

But it’s okay to be suspicious as you might save another person’s life. Did you read about the abandoned baby found by a boy who was playing nearby? The boy heard the faint cry of an infant. He was curious and searched where the cry came from. And he found a baby!! The sad thing was the baby was left by an adult there to die, judging by the location. If the irresponsible adult wanted the baby to live, he/she might have left it at the surau or the police station or at an orphanage. I don’t understand human nowadays, are we turning into animals? Even animals love and care for their young. I think we’re turning into robots. We just want to be charged, function (but sometimes malfunctioning), survive and be as selfish and heartless as we can be. Robots are selfish because they’ll only do what they’re programmed for. There’s no such thing as charity work done by these robots. Ask the floor cleaning robot to do some sofa cleaning… sure fail punya.