What really got his motor revving were the firecrackers.
What's that you say? They're insanely expensive? They're illegal under Malaysian Law? If you play them, you risk going back to school missing a few fingers?
"Tell me something I don't already know, " Mike would tell you.
For as long as Mike could remember, playing firecrackers was a yearly ritual which came hand-in-hand with his family's Deepavali dinner. As a kid, he began with the Pop-Pop snappers. Then he moved on to sparkles, next graduating to spinners and thunderclaps. And by the time he was 16, the was lighting the family's twelve foot long Chinese firecracker.
Mike then retired to supervising his younger, more death-defiant cousins as they became old enough to play 'light-the-fuse-and-run-like-a-maniac'.
One year, Mike found himself reading the instructions on the side of a rocket shaped firecracker the size of his forearm. "Big Boom! Fun! Fun!" the poorly drawn cartoon children on the cardboard box declared.
Mike's uncle who got the item said they were smuggled leftover fireworks from the closing ceremony of that year's FIFA World Cup. It said 'Made in China'. "By whom?" Mike wondered, looking at the size of it. "The Taliban?"
Mike began contemplating whether or not it was wise to trust an 11-year old to set fire to that much compressed gunpowder. Cousin Ravin, however, told Mike to stop being a pussy and allow him to light the first one.
Using a large Sprite bottle and handfuls of wet sand, Mike set up the apparatus of death near the edge of the playground. He then gave Cousin Ravin a 5 minute briefing about the proper ignition procedures involved, but it was pretty apparent Ravin was just waiting to get his freak on.
With a steady hand, Cousin Ravin lit the little green wire. As soon as it started sparking, he and Mike did a Charlie Chaplin run for cover. For the first ten or fifteen seconds, everything was silent. Almost as if the firecracker wasn't going to go off. Mike actually considered going to check up on it.
Then, without warning, the rocket shot across the playground and into the night sky with a deafening scream which left neighbours' dogs barking for half a mile in every direction. The furious 'thud' which followed when the rocket exploded in the stratosphere was so deafening, Mike was pretty certain that if there were angels up there, one of them must have yelled "Opocot mak kau!!"
For the entire town of Sentul to see, the sky turned into a colourful garden of sparks.
"Blardy hell!" Mike screamed in excitement, shaking the 11-year old boy by the shoulders. "Did you see that?! Did you see that?!"
Cousin Ravin was still in shock to say anything. His system wasn't prepared for what had just happened.
"Fulamak..." said a Malay guy from behind Mike. "Kuat tuuu...."
"Kuat giler, bro!" said Mike, his blood still pumping like crazy. "Bro nak cuba satu?" He rummaged through the black plastic bag and pulled out another one.
As he turned around to offer his fellow Malaysian another rocket, he noticed that there were two of them. And they were wearing police uniforms.
Why, Michael? I sighed. This is the fourth story that ends with you getting screwed over by a cop.
