Sunday Focus: Ramblings: Paying RM9 at cineplex and being buffeted at dinner is too much

By S.H. Tan
13 August 2000

TED Dorall, a friend, dropped in and after the usual courtesies, said:
"Have you seen Dinosaur? "Nope," I said. "Haven't been to the pictures
for ages."

When he chuckled, I was baffled. So I asked him what was the joke.

He said: "Nobody says go to the pictures anymore.

When I blinked, he said: "Nobody says go to the movies either."

When my jaw dropped, he said: "Nobody says go to the thea...."

"All right, all right," I interrupted. I said that I had the hang of
what he was driving at. "So what do they say?" I asked him.

"Go to the cineplex," he said.

When I was perplexed, he said: "A cinema is five six or seven cinemas in
a shopping complex."

Embarrassed, I decided to do what companies do when they have been found
wanting.... reinvent myself. That Sunday, I took my wife and daughter to
see Dinosaur at the cineplex at the One Utama, Bandar Utama. Coo...
things have certainly changed since I last when to the pic.... I mean
whatever. To buy a ticket, instead of a tiny room with a tinnier hole
through which there was just enough room for me to slide my cash in and
for the ticket seller to slide a ticket out, there is a counter like
those in banks.

And transactions are carried out not surreptitiously but through wide
open grilles the length of the counter itself.

Chocs, popcorn and drinks can be bought at a colourful booth and not
from roadside hawker stalls or from a digny cubicle in the cinema. The
lobby is carpetted. So are the stairs. And the hall. What is more, the
carpet is so thick, it makes the mattress I sleep on feel like a tikar
(straw mat).

And as for the hall ...! The cushioned seats, tapestried walls,
decorated ceiling, and all-round sound system make the last cinema I
went to look and sound like a squatter hut.

How many halls are in this cineplex I could not tell as there was such a
crowd, I could not see the number for the people.

Finally, to go in there is one entrance and to go out there is another.
So when the show ended, there was no stampede with people going out
elbowing their way through those coming in.

The only complaint I have is the admission charge. It was RM9 whether
you sat in front or at the back.

The first time I went to a cinema. I paid one cent, it was a zinc
enclosure with no roof, the film was silent, the star was Buster Keaton,
the seats were benches and the grass was still growing under them.

All right, all right, it was so long ago you do not want to hear about
it.

Ancient history aside, the last time I went to a cinema, there were 1st,
2nd and 3rd class seats, the 1st being upstairs or the balcony. And the
prices were RM3, RM2, and RM1. And I would cough up to RM2 only when
there were no more RM1 seats.

But RM9? There is no doubt about it... my cineplex days are over. It is
more thrifty to stay at home and watch TV.

No sooner had my general knowledge been enhanced than I was brought down
to earth again.
Siow, Ching Cherd, a former colleague, dropped in with an invitation to
his daughter's wedding.
When I glanced at the card, I said: "H'm ... dinner is not buff fat is
it?"

Unlike Ted, he did not chuckle. He looked at me in disbelief instead.

When I said that I could not stand buff fats, he said gently: "It is not
buff fat but boo fay."

"So what?" I said: "No matter how you pronounce it, it means the same to
me."

As we had the whole afternoon for idle chat, I said that buff fats, boo
fays, or whatever are merely a stampede by too many people for too
little food.

More often than not, when the host or hostess hollers "come and get I "
pandemonium breaks out. The guests who have been behaving themselves
with decorum and small talk, suddenly go berserk.

The women are told "ladies first". So they trot to the table groaning
under the grub, garb a plate, and fill it with whatever catches their
fancy.

And this is when the men have to keep a look out for the rustlers _
other men waiting for their turn to swoop in.

Women being women, they would take an unbearably long time to make up
their minds what is good _ or bad _ for their waistlines, their
resolutions or their taste buds. If some of the rustlers were starving,
their patience would be exhausted. They would then sneak in and join the
women.

The louts among them would think nothing of falling either in between or
in front of the women and not queue behind them.

And this would be enough to goad the gentle men in charge in _ they were
dashed if they were going to allow the others to sapu (sweep) the meat
and gravy and leave them the skin and bones.

As the guests jostle with one another, the scene is like a free-for-all
at a refugee camp.

When Ching Cherd could not believe his ears, I said: "Now you know why
it is called buffet, never mind how you pronounce it. To scoop up a few
tit-bits, you are buffeted from left, right and at the back.

"Veterans of such campaigns like myself prefer to sit down and be
served. As I am timid, when I go to a buffet, I enjoy the spectacle more
than the spread. After all, who cares for soggy, left-overs, the
bishop's nose, or the skeleton of a pomfret?"

Ching Cherd assured me that at his daughter's wedding, I will not be
bufetted as it will be a Chinese dinner. So I accepted his invitation
with alacrity.