"When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

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1. In a scene from the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Tuco (played by Eli Wallach) is washing himself in a bath when a bad guy appears and starts to intimidate him at gunpoint. As the bad guy is talking away, obviously thinking that he has gained the upper hand, Tuco fires a shot with his gun concealed under the bath foam. Having shot down his adversary, Tuco says: “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” Somehow I’ve always thought that Tuco’s words make sense. If you intend to do something, then just do it. If you keep holding it off, you might not be able to get it done in the end.

2. Holding off doing something is one of my bad habits. One classic example is how my newspaper collection ended up in ashes. As a teenager, I delighted in reading short stories. Back then Berita Harian was publishing short stories on Thursday. Its weekly, the Berita Minggu, dedicated a few pages to short stories and poems by local writers as well as articles concerning literature. The daily also dedicated a full page to students’ contributions. I was quite a prolific contributor then.

3. So I made a point of buying the daily every Wednesday and Thursday as well as the weekly every Sunday, paying for them out of my pocket money. I started keeping all the papers I’d bought and began stacking them up on a disused crude workbench I got from somewhere. They piled up over time and eventually grew into two stacks of old papers about a metre high.

4. From the start I thought of making cuttings out of my collection of papers to keep all the short stories, poems and articles for my future reading or reference. As days went by, the stacks of yellowing papers remained untouched on the old workbench. I was quite comfortable as long as my stacks of paper collection remained safe on the workbench and I was quite certain I’d find the time to begin my paper cuttings one day.

5. Then came my teacher training days. I was quite busy with my studies and assignments during my two-year teacher training period. In the first year I attended what was known as the regional training centre when I had to teach on weekdays and attend courses on weekends. In the second year, I continued my training at a teacher training college in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. All through my training days, I had almost forgotten about my newspaper collection.

6. One day, during a long vacation, I thought it was high time I set to work doing my paper cuttings. As I took a look at the stacks of old papers, I noticed something odd about them. There were traces of earth plastered on one side of one of the stack of papers. My reaction was to lift the corner of the stack. My goodness! There was a swarm of white ants underneath! The stacks of papers were infested by white ants! I had no choice other than to get rid of the old papers. I moved them to an open space outside the house and burned them to ashes. Well, there goes my paper collection …