Morning Moves and Circadian Codes
[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual beings, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.]
Elias writes code and wrangles AI animations from the comfort of his laptop. But at the crack of dawn, he’s on his feet, leading a joyous swirl of aunties and uncles in street dance at the local community hall. In this tale, Elias reflects on growing up between cultures, finding solace in movement, and reconciling a life shaped by regimental discipline, quiet rebellion, and unexpected passions. With warmth, wit, and rhythm pulsing through each memory, this is about one man’s journey to bridge the worlds of tradition and technology, solitude and society, duty and dreams.
I like to think my day begins with aunties and ends with algorithms. Some people start with coffee. I start with a headband, a remix track, and a hall full of sprightly retirees stomping their feet to music they don't always recognise. So, try to imagine your day starting in a multipurpose hall that smells like deep heat, rubber soles, and faint traces of a basketball game from the previous night.
It’s barely 7:30 am when I hit play on my trusty playlist. You may find it strange but it is somehow satisfying for me when I hear a blend of Chinese opera beats, Malay pop, Hindi rhythms, and a dash of Tamil kuthu. My own little Frankenstein of a medley, stitched together on my laptop. I call it multicultural cardio.
“Any newcomers today?” I yell over the music, already bouncing on the balls of my feet. A few aunties wave sheepishly. One uncle, trying to be cool, gives me a peace sign. I nod back, grinning like a game show host on too much caffeine.
This is my happy place.
Three times a week, I haul myself out of bed before the sun even stretches its arms, just to come here and teach what I call “street-style movement therapy.” It’s street dancing, really. But when you say “therapy,” everyone’s doctor suddenly says it's good for their cholesterol.
When the music kicks in, the energy shifts. It’s like someone plugged these seniors into a power source. Recharge. Their feet move. Their arms sway. I see people who could barely lift their arms a month ago now pulling off moves I’d be nervous to try on a slick floor. I swear, one of the uncles looked like he was ready to enter a dance-off with me last week. I had to bring my A-game.
But here’s the twist: this isn’t my job.
I teach these classes before I switch hats and dive into my real profession. I'm an IT guy. Specifically, I work on AI animation projects. Very nerdy, very digital, very no-sweat. I’m lucky to have flexible hours. As long as the code compiles and my boss doesn’t scream, I can work from anywhere. Even after an hour of shoulder shimmies and sassy twirls with retirees.
I didn’t exactly grow up imagining this life.
I’m from Jasin, a quiet town in Melaka that tourists skip entirely. If they knew about our curry mee and pineapple tarts, they’d think twice. But I’m not complaining. I grew up in a home where love didn’t shout. It existed in stern glares, perfectly ironed school uniforms, and the unspoken understanding that failure was not an option.
My mother? She was in the army. You know, actual uniform, saluting, shouting-at-people army. She never did bedtime stories. Never. She did “lights out” as if she were commanding a platoon. And yes, my siblings and I got the rotan. Discipline was her love language.
My father? A tailor. Like how I stitch medleys now, he used to stitch crisp business shirts, pants, and the occasional baju Melayu. Suits weren’t in demand in our sleepy town. He wasn’t just good. He was meticulous. People said he could spot a crooked stitch from ten feet away.
Funny story. He wasn’t born Muslim. He converted to marry my mum. His name was Tong Beng Siang. After conversion, he became Ghazali Tong. Yeah, try carrying that name in a Malay school.
“My son’s under a spell,” his family used to say. My grandma from his side, a stoic Chinese woman from Lukut, stopped speaking to him for a while. Religion runs deep there. And changing yours? That was betrayal.
But after I was born, Ahma moved to Jasin. Slowly, the walls came down. I remember sitting on the porch with her, eating tang yuan during the Winter Solstice festival while pretending not to notice my mother disapproving from her bedroom door.
It wasn’t an affectionate family. Hugs were rare. My mum was tough. She ran the house like a barracks. My father? Gentler. Never laid a hand on us. Just a shift in his tone could make us straighten up. I grew close to him, especially after the divorce. Yeah, they split when I was a teen. She left us with him. That was when life got real.
I was the eldest of three. Two boys and a girl. Expectations weighed on me. You know that Asian feeling when people look at you like you’re supposed to be the example? Yeah, I got that daily.
My father did something rare. He convinced my mother to send all three of us to a Chinese vernacular school for primary. I was the only Muslim kid in class. I ate differently. Drank differently. Couldn’t join the others for certain celebrations. But I never felt like an outsider. Well, not until secondary school.
That was a battlefield.
Now I was in the Malay school system. And suddenly, mixing with my Chinese friends became “controversial.” An ustazah once pulled me aside and said, “You must protect your identity, Elias. Mixing too much will confuse you.” I was thirteen.
Confuse me?
Lady, I am confused. I’m half Chinese, named Elias Tong, and I don’t know if I belong at recess.
The teasing came fast. “Eh, Tong tu tong sampah ke?” Yeah, Tong as in trash bin. Real original, guys.
But I didn’t fight back with fists. I smiled. I shared snacks. I helped them with homework. Eventually, they let their guard down. Not all of them, but enough. Still, that outsider feeling? It never completely disappeared.
After SPM, I went to Johor Bahru to help my aunt run her dance studio. Just for a few months, I said. Just to get away. That’s when I truly fell in love with dance. Not as a hobby. As a language. As a way to speak when words failed me.
When the time came to apply for university, I chose acting as my first option. Theatre. Performance. My heart.
But guess what I got?
Information Technology. My fifth choice.
My first reaction? "IT? What do I look like, someone who understands how a motherboard works?"
Turns out, I could understand it. I didn’t come from money. Private college for performing arts wasn’t realistic. Not at all. So I accepted what I was given in a public university. I studied hard. And somewhere along the way, I actually began to enjoy it. “It” as in IT.
We didn’t grow up with fancy computers. Ours had barely enough fuel to run Microsoft Word and maybe one browser tab at a time. But what it could run was YouTube. And on YouTube, I found dance. Popping, locking, voguing. You name it.
My final year project? An AI-assisted animation prototype, of course with my dedicated lecturers. It blew my mind. That’s when I knew this was something I could love. Dance can wait. Writing code was quiet. Focused. It gave me the space to build without explanation. Unlike life.
My day job now? I work with a small creative tech studio that does AI-assisted animation. We’re not Pixar or anything close, but we do pretty cool stuff. Short films, web series pilots, explainer videos. A lot of our clients are indie content creators who want their wild ideas come alive but don’t have the budget for a full animation team. That’s where we come in. The AI helps generate keyframes, smooths transitions, and sometimes even adds lip-sync based on a voiceover. It’s like having a super intern that never sleeps.
I handle both the front-end design and a bit of the back-end coding. Which basically means I get to tinker with how things look. And also figure out why something’s crashing at 3 a.m. when everyone else is asleep. We train the AI with motion capture data, reference footage, and dialogue scripts, and then tweak the outputs so they feel organic. You can't fully rely on automation. Human touch still matters. The algorithm might draw you a face, but it can’t feel embarrassment or joy. That’s on us to finesse.
The best part is watching a character move after hours of debugging. Seeing something that was once just lines of code suddenly blink, behave like it has a soul, and smile, that's when I'd smile along. Sometimes I even slip in little dance-inspired motions, just for fun. A hip sway here, a shoulder roll there. No one’s caught on yet. Maybe one day, someone will ask why our animated avatars groove like they’re in a Zumba class.
I still dance, of course. I continue to learn new steps from online videos. Beyond just YouTube. Improvising and teaching dance now. Community service. It keeps me grounded. Keeps me healthy. And no, I don’t teach on weekends. Those are mine to keep. I like disappearing into the hills. Hiking in solitude. Walking in kampung trails. Sometimes an island, too. I also cook. Fusion stuff. I’m the kind of guy who’ll attempt a nasi lemak pizza and then blame the recipe when it fails.
My father’s retired now. He sold off the tailoring business and moved to Johor Bahru to be closer to his sister. The one who runs the dance studio where I once worked. He reads obsessively now, to make up for what he never did much in his younger days. Self-taught. Uses the iPad I bought him. “The factories took over,” he says. “Not much room left for real tailors.”
Sometimes I think I’m part of the same problem. AI is replacing jobs. Maybe one day, even dance teachers.
But as my father says, “We are always sailing against the current. If you don’t paddle forward, you’ll drift backward.”
He texts me now. Emojis and all. I taught him how to send voice notes too. It took three weeks and the patience of a monk.
People say I’m outgoing. But truth is, I’m an introvert. Loud on the outside, quiet on the inside. My faith remains steady, thanks to my ustaz in my early years. Not loud. Not boastful. Just there. Like breath.
So why dance?
Because it was my first love. Because I still believe in giving back. Because in a world of changing codes and shifting identities, sometimes what people need isn’t just a smarter algorithm.
Sometimes, what they need is to feel human again.
And if that comes in the form of a sweaty dance session at dawn with a bunch of spirited aunties, why not?
And you don’t have to be an auntie or uncle to join in. You just have to wake up early.
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TO REACH THE WRITER:
Email: contact@chunjiro.com
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