Life's Remains....

I did not realize my 2009 resolution, which was the same resolution, unrealized in 2008. Focus! Focus! I keep telling myself, but there is this distraction called... my job. Get out of the comfort zone! Get into the combat zone! Are you crazy? How will my children eat? Will they have to eat rice and home cooked meal only? And deprive them of Pizza Hut, or the beef noodle at Secret Recipe? What about the occasional McDonald's? If I were to give up my day job, how will I get around without my company car? Are you implying that I will have to buy and MAINTAIN my own car? What about my Astro? Are you saying that I have to give that up, too? No ESPN? No StarWorld? No HBO? How will I know what's going on in this world without CNN, Bloomberg or Al Jazeera? No, no, no... I must continue to work and earn a steady income, so I can pay for my children tuition.... Tuition... how else are they going to get a proper guidance to get all those As... You are not suggesting that I do it, are you...

There ought to be a law that restrict stupid people from breeding. Or maybe, increase the age of statutory rape from 15 to 25. There's just to many stupid people out there getting married because they want to boff each other's brains out. They don't know that boffing will result in the girl boffer getting pregnant. They just thought that the girl is getting fat. Then, the baby comes out and they don't know what to do with it. It starts crying and they slap it around to keep it quiet. Then, the baby got quiet, they got worried (by instinct, I suppose they sense something is wrong) and they send the baby to a doctor. They tell the doctor the baby fell...... Instead of just asking brides and grooms to do a HIV test, I think they should all sit for an IQ test too. Make it real simple, because those who got married just to legitimize boffing do not use their brains. Most of the blood is pumped to the lower half of their bodies. Then, there's incest. These are commi...

There are so many things I want write about today. First, is to ask for Rafael Benitez to quit as Liverpool FC manager, so that the club do not have to pay the contract breaking penalty of (rumored to be) 20 million pounds. Mark Hughes I believe is looking for work now... Secondly, I woke up this morning and watched "Sicko", another America bashing documentary by Michael Moore, this time about public health care. Once again (as with his previous documentaries), the genius of Michael Moore managed to put us under a coconut shell and let us peek at the world through the hole he made in it. He was comparing the public health system in his native land with National Health System in the UK and something similar in France. Then, as a climactic end, he took some "sickos" to Cuba, and showed us the wonderful Havana Hospital, with it's free health care. I really like it when people start bashing the Great Satan, as the late Saddam Husseim calls them, but Mr. Moore was co...

While in Geneva, I noticed an advertisements all over the city urging people to say "no" to the building of minarets. By the end of November, the resulting poll was that more than 50% agreed to ban the construction of minarets.... Why? From what I read, the Swiss do not want Switzerland to become a Muslim country. That, by allowing minarets to be built, will eventually result in women being forced to where burqas, and stoned to death in the streets and subject the Swiss to shariah laws. I enjoyed my time in Geneva, partly because it was really easy to find food I can eat. The Pizza Presto restaurant, just a few meters from the the hotel I was staying in, was run by an Arab family. On the walls were frames of Quranic verses, Allah and Muhammad. Each time I went to buy food (beef burger for 6 CHF = RM20), the place was packed and I am sure not all of them were Muslims. I visited the Favarger Chocolate factory, and while we were browsing the beautiful packages of lovely chocolat...

When I crashed Abang Haris's three month old red Proton Saga about a quarter of a century ago (it is fresh in my memory) I was deemed to be in the wrong. All evidence pointed to me as the guilty party, because: 1) the skid marks indicated that my right side was on the other side of the road, 2) the other driver was an apek tua (well not so tua... maybe 40 plus) 3) I was young (I wasn't 20 yet then). Sergeant Abu Bakar, I remember him well, was the policeman who took my statement. He was wearing a hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned down to his bulging stomach, and I, being scared and intimidated, dare not look straight at him and was instead looking at the few strands of grey hair on his leathery chest. He wasn't really interested in hearing my side of the story.... He just asked for me to accept his "special offer", a reduction in the compound. So I was wrong, and Abang Haris paid for it. Abang Haris, I seek your forgiveness.... But, I tell you the real story now. Mother ...

My boss keeps reminding me and my fellow managers that nothing happens by itself. Somebody must have flicked a switch, pushed a button, literally or metaphorically, for things to get in motion. It's a nice notion that somewhere along the line, there was somebody responsible for something that happened. Of course, it may not be a nice thing, and that somebody who was deemed to have "flicked the switch" or "pushed the button" may not want to take any credit for doing so. But, more often than not, we can't really pin point the start of something. There's always something else that leads to another and we find it's impossible to separate the end of one incident and the start of another. What riles me the most is when somebody takes credit to say, "I saw that coming." That's a load of bull, because nobody ever saw it (whatever the it is) coming. From the a death in the family right to the credit crunch, culminating in the fall of giants like...

I did not bother to set the alarm clock to wake me up at 3:30 am this morning. Last season, I'd make the point to watch Liverpool's every game. "Early days" still, they all say and opposing managers all "refuse to write them off" after beating Liverpool with late goals, I say they are being very polite. At first, I refused to believe that this current appalling form is due to the departure of Xabi Alonso. But, I now have little doubt in my mind that the Reds are missing him.... terribly. This season, LFC is a one man team. No, not two, one. Gerrard hasn't showed up this season. This season, all the teams in the world fear only one man.... Liverpool's Number 9, Fernando Torres. The only one of Rafael Benitez's great acquisition. At 26 million pounds, he's proved to be a bargain. His mere presence on the pitch, forces opposition teams to camp in front of their goal. They are afraid to venture out too far and leave their defenders at the mercy o...

Nothing on this earth is absolute. What may seem good could be bad, what seems bad could be good... maybe not immediately, but sooner or later, we learn that, all that glitters is not gold and not all that glitter is (I confused myself there, too. But, you know what I mean..) Hindsight is 20/20 vision. Some (many) people will say... "I saw that coming", after the thing happened. But, the greatest of human minds cannot possibly see the future. I read a motivational article sent to me via e-mail, which I was supposed to send to twenty other people or something bad will happen to me. It was interesting enough. Actually, I've read it before a long time ago, late 2001 or early 2002, after the fall of the twin towers in New York.... also known as 9/11 attacks. (By the way it's 9/11 only in the USA, everywhere else it would've been 11/9). The e-mail entitled "A Purpose Behind Every Incident" tells the accounts of (supposedly real) people who were inevitably det...

Today (26 October) is my eldest daughter's birthday. 16 years old..... the most confusing age. I'm talking about me as a parent. After work today, I exited the NKVE at Subang Jaya to go to my favourite haunt, Subang Parade. I kind of like it there since it's not too crowded like Sunway Pyramid, and there's MPH and Rock Corner, my two favourite stores and there McD and Pizza Hut and Nando's and Secret Recipe and Sushi King and even KFC. Anyway, I thought of getting my daughter a soft fuzzy toy, but Nur is really known for the soft fuzzy type. Besides, we already have two big teddy bears and one turtle soft toy which are pretty much abandoned. She like those Jonas Brothers.... not all of them, just one of them, t he cute one... I don't know, it's Nick or Joe or Jacob or Jeremiah or something. So I thought maybe just get her a CD. The poster at the entrance of the CD shop looks new... but when I asked the shop assistant, she said the album was at least half a y...

Reds 20 Year Wait Ends!! I am sleepy... I got up at 3 am this morning to watch Liverpool vs Lyon, knowing very well that my favorite English Premier Club can easily lose. This is a tough season for Liverpool FC. Already we've lost 4 in 9 games. Last season, Liverpool only lost twice, but drawn 11 games, and ended up 2nd to Manchester United. This Sunday, at 9:30 pm Malaysian time, I will be glued to the TV to watch Liverpool take on the league leaders Manchester United. My son, who is not a football fan, asked why I keep supporting Liverpool and keep getting frustrated. Support other teams, my son recommended. Maybe he's right.....Arsenal is not faring too badly, and I am an admirer of Arsene Wenger. Last season, when Liverpool were going through their slump (as every team in the league will experience at various stages of the Premier League season), drawing games they should've won comfortably, I actually, supported Man U for a while, because I (as I told my Man U suppo...

Today, I went to the market, by myself.... alone... without my dear wife. As she is incapacitated, and the food supplies were running low, it was up to me to ensure the survival of our family. I've done it before, I think, a long time ago, just after the birth of my youngest child, while my wife was in confinement... but, that was almost 10 years ago. 07:30 hours, after the debriefing by my wife, equipped with a list of things to buy, I embarked on a journey of uncertainty..... I was unsure what ikan senangin (threadfins) looks like. The night before, I googled an image of the fish, tried to commit the picture to memory. 07:48 hours. Arrived at destination. As usual there wasn't an empty parking space in sight around the Subang Jaya SS15 wet market. I stopped the car and wait for somebody to vacate a space. There were a few, but they were on the other side of the road and were quickly filled by others who were also lying in wait. 08:02 hours. went once around the block and...

While waiting for my wife, as she was undergoing surgery, I regretted that I didn't bring to the hostpital the book I was reading, "Life of Pi" by Yan Martel. I had not finished reading it, in fact, I abandoned it for a while, because I can't stand the graphic descriptions of how (driven my hunger) Piscine Molitor Patel killed turtles and birds. Bookless, I found myself walking to the mamak restaurant across the street from the hospital, with the intention of buying a pack of cigarettes. I approched the cashier counter, looking past the cashier, and scanned the showcase of a variety of (supposedly) repulsive pictures of various cancer ridden anatomy. I've always preferred the gangrened foot (and by consensus the least repulsive of all the pictures) but whatever the picture, they are easier to ignore than the nagging yen for nicotine. Then, as I was just about to reach for my wallet in my back pocket, it occurred to me, that, at that particular moment, I did not re...

It's 9:39 pm as per my bedroom wall clock. In approximately, 2 hours and 20 minutes I will have lived on this earth for exactly 45 years. And today, strangely, I have been receiving more birthday wishes than I can ever remember. The first to wish is my wife of course, although, her actual words we.... 45 today huh? Perangai tak berubah... Then, my phone started to tinkle, and the wishes started to pour in.... ok, I got 5 text messages. One was from Maxis, the telephone company, one from an insurance company and another from the electrical goods store where I bought MP3 players for the girls. The other two were from my female friend (as opposed to girlfriend) and the other is from Edward, who sold me the insurance from the aforementioned insurance company. Then, there are my facebook buddies... all 4 of them wrote a birthday wish on my wall.... A few years ago, I told myself that I will be retiring at 45. This milestone, just a couple of hours away, seems unlikely to be achieved...

Looking at my children, how close they are with each other, made me realise that I don't know how it feels to be them... to have siblings with age difference small enough to actually share an era. I was born in 1964, which means that I started school in 1971, at which time my youngest older brother is well into his teenage years, my eldest sister is 30 years old. I was almost like an only child, spoiled silly by my mother and sisters, frowned upon by my father and brothers as an annoyance. I have no fond memories of brotherly love, like wrestling each other or playing a game together, which makes me rather apprehensive of how my two sons relate to each other. They are 5 years apart, but I was often afraid that Afiq will treat Aiman as a nuisance and leave him out of whatever he was doing. That, happened for a while, but I found out that Afiq blamed Aiman for not being able to play his PS2...(long story). I straightened that out, and ever since, he and Aiman are so close, it warms m...

The arrow of time can only move in one direction. Forward. That is the law of the universe... the law of God. What this means is just that we only have memories of the past, and we can't see the future. And (it is theorised) that even if one has gone to the future, and come back to the past, he will not have any memories of the future he's gone to. So all we have in our minds are things that has happened in the past. I am trying to think of things that happened in my life, and the more I think, the more I realised that, I seemed to have forgotten of so many things in my past. This happens all the time, (especially during Eidul Fitri), when the conversation, inevitably, steered itself to comparisons of then and now. More often than not, I am surprised that some people remember things about me or what I said or do that I have no memory of. And it amazes me that some will remember every detail of a certain long gone event like it only happened yesterday. Once, I showed an old pict...

My mother told me that my name means the Sun. And, she bought me a book of Aesop fables and, though I love all the stories with its moralities, I can’t help but become attached to the story of the wind and the sun. Thereafter, somewhere in the beginning of my life, I made the unconscious decision to adopt the sun’s virtue in making people to do things. And, today I can’t do it otherwise. Throughout my life, people around me tell me to be more aggressive. They say I am too soft. Some adults say that I’ll never survive in the real world, if I continue to let certain things go... not get back at those who have put me down or bullied me. Maybe it is the result of people constantly telling me that I am soft and indecisive that has made me soft and indecisive... Maybe this sun attitude as opposed to the wind attitude is just my way of consoling myself. I don’t know. Perhaps, I am too much like my mother. My father is very assertive and will tell people exactly what’s on his mind. My mother t...

If life were a premise of death I’m dying to live If death is what we live for Live and let live If the rich are kind There will be no hunger If the poor are apathetic What are the rich? If war is the answer I shall not ask questions If peace is what we kill for Please don’t have children....

Haji Jaafar knows where the devil lives. He told me, and at first I didn't want to believe him. "The devil called my name once," Haji Jaafar said to me. "It was when we, your mother and I, were travelling to Alor Star... or somewhere, I can't recall, but I know it was a long journey." There were no expressways then. The roads were narrow and dangerous, and the journey up north will take maybe ten hours from Muar. Hj Jaafar told me he heard it clearly, above the drone of the car engine and howling wind as he sped to his destination. "Maybe it was the wind rustling the leaves in the trees," I suggested. "No," Haji Jaafar said, "it can't be." I waited for his point of argument, but it never came. Instead, he fell silent and looked out the window. "He even tried to cause an accident..." Haji Jaafar said to no one outside the window. "He pulled on the steering wheel... but I managed to fight him... I read out the a...

Someone told me a joke about a man who had just bought a car. It was his first car and, not wanting to have even a scratch on it, he took it to a hindu temple, a buddhist temple, a church and a mosque. At the hindu temple, the hindu priest chanted mantras over the car and tied a red string around the car's right wing mirror. The buddhist monk sprinkled the car with water after chanting traditional mantras and then a white string was tied to the left wing mirror. The christian priest blessed the car with holy water and gave the driver a cross to hang from the rear view mirror. At the mosque, the imam was astounded since nobody ever asked to bless a car before. So after a recitation of selected verses from the Qur'an, he took a hacksaw and promptly cut the tip off the car's exhaust pipe..... to circumcise it. When I first heard this story, I thought the new car owner was an atheist, albeit a superstitious one. This man, I had deduced, did not really believe in the existence o...

Abilene is a place in Texas, USA. I’ve never been there, but the first time I heard of the place was when I was in college (UiTM) during the Organizational Behaviour class. Dr. Zulaika told the class about a bunch of people, a husband, a wife and the wife’s parents, who were sitting around, doing practically nothing when all of a sudden the father said, ‘Let’s go to Abilene.’ From where they were, Abilene was 85 km away. Because he sounded so enthusiastic, the son-in-law said, 'Ok, why not.' The wife said, 'Yes, let’s have dinner there.' The mother said, 'Sounds like fun.' The trip was bad, and the food was lousy and then they had to travel all the way back again. Then, the mother said, 'Maybe we should’ve stayed home.' And the wife said, 'Yes, I thought, everybody else wanted to go, so I went along.' The husband said, 'I thought you wanted to go, Dad…I didn’t want to disappoint you.' The father said, 'Not really, I just made the sugg...