Everything

"Kakak ini hari kena pergi beli barang mahu masak untuk Maulud Nabi. Ini hari kerjanya harus cepat-cepat siap, boleh ke pasar beli barangannya. Kita orang Indonesia, kalau Maulud Nabi kita masak sedikit buat jamuan di surau. Tapi tak berapa banyaklah, dik. Biaya sekarang ini mahal. Kakak kongsi sahaja lah sama teman-teman. Kakak beli pulut, temannya beli ayam, yang seorang lagi beli telur. Asal punya jamuan sahaja dan kita ingat sama Nabi. Tak banyak pun tak apalah. Gaji kakak satu bulan di sini 600 ringgit. Suami aku kerjanya di kolam pancing ikan. Ada juga lah dalam 500 ke 600 ringgit dikira berapa jam dia bekerja. Anak aku dua orang di sini. Mahu hantar belanja sama emak di kampung. Adik, kau tahu? Bil api di kampung kakak satu bulan sahaja sudah 60 ringgit. Kakak bilang sama emak, "Mahal ya, Emak bil apinya? Kenapa begitu?". Emak aku bilang dia tidak tahu sedangkan lampu pun jarang-jarang dia pasang. Minggu lepas aku habis 500 ringgit, adik. Buat belanja beli bara...

Salam. I still remember my post on the regular headache I had to bear mostly at the coffee shops, how I've had to go for a dubiously generic English name; Suzy. But, I did't tell you about the famous hackneyed Malay name though. Hayati. That's my mother's name. I strongly believe that my late grandfather had made the best life decision cum the first responsibility as a newly-titled father when he had to call the iqamat into a pair of little angel's ears; most importantly by not being too excited on the baby's name part. Thank God too unconventional names were't kicked off while having the colonials around them. My late grandfather who I called Tokwan had proven to be a wisely sane man or I couldn't have used Hayati as another camouflage.  Don't get me wrong, people. Not that I'm saying my Abah is crazy but don't you think that he's a wee bit of delusional? Come on, I'm open for criticism. Or, you don't know my na...

Salam.  Back in May this year, I was in the state of negotiating with God on my death date. I kept on asking Him to bring it forward before its definite time, literally praying, "God, please take my life".  Instead of praying, I was begging him to consider the idea of pulling out the plague of my body, incessantly after the five times daily prayers like I knew better than Him. I tried to instill that, that idea was totally brilliant so, "God, please accept my suggestion". I didn't blame Him though for putting me into a hell difficult situation I had to go through partly because I knew I begot the roots. But worse, I didn't notice that I actually have underestimated my God. Not sure if any of you have ever tried to impose the ideologies of "Humans know how much we can take it, better than You (God)" on God because I wonder what kind of facial reaction you are having now. Ridiculous as it may sound, I even wondered the same whether Go...

How would I observe 2015? How would I honor the beginning of a New Year? Because New Year has always been unimportant to me. Now we are heading to the end of March. Three months have left the opening curtain to the continual/new plays of life. The achievements somehow seem so dim almost nothing. I once had New Year resolutions back in 2012 whereby having an ice-cream while riding on carousel was on the top of everything; as cliche as it may sound, nothing was unlocked. So I gave up. 2012 taught me a lot of life lessons and those made the fake pledges not well thought out. I started to realize life cannot be all planned and jotted down onto a piece of paper. Of course there will be a lot of times an alarm bell ringing at the state of I am not prepared but a lotta bottle in me surely can combat all the rumpus. I just gotta believe. 

We take a chance from time to time And put our necks out on the line And you have broken every promise that we made And I have loved you anyway Took a fine time to leave me hangin' out to dry Understand now I'm greivin' So don't you waste my time Cause you have taken All the wind out from my sails And I have loved you just the same We finally find this Then you're gone Been chasin' rainbows all along And you have cursed me When there's no one left to blame And I have loved you just the same And you have broken every single fucking rule And I have loved you like a fool

I remember one balmy day when my family and I went to this restaurant in Kampung Attap for lunch and one lady came to us with her tot on the shoulder asking for food. I could tell that they are Burmese, to be specific Rohingya people. They seemed helpless and hungry so we invited them to have lunch together but the mother refused. She wanted some money to buy foods and she will bring back the foods to the shelter where the other three kids were waiting and staying temporarily. So I assisted her to the foods counter and let her chose what she wanted. It was really heartbreaking to see a mountain of rice only swamp with plain watery curry and divided to four portions. I did the calculation myself and asked her whether it was enough for the family. She answered, “Alhamdulillah.” At the cashier where I was paying for the foods, she suddenly removed her bracelet and put it into my palm. “Terima kasih.” I was shocked and returned it back to her. “Tak perlu. Saya sedekah.” I could see the ...

Assalamualaikum wbt. One of the most striking features about the sort of lives nature has bestowed upon us and it is our ability to influence a certain number of events to go rather as we wish; rather than as we do not wish. The influence we have, when we are honest to ourselves about this, it is very partial. For a start, no past event is within our power to influence, and of all those events that might realistically be supposed to happen in the next few minutes, not very many of them are written in my power to bring about, or not bring about; as I choose. Fortunately, some are. Whether or not I drink my coffee now, or let it go cold, it is up to me. If I am on a journey, whether I turn left or whether I turn right at a particular junction, is up to me. Most people do not give this fact about our experience very much thought, we can influence events that mostly we have no call to think about this fundamental function of human life. Obviously we think about the choices, which ...

I am back. Ironically; some people generally say they don't like to lie and sometimes feel guilty or bad about lying, though they do it, while feeling angry and betrayed when others lie to them. Yet they commonly feel their own lies are justified or appropriate. In fact, these some people sometimes feel proud of certain lies. Ugh! Lying is fundamentally wrong. Everyone would generally acknowledge that. Though many people have this relativistic ethic, making it is okay to lie to certain groups of people or under certain circumstances which they label "little white lies" or "bohong sunat". I feel a great deal of contempt for the lie. My style is to want and to get everything out in the open, and to confront things I feel aren't true (which truth is I don't want to do the confrontation because I'm sucks at it). I know confrontation upsets a lot of people. They don't like to look at the truth. But I much prefer getting everything out in ...