Long Time No see

I was surprised when a friend mentions that I have not made any new posting after January 25th or so. I can be considered as a very disciplined person but unfortunately this good trait of mine does not extend to updating my blogs. Thousand apologies for that. Insha Allah I shall try to resume my postings from today.

Hajj: Old Habits Die Hard

it is always being stressed by the ustazs(=trainers) that one must 'settle' all debts and change one's repulsive habits before going for Haj. An example given is that if one 'accidentally' caused the death of another due to traffic accident has to pay blood money for it. And it is always mentioned that one has to be extra pious before departing for the Holy Land.

During the "Kursus Perdana Haji' just a couple of weeks before my departure, I noticed many would-be Hajis took two or three food rations for himself causing the shortage of food packages. Several would-be Hajis couldn't get their ration. Now if one deliberately taking food belonging to others, depriving others of their entitlement what use is them going for Haj?

In Medina and Mecca hotels, the Hajis and Hajjahs lost all inhibitions when it comes to collecting food packages. And the habit of jumping the queues at any service counters shows the ugly side of Malaysians and Moslems!

Old habits die hard, even among those chosen to be the Guests of Allah!

Haj Course

Immediately after getting the notification from Tabung Haji that I was selected to perform the Haj in 2010, I knew I have to go for the courses organised by them. This simple routine is not so confortable for me. The reason for my 'uneasiness' is that I am a shy person and I do not like people to know that I was going for Haj. I prefer to take my spiritual journey private for the fear of being a 'village celebrity'.

For that I choose a mosque at which the course was first introduced and luckily it was very far from my house. In my first session, I saw no one whom I know at the course. I was happy. Attending a course can be an experience as everyone who goes there always asks questions such as: "(are you) going this year?', "going with wife?", and the irritating (at least to me) "going by muasasah or package?". Of course my wife and I have to choose the muassasah terms as it is cheap. For the uninitiated, "package" means going for the haj using private (Tabung Haji also has this mode) travel agents. It costs more, ranging from RM18,000.00 to RM60,000.00 per head.

Once the inquisitive person next to you gets your answer he/she starts telling you about the virtues of going via the 'package'. Worse still if he/she has performed the Haj before. He/she will rattle off tonnes of information to you about Mecca etc. I had gone for an umra (minor haj) years before but I never mention the fact to my numerous questioner....

Haji!

Last October (October 17, 2010) to be exact my wife and I went to the Holy Land for our haj - a once-a-life-time journey ordained for those who are able, financially and physically. It was a spiritually rewarding journey. Talking about haj, I feel proud as I was able - thank God - to perform the haj, finally. My father did his haj before his demise. So did my grandfather. My grandfather first went for haj in 1953 via steamship. I was not yet born then but I was told the return journey took six months. And my grandparents had to bring along everything except the house for the journey including the lesung batu.

My grandfather went for haj twice. The 1953 journey was with my grandmother, who passed away in 1957, before I was born. He remarried and eventually he and my step-grandmother went for haj too.

My father also went for haj more than once. I don't think I could do that, the reason being financial and my physical weakness.

I shall try to make postings on my haj very soon.

Hari Raya Puasa (Eid Mubarak)

It is time of the (Hegira) year again. You know when Ramadan comes, our mind straight-away think about the celebration at the end of the month. I cannot recall when I first started fasting. In the old days observations on fasting were very strict - some of which I regard as arising out of plain ignorance on our part of the religious requirements. We spit a lot during Ramadan back then as we thought nothing should get pass our teeth and hence into our stomach. So saliva is out....Nowadays we are more enlightened.

Whatever it is fasting is tiring for me. My metabolic rate is high. So you can imagine my hunger pangs during the fasting month. Usually I am lighter by at least 3-5kgs every Ramadan. After two months, my weight gets back to the original 58kg until the next Ramadan.

Ramadan is not eventful for me. Neither does the Hari Raya. Being poor during my younger days means that baju raya is extremely optional. Sometimes, I get school uniform for my baju raya, a two-in-one solution devised by my parents. Despite that, year in year out, Hari Raya is always a happy occasion despite the absence of baju raya. When I starts working and having children, my wife and I do buy baju raya for my children. And sometimes my wife buys baju raya for me too. Somehow, old habits die hard. I don't really give a serious thought about baju raya. I wear 'new' cloths during Hari Raya but I don't really wear baju raya. Nowadays, I wear simple ordinary baju Melayu for the Eid prayers, and a normal t-shirt or shirt plus trousers when visiting relatives and friends.

This habit does not mean that Hari Raya is unimportant but what it really indicates is just that I don't really 'over'-celebrate Hari Raya, more than I think is necessary. Or perhaps I am an odd man during this celebratory period!

Selamat Hari Raya * Maaf Zahir Batin!

Maths & Science Anyone?

In my last posting, I talked about how I learned and tried to master English, from scratch. Some readers may misunderstand the piece and conclude that I am a brilliant learner. I was in fact an average learner. Until form 1, I am quite OK with Mathematics and General Science. My trouble with the two subjects started in Form 2, when I found it almost impossible to understand what were being taught by the two subject teachers. My interest in the subjects waned henceforth until I reached Form 5. I hate Arts (Lukisan) and I dropped it from my MCE (Malaysian Certificate of Education) exams. Considering that I was weak in Mathematics and General Science, my prospect of passing the MCE looked bleak. That was very alarming, considering my less bright friends in the primary school days passed their SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) a year earlier. It would be koman for a supposedly brighter student to fail the MCE....

With the bleak prospect, I resolved that I must pass my MCE. My reputation had to remain intact. It was a scary scenario for me in that year...i.e. 1977. Slowly I created an Action Plan. Action no. 1: I used the compulsory prep-hours to practice mathematics together with my friends from the Science stream; Action no. 2: I read the Science books from the Science Stream.

Action plan does not guarantee success. I was lucky to have two excellent teachers teaching the two subjects viz. Mrs. Phua and Mr. Fong Fook Ming. Mrs. Phua spared the last 5 minutes of her class at my desk. She checked my exercises, guided me through them and praisde me for managing to finish about 40% of the homework that she gave me in the previous classes. Mrs. Phua would be at the door before Ustaz Mahmud ended his Islamic Studies class. That left me with no room to skip her class.

Mr. Fong Fook Ming was too patient with slow learners like me. He always checked on me...in his class. He would ask if I could follow his teaching, to which my answer was always an emphatic yes. He drew on the blackboard, examples - not on experiments but - of every science concept that he taught. I still could remember his drawing of a moving express bus with me seating on the bus toilet seat when he wanted to explain on relative speeds.

To cut the long story short, I managed to score C3 for both subjects in my MCE, a great feat for me enabling to come back from the brink of failure. In case that does not mean anything to you, I got a C5 for my Pengetahuan Agama Islam subject!

By the end of the year 1977, I saved my reputation among my kampung friends by passing my MCE with grade 1! You can imagine my sighs of relief then!

English?

Bahasa Inggeris or English is not my first language or mother tongue. My first language is Malay and my spoken tongue is the Terengganu dialect. Maybe it is in my blood or perhaps to make up for my lack of numerative skills, I have some flair for language.

I love reading! When in school I like to read anything that I can lay my eyes on. Books, signages etc. At a young age I already have some flair for writing. Malay (both the Rumi and Jawi versions) and English were taught in schools since standard one. And my parents did not object to my learning a language; or another language for that matter.

In standard one, my English teacher, Cikgu Adnan, made me accompanying him to other classes. He taught English. In standard two, a teacher, Cikgu Yusof Ishak, recommended me for a transfer to an English primary school in town. I didn't know why, my father flatly declined Cikgu Yusof's suggestion.

In standard five, I recall a visit by a team of inspectors. They took over my class during the English lesson. They asked questions and asked us to spell words that they said. I could spell correctly all the words a gentleman mentioned until he said, "How do you spell the word "beautiful"?" I knew the correct spelling but I felt overwhelmed by the class' deafening silence. And I was overawed by the smart gentlemen in suits.....Finally I didn't answer it. And he spelt the word for us. I had the correct spelling by my fear overcame me.

After standard six, I was sent to the premier school in my hometown, where English is used pervasively. My friends from the Malay schools became the butt of jokes for our limited vocabulary, funny pronunciations and ungrammatical English.

Not infrequently I asked my father to allow me to drop out of school. He refused. My fear of him got the better of me. I started reading voraciously any books or magazines in English. Not to mention newspapers. Every afternoon, I spent 90 minutes - yes 90 minutes - reading NST (New Straits Times). And I read Newsweek that I subscribed regularly.

In my MCE (Malaysian Certificate of Education) examinations, I answered the Communicational English paper confidently. The question on composition was based on a cartoon by Lat. A sequence of sketches showing a man looking for the right durian he wanted to buy at a pasar malam. the last frame showed him at the hospital with a visitor standing near his bed. Most of my friends just wrote their composition according to the sequence of the cartoon frames. i took a slightly different approach. I wrote of the man telling his visitor how he got into the hospital (using flashback technique).

When the results came out, I was the only one from my school scoring a distintion in Communicational English. To cut the long story short, it pays if we work hard. Now I feel more comfortable writing in english than in Malay although my Malay also good.

English anyone?