Lobo's Lessons

Today was a good day for me. I went to work, went for prayers, played badminton. In short a good day (though still a bit lacking in the PhD department). Coming home from this high, I thought to myself "I want to do something with the family". But when I got home, Salmah was a bit tired, and Adam was taking his nap. So  the only person there was Adel, playing with his robots. I thought "hey why not?". I asked him if he wanted to follow to go window shopping. And he replied that he did. And so we took the Bimmer and drove off to the mall. When we arrived, we strolled round the shops, looking at things both of us were interested in (smartphones, gadgets and games). We talked. We joked. We walked hand in hand. And I realised that I had never done this with him before. At least not as an older boy. Sometimes as parents with more than one child, we forget that each and every one of our children need their own time with us. We always think of 'famil...

I am in a bit of a quandary. I'm not sure how I feel. And I'm not even sure if it is appropriate for me to feel this way. I feel I need to break it down and analyse it to even begin to understand it. My father is a good, honest, and loving man who care than anything has an affinity towards helping people who he feels are deserving - good, honest people who need a leg up from whatever difficult circumstances life has handed them. He befriends them, procures their services if they have any, buys their products if they sell any, visits them on trips and even takes them along some, takes them in and gives them a sense of 'home' during the holidays, and a myriad other things. Such is my father. There have been many that he has gone through the process with, but there are a few that stand out. One was a school clerk from KL. One worked for JAL in KLIA. More recent was an Indonesian odd-jobs worker who was also a traditional massage therapist. Another was a n...

I am on Facebook, and I see throngs of status updates wishing a Selamat Hari Merdeka Malaysia. People have changed their profile pictures to flags, or to pictures of them with flags.  All to indicate their love for their country. Their Tanahair . Their Ibu Pertiwi . As for me, I ask myself what do I feel? No over the top compulsion to break out into patriotic song. No compulsion to change profile pictures, to upload pictures of flags. Nothing. Why? I don't know. Part of me says it's that i'm sick of everything that is happening there. Merdeka slogans that mean nothing at all about achieving Independence? Seriously? The Independence song that has the phrase Kedai 1Malaysia in it?? Seriously??? Why are you trying so hard to push propaganda down people's throats? Why are you so insecure? When are you going to learn that Malaysia is not the same as BN? When are you going to learn that the harder you push something down people's throat...

"Every soul shall taste death" (Holy Quran) Death is inevitable. It is the other side of the coin for life. We know it, and acknowledge it. Yet, when it hits we are never prepared. Yesterday, my wife received news that her father had died - twice. One from a relative who was misinformed, at 7pm NZ time, when my father in law was actually still barely alive. One from my own father at 3am NZ time this morning, when it was confirmed that he had passed on. And both times I saw her cry, like her heart had shattered into a million pieces. The anguish in her agonised sobs could not be hidden. All the pain and the frustration, the feeling of helplessness at not being able to do anything while being in another country thousands of miles away from home, tore from her very being. And I was powerless to do anything. I could only be there comfort her and wait for the storm to pass. In my mind however, I was very thankful that we managed to do at least one thing...

Image credit here . In a PhD, we are expected to write close to 100,000 words. In a Masters we are expected to produce 30,000 words. Imagine all the effort and pain it takes to write even a single paragraph of an academic masterpiece. Your theoretical framework, your methods and methodology, your research context, research participants, analysis, discussion.. the list goes on and on. In imaginary terms, with a PhD you try to come up with substance that can produce the mass the size of the Earth, and the thickness of your final thesis reflects this. Now imagine that you have to take this planetary sized mass, and compress it. Compress it until the very ground you walk on shakes and moans, buckling under the strain. Compress it until everything comes to a juddering stop. And you are left with a ball the size of a marble, but containing the mass of a whole planet. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Thesis in Three. Three minutes to sum up your life's work. Three minu...

Image credit here . It is only a few more days until we reach the end of the holiest month in Islam. It is time for retrospection. Praise be to Allah the Most Compassionate and Most Merciful for allowing us to draw breath until this very second. To be able to breathe, to be able to live, is sometimes a ni'mah that many of us take for granted; for it is through His will and His pleasure alone that we remain on this Earth. Even that is only for the briefest time, before we return to Him, and await Judgement. Judgement. Where our eternal fates will be decided. Where there is only eternal bliss.. or eternal damnation. No middle ground. What will we be able to do in the Supreme Court of our Lord? Who or what will defend us against all the sins that speak out against us, each lengthening the Sirat Al-Mustaqeem, making it further to cross, and ever so much easier to fall into Jahannam. Who? And the answer is our deeds, on this Earth, for the briefest time that we draw...

Picture: My caffe latte served with my wife's Raspberry and White Choc muffin It began with a shy look. A college student with barely two coins to rub together, walks past a Coffee Bean cafe and wonders how his some of his friends can afford to drink a coffee that costs as much as two whole meals. He looks up at the price list, steals a glimpse of a straw touching a pair of luscious lips, and sees the dark, cool liquid move up the straw... and sees the person's eyes close with pleasure. And he quickly looks down. "One day" he whispers to  himself, "one day I will drink you". It has been many years now since the college student made the promise. He is now a... well, he's still a student. Except he is now studying towards his PhD in New Zealand. He has drunk countless cups of coffee. Some coffees cheap and cheerful (and usually always upsetting to the stomach), some coffees more refined than others, and some coffees verging on ...

It's been more than a year since my last post, and I am frankly a little surprised my this blog still gets hits. But what can I say, doing a PhD punches the wind out of you, so much so that you only have a vague memory of what life was like before that. Right now it seems like there are only two phases in my life - PhD, and pre-PhD. The strange thing is, it's not that I've been buried in journal articles and papers for the past years, just swimming round and round, drifting aimlessly as I do so. It's more the little things, that bury me, where I'm just swimming round and round, drifting aimlessly as I do so. Seriously. It's like instead of being on the "where is the next conference" and "when is the next journal due?", we get questions like these: "how am I going to register my son in his new school?", "how many hours teaching am I doing this week?", "have I filled in the timesheet yet?", and "when ...

image credit here . 12.51pm. The congregation falls silent, heads bowed in contemplation. All I hear is the breeze blowing through the rustling trees, and the happy chirping of birds, oblivious to the human drama unfolding below. I am at the university quad, surrounded by my fellow students and university staff members, all gathered at the memorial service to commemorate the tragedy that struck at this very hour, on this very day, exactly a year ago.  We were joined by the entire nation. The entire nation had grinded to a halt, each man, woman and child dedicating two minutes of their lives in silence, in remembrance to those who had perished in the great Christchurch earthquake; in remembrance to those left behind to soldier on and rebuild their shattered lives; in remembrance of the ordeals endured by each and every Cantabrian, one aftershock at a time. Silence. I remember the walk to the main campus, a sweet sadness welling up deep inside me as I s...