Lobo's Lessons

I have been putting off writing this post for a long time now. I told myself the timing was never right. Or that it was too soon. Or that I had too much going on. Which I did of course. But today marked a significant milestone in my life here in NZ. We had sent the boxes containing our personal effects that we had collected over the past three and a half years for shipping. A hard month and a half of packing, and a mad sprint to the finish yesterday, where Salmah only slept 45 minutes in 24 hours, and then had to rush off for her final day at her job at 4am in the morning, bless her soul. But we made the deadline. And now in as the adrenaline is ebbing out of my veins, I finally get a chance to contemplate on the past three and half years as a Kiwi, and how life was going back full circle, as I prepared to leave these shores. It is impossible to capture every single experience in a single blogpost, but there are those moments that are impossible to delete from one...

Twenty-three hours to go... and soon, I'm going to be home... Home, where the land beckons, waiting for her traveling son to return. Home, where my parents and siblings await with beaming smiles. Home, where I left half my heart, in this journey to broaden the mind with new knowledge and experience. Twenty-three hours to go...

Aotearoa... Land of the long white cloud... The first sight that greeted me as I stepped off the plane in Auckland was beautiful vista of clear blue sky. It was cool, but much warmer than what I had expected winter to be. In fact, it was almost like a cool, sunny spring morning in my memories of my time in the UK. I had spent 11 hours on the plane and crossed God knows how many time zones, but it was all sinking in... All the waiting, all the pain and frustration in the previous months... seemed to dissipate as it finally dawned on me that I was finally here. One of the very first things that I noticed was the consistent reminder to 'Declare it' in the airport. Apparently, you have to declare anything that may be food, or originally organic, and chances are you would be expected to throw everything away before you get to cross the Customs and Immigration. A bit harsh I thought. My travel companion told me the story of how the Indian national cricket team were fined...

It has been three agonising months just doing what NZ Immigration has asked me to do, and waiting for the damn results from the medical assessors to be returned. Call up NZ Immigration this morning. Answer from NZ Immigration "Sorry, the medical examiner needs more information. They need a liver function test, and a hepatitis test. Sorry you're going to have to call up the university and ask them to postpone the starting date for a while". I am crushed. Not as bad as a full out rejection, but still bad. This means a few more hundred/thousand ringgit on useless tests, with still no guarantee of anything by the end of it. This means waiting another month after I do the tests to see if I need to do more tests, or if I am through, or if I am rejected. This means another whole month of worrying. This means another whole month of answering the onslaught of the usual friendly question - "So when are you going?". I think I'm almost burnt out and ja...

Image credit here . Dust and sand... Dust and sand... Dust and sand... Thus the gathering ' toos ' (sandstorm) swirls in the wind gathering unbridled momentum, angry and pulsing with life. It was as if the sandstorm had become a living entity, an embodiment of the life-force of the desert sands - harsh, unrelenting, and totally out of man's control... I stared unblinking as the fury of nature unleashed wave upon wave of unnerving howls, each wail seeming like a call from souls lost in the vast expanse of the unforgiving desert... I thanked the Lord above that I was safe indoors, in the sanctuary of the room I shared with two others in the student hostel, our ' sakan '. It was a paradox of states, as if two forces were struggling to collide and merge with one another, one the peace and serenity of the sanctuary found indoors, and the other the pure untamed wilderness of Nature. I stared on, eyes wide with the fear of a man who is confronted with a new element in...

SCENE 1: CAMERA VIEW: POV Me at Woodlands Checkpoint. Singapore customs clearance. Filling in disembarkation form. I finish writing everything and hand over my form, along with my Passport and IC to the rather stern-looking female Indian Customs officer. She takes my documents. She looks at the documents. She looks up at me. She looks at the documents again, and says "Abdullah Mohd Nawi... Ooooo... Melayu kaa? Saya ingat Cina...." (Translation: Abdullah Mohd Nawi... Ohhhh... You're a Malay? I thought you were Chinese...) CAMERA VIEW: My face (Closeup) ...wtf?... FADE

Inspiration... It comes to us in many different ways, in many different shapes... Some of us search high and low to the ends of the Earth looking for it. For some it just comes when we least expect it. And for a few lucky people, it comes and visits quite a few times throughout their lifetime. For me, one of these rare moments came from the most unexpected of places, in the most unexpected of times... Venice, the City of Romance... Its lush waterways and canals enticing every single soul that sets its eyes upon them... A magical wonderland, with the Renaissance lingering in the very air that the city breathes... Venice...the City of Romance... And me nursing a broken heart, which I had left behind somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland... Irony at its finest... It was summer, and summer in England was nowhere like summer in Italy. We were roasting in the sweltering heat, sweat continuously pouring down our foreheads... My cousin and I had arrived in Venice for a couple of hours, and we...

Alamak... begini ke rasanya kena tag nie? Hatiku panas membara kerana telah ditag oleh studentku sendiri... Sampai hatimu Tiqa... tidakkah daku cukup memberikanmu kasih sayang dan perhatian dalam kelas? isk...isk... (There goes my drama skills kicking in...hehehe) Anyway, it looks like I've been tagged... and the topic is... 'The age that I wish to go back to...' I think with me there isn't really an age that I would go back to just to change anything, because to me, all that has happened in the past has shaped me into the person I am today... However... I would like to relive the events that happened to me when I was 22... Yes... That was one heck of a good year... Canterbury, Kent... England... A year of love gained and love lost... A year of the best friends a guy could ask for... Enrique Garcia Ruiz...Maria Isabel Poveda...Cindy Barquero...Katherine Fiallho... Junji... Takako... Ainara Andueza... Miguel... Jayne Ann Kilvington... and a host of others too numerous to...