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...

Two days ago, I broke my little toe, and fractured the toes beside it in 2 different places, after slamming it into a doorframe, while I was half asleep and rushing to see what my baby son was crying about. Turns out his mother was in the room with him, but was preparing my other 2 sons to go to school. So the baby was just being a baby. And I had broken my toes for nothing. It wasn't much fun, and it hurt like having a steamroller have its way with my foot. Fast forward the first 2 days of absolute misery, waiting on a wheelchair at 2 different clinics and lastly the hospital. Fast forward the day after in my PJs, feeling painful, and miserable, full of self-pity and loss of self-worth. It is now Day 3. The deadline is closing in and I have so much that I haven't done. We are leaving NZ for good in just over 3 weeks' time. So much to do. Packing. Shipping. Writing PhD. Most pressing is the fact that I have to sell my beloved Honda Odyssey in a few days'...

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...

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 It is now coming up on two weeks since the horrifying 6.4 earthquake , 11km deep, ravaged Christchurch and caused death, destruction and total chaos to the city and its inhabitants. Not in the very least, coupled with the 7.1 earthquake on 4 September 2011 and the 5000 or so ensuing aftershocks to date, it has frayed my nerves almost to the brink of exhaustion. I am unable to concentrate on anything at this point in time, and if that wasn’t enough, the 4.8 aftershock followed by 3 subsequent aftershocks were significant enough to put me teetering on the edge. Initially after the first major Canterbury quake, the aftershocks, though annoying and sometimes a little hairy, were bearable because of the knowledge that they wouldn’t be as bad as the initial quake. Well, after the untold destruction of the 22 February quake, and a death toll approaching 200, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Before it used to be “oh, it’s just an aftershock”. Now it’s “is this a b...

It has been a terrifying ordeal. I am drained physically, emotionally and mentally. When the quake hit, I was 5 floors up, in a building right at the heart of Christchurch. It started as any normal aftershock would, with the familiar roaring sound of the very earth moving beneath us. After 2 seconds I realised it was no normal aftershock, as the familiar rumbling turned to violent shaking.  I was thrown off my feet, and landed on my knees. Computer monitors toppled everywhere. The shaking seemed to engulf the world, and my mind almost went blank. I remember falling down. I remember clambering under a table with Bronwyn, my boss. I remember a short respite where as I slowly stood up, I looked out the window and all I saw was smoke and dust, like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the city. My mind still had trouble trying to take everything in. Aftershocks I can take with relative ease... A full-on earthquake.. with me smack bang in the middle of it all... Now that's a tot...

When you're stuck at a proposal your life doesn't seem to move forward. Ask that to the sweating man whose heart is pounding like a hammer while he is down on one knee, holding out a gold ring, waiting for the fateful answer... It's like time stands still. The same concept applies to the man in the office, sweating it out in the hot summer sun, shivering it out in the cold summer rain, typing and typing away, just so that a bunch of very highly placed professors get the chance to critique his work and shred it to bits before they give the OK for him to proceed with the next phase of his life. That, dear friends, is the proposal. And that is how I have been spending these past few months. It's not like I've been slogging day and night over it; I have had time to do other things, but I guess the combination of a few factors has made it seem rather daunting. First off, I am now working on a deadline. I was supposed to have sent the proposal in on 31 December, b...

If you ask me now, I wouldn't really be able to tell what life was like back in Malaysia. It's like it was another life altogether. To tell you the truth, the only bits and pieces that I do remember were going to work at uni, and then going to work tutoring the Koreans, and then going home, and then going to sleep... Oh of course there were the occasional nights out, movies, dinner and so on, but they seemed to pale in comparison to the crushing weight of work and responsibility. And if you were to ask me what I remembered of my son back home, I would say I remember him sleeping when I went to work, and sleeping when I got back from work... but of course there would be the weekends that we would enjoy together, where I would take him to the lake gardens and we would go jogging together with his mother, and we would end the morning with a trip to the local Mamak restaurant, where he would order his favourite items on the menu without fail - roti telur with dhal, and iced M...

Image credit here It is the last day of Ramadhan. I pause to reflect on the events that have transpired this past month. So many questions come to mind - Did I make full use of the Ramadhan? Did I manage to get closer to God? Was there anything that I could have done differently? And the answer always seems to fall short of what I want. It is not the not eating and drinking part that I have found difficult the past month. The challenge for me was more of the other aspects of Ramadhan: having to avert my eyes at impure sights ( a big challenge here), avoiding impure thoughts, and most of all, sustaining my supplementary prayers and du'a throughout the entire month. But Alhamdulillah, I am glad to report that I did manage the latter - I almost always managed to pray and additional solat taubah and solat hajat after my tarawih, and an additional solat taubah and hajat after Subuh prayers. Of this I am infinitely grateful that Allah gave me the strength and will-power to acc...

It is now the third day into the Canterbury Earthquake crisis. Only now are we beginning to grasp the full extent of the damage and trauma Cantabrians face. So far there have been 15,000 insurance claims on damages, and a full 50% of the homes in Canterbury have been damaged in some way. As I watch the news, my heart goes out to those whose homes have been totally demolished, or condemned. Homes, old and new, some worth a million dollars or more per house, all gone in the blink of an eye. Some have no electricity, no toilet facilities, no running water. Stories have cropped up today of so many close calls, of bricks falling down exactly where there people's heads had been just moments before, some of people suddenly falling into silt and quicksand, but managing to to escape. Many were in tears as the news crews interviewed them, voices shaking, still reeling from the shock at the events that had transpired over the past three days. Even my fellow Malaysians here were n...

Picture: Manchester Street, just off where I work. Very thankful the language centre is OK It is now a full day since the monumentous earthquake rocked Canterbury, and Cantabrians find themselves changed forever. The safety and sanctity of their idyllic little world came crashing down the very instant the first brick dislodged and disintigrated onto the ground. The city centre is now in lockdown. There is a police curfew in effect from 7pm to 7am, relegating Christchurch to become a ghost town after dark. Businesses are expected to be closed for at least a week. My language centre is closed for a few days at least. The University of Canterbury declared a closure until Monday the 13th. And yet, be that as it may, I see Cantabrians still getting on with life. The streets are a lot quiter, and there aren't as many people jogging, but the mail is still sent, flyers from supermarkets about their latest price promotions still litter the lawn, dogs are still being walked. Life seems ...

Never have I felt totally powerless against the awe of Nature, before the might of God. I awake up with a jolt. Pitch black. A roaring sound in my ears and the house shaking on its very foundations. I do not comprehend what is happening. My heart thumps like a hammer on an anvil. I draw the curtain, and what I see stops my heart. Darkness...and a sudden flash of light... like something exploding in the distance... And then the heater suddenly switches off. And the street lights blink and die. My mind still does not know what forces are assaulting it. Earthquake? But what was that explosion? Was it a plane crash? Is is the end of the world?... Total pitch darkness. And the roaring continues, filling my ears with cacophony and my heart with dread. The house continues to shake in waves. With no electricity and the outside temperature being 1 degree Celcius, my mind starts to panic. No electricity in Malaysia means a pitch black night of sweltering heat, sweat, and no TV. No el...

It is now past the 10 day mark of the fasting month. I take stock of what Ramadhan has meant to me so far. So far, I am on my 5th Juz of the Quran, which makes my progress slow compared to what my parents are doing, which I'm sure is more than 1 juz a day. Note to self - need to spend time to read more Quran. Alhamdulillah, I think I am lucky to be able to pray 2 raka'ats of tahajjud before Subuh, and 2 raka'ats of Taubah after Subuh almost every day. I know it isn't much compared to what so many of my brothers and sisters in Islam are doing to show their devotion to God, but I am doing what is manageable to me, and InshaAllah, God willing, I will be able to step up my 'amal more and more as we progress further. A very wise person once told me that the best way to achieve overall spirituality is not a heaped dose of 'amal, which fades as time goes by simply because it is difficult to maintain. The best way is to do what you can, and making sure you are comforta...

I step into the classroom. I see four students looking up at me, a little puzzled, and perhaps a little apprehensive. I wouldn't blame them of course because that was the first time they saw me, and they would have had no idea what to expect. But I took it all in stride, as an experienced teacher should. I smiled and greeted everyone. It was nice to see them smiling back. I knew that I was going to like them immediately. For me, the first lesson is always the most important to build unit cohesion. Simply put, this is the ideal time to make them like you and trust you with their learning. And it is also the best time you get to know them as individuals. There were four in the class. Bronwyn mentioned that winter was a hard season for the centre, because the enrolment numbers usually dropped. The first student was a Japanese man in his late 30s or early 40s. His name was Norifumi, and he was a full-time guardian to his daughter in NZ. I wasn't quite sure what he was...

I don't know whether it was meant to be, or if it was fate, or divine intervention. Initially, I thought that I could focus a hundred percent on my PhD and not having to do anything anything else, but it soon became clearer and clearer that I was running out of options. My bank account was bleeding to death, and I knew I would soon follow if the situation were not remedied. I tried a few things - tried to get marking jobs for lecturers, or to teach part-time in any university subjects.. any job at the university would have done.. but it just wasn't meant to be. I was like a fish out of water. They didn't have TESL-related disciplines here, otherwise I could have done well.. In the College of Education they had art-related disciplines, of which I barely have any experience. Even the Drama in Education that I taught in UTM were language-based, and not arts-based. I couldn't teach English.. well.. because it's an English speaking-country! Or so I thought... Answ...

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...

The clock is ticking. I am counting the precious hours I have left with my family before I start the next chapter of my life in the land of the Kiwis. It's all been crazy after the euphoria of getting the news that my Student visa was finally approved, though only for two years.. this would mean that for my third year there I would have to get the whole circus running again, taking the medical exams etc. But, for the moment, I am as good as there. Plane ticket... check. Temporary accommodations... check. Sell my car... check. The list goes on and on. So much to do in so little time. Less than two days to go... And I have yet to pack.