Lobo's Lessons

Lately I've been finding it hard to focus. I think it's been going on for a while now. So I guess I shouldn't say lately. Up until early 2021 I felt that I was in control of things.  I could work, whether from home or from the office, depending what the situation was like and what the directives were from the university. I'd attend meeting, give lectures, run my various committees under my portfolio as Assistant Dean for External and Global Engagement.  Then I'd go home, spend a little time with the family, have dinner, pray, and then continue working - either continue with work from the university, or working on my own work - content creation, writing my various book projects, make videos.  There was always something that I would do, and I would do them because I wanted to do them, and I had the energy and the willpower to do them. But of late, that seems to have all dissipated. I'd go home after work, and just look at the computer after dinner.  My head is swi...

I am in a hotel room. It is unclear who else is in the room. It must be my family. But I am uncertain. I know I am in the room with people I love. The hotel room is in a building that towers above ground level, and we can see all the houses below. I am in Hawaii I think. How I know that I do not know. All I know is that we are beside the ocean. I feel unsettled as I look out the window. Something is compelling me to look outside the window. It is getting dark. But I know by right it should not be dark. It is midday. And then I see it. In front of me a huge storm cloud is gathering. But I start to quiver because it looks like no ordinary storm. The clouds are pitch black. Black as death. My eyes follow their shape to where they originate. I gasp. I see a gigantic water spout, a tornado in the ocean, funnelling its energy to the black cloud. The water spout is also pitch black. Rain now pours uncontrollably. It is a hurricane at its full blast, but not just that. It is mu...

Help is never far away. That is the old adage that has been drummed into us ever since we were young. No matter where you are, and what difficulty you are going through, someone will be close at hand to help. Except they aren't. Many a time no one in your vicinity gives a rat's ass. Or could be in a mess of their own to even think that someone else may need the support. Just that little bit of assurance to show that they care. Sometimes it can be in the smallest things. A kind word. A check up of how one is doing. Yet help does come. Someone takes the time to respond, in short messages, all the way from across the Pacific Ocean. Someone does take the time to relate, and share their own experiences, and offers words of comfort from across the country. Yes, help is at hand, but it is always far away. *picture credit here

How does one forgive someone who has done them and their loved ones so much wrong? This is a question that I struggle with, and have always struggled with for a long time.  How does one push past the pain and suffering that a person had willingly caused, worse yet, caused to someone that they loved. We stand at the sidelines, and feel ourselves slighted, yet the pain we feel is minuscule, compared to the earth-shattering hurt our loved one experiences. Yet we are powerless, drowning in a helplessness, grasping for any lifeline that can pull ourselves out from the deep.  How can we let go when hatred is all we know. A hatred that festered from seeds of dislike. This poison that we feed ourselves. Yet it is all we know.  How does one tell oneself to let go? If a person murders your son, and returns a month later, saying he is genuinely sorry; what would you do? He comes in and says he will pay for the cleaning bill, to wipe the blood stains off the...

Image taken from here As I am gardening, my mind begins to wonder. A pleasurable activity, now that I have some time on my hands. as my hands sift through the earth I come across a small shiny object. What is this? I wonder.  I pick it up, and it appears to be a key. I rub the dirt off the key and I see the letters B...L...O...GGER. I am amazed. So that's where it's been all this while. These couple of years.  Perhaps it's time for me to start writing again.

I remember when the highlight of my day was to see my blog roll shift, signalling that there was a new post in any of the blogs that I followed. I would usually attack the link with a voracious appetite. Here was something that I knew would stimulate my thoughts, tickle my funny bone, provoke passionate responses. But most of all, it was connecting with friends on a deep level. The kind of connection one could achieve by a chat over a good coffee, all in the comfort of one’s own home. I would always wonder what Ailin would be doing in Sweden, and how she was faring in her battle with pain; where Fauziah Ismail was and what adventures (and gripes) she would share; or what entertaining fad Ah Beng would share from his treasure trove of a brain; what epiphany of language and culture Jordan Macvay would experience. And oh so many, many more. But progress is a cruel master, and like all roads lead to Rome, progress on the Internet all led to Facebook. At first I was ecstatic to connect...

Image credit here . I used to always think it was strange that Dad was never able to sit through a whole movie with us when we were growing up. He would perhaps start watching one with us, and leave after about 30 minutes, to do whatever it was that he would rather be doing. That is, until I found myself challenged trying to finish a whole movie myself, without feeling the urge to hit the fast-forward button, at times, or even getting up and going to my study to do something else that was more productive. I can't remember exactly when I started behaving this way, but I think it could have started sometime during my PhD. Unless it was a movie that I really wanted to watch (and not my children), then I found that it was almost impossible to sit through the whole thing. Things that I normally found more engaging/pressing/interesting than watching through a whole movie: The Internet. Yes. That's right. Even though it was little more than scrolling through my Facebook ...

Photo credit here The 22nd of August was day of mourning for the whole nation. Malaysians from every walk of life gave a minute of silence for the dead as their earthly remains were transported from the coldness of foreign shores to the warmth of the embrace of their Ibu Pertiwi, their Earth Mother.  And yet, hardly a day had gone by when a headline rudely splashed across my Facebook newsfeed:  “PKR leader calls National Mourning Day an excessive affair”, which immediately raised my ire out of the sheer audacity and disrespect toward the dead, and toward a nation in mourning. How dare this upstart politician use this tragedy as a grounds to bash the government? Has he no decency? Has he no respect? I straight away clicked on the link to find out more about this person.  And I was surprised. This was no ordinary politician. He was a retired Admiral of the Malaysian Armed Forces, someone who had dedicated his life to the preservation of our nation’s well...

"Go on, tell Abah" I heard Salmah tell Adel. Immediately, alarm bells started to go off. Tell me what? "Tell Abah your problem" Sirens were adding to cacophony in my anxiety at what was going to come next. What did he do? Was he in trouble? Did he break something? And so, hesitantly at first, he started telling me what he had told his mother in confidence. He was in a dilemma. He had two friends at school what wanted to play with him every day, at the same time. What?? I thought. That's it?? He continued - he didn't know what to do. Normally he set a challenge for his friends to see who got to play with him, and it seems like every single time this one particular one kept winning. Leaving the other one in the lurch. So?? I asked. Why not play with them at the same time? Adel murmured something that I couldn't quite hear. I was getting a bit impatient as in my mind I had more important things to do. I was in the middle of editing a ...

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 . 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...

Image credit here Today I read an article in the NST about a young woman who attempted to commit suicide by jumping off the KB Mall rooftop. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), she was not successful. She jumped right into a safety net waiting below. This got me to thinking why did she do it? As a Malay Muslim she would have believed that nothing would be waiting for her except eternal damnation.Yet she chose to (unsuccessfully) take the fastest way out of her misery. I do not presume to know her story, or her reasons, and based on that alone I cannot pass judgement. That is for the Lord to do in his own time and will. What I can do is draw comparisons to my experiences, and to those of people that I know. I think that almost everyone has had a moment, no matter how brief, where a suicidal thought enters their mind. It doesn't have to be a long lingering thought, festering within the deepest recesses of your mind, just waiting for the right moment to ...

No, this post is not about the TV show. Today on Facebook, I was very much surprised to see very tense comments on a friend's page. Funny thing was, these tense comments weren't random comments made to outsiders, but were targeted comments, insults and veiled threats, between people I have known and befriended since my high school years. These were the people that I would go fishing with, or take long trips to the countryside just to get coconuts from their family estates. We were beside each other in spite of the trials and tribulations of school life, with exams, girls, science experiments and school bullies all threatening to make it a living hell. And today, after not speaking to each other for about 15 years, and reconnecting through Facebook, a smart comment here, an angry retort there, and very soon after - an invitation to fight it out if the other party had any further problems. This leads me to explore the question - are friends really forever? Is it some sympat...

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...

It's a big change having to adjust to living with my parents again. Basically having to uproot and move everything back to Skudai. Of course I'm no stranger to Skudai. I work here and go to my parents' house every other day after work before I left for home in Kulai. But living here and dropping in every other day are totally different things. I have still to adjust. Right now I have no fixed schedule. There is still a lot to unpack. I do not know when I get up and when and where I can go for my usual walks. There is still no rhythm, no routine. One of the things that I realise that I have taken for granted was that my old house was in gated and guarded, in a very nice neigbourhood. It used to be that I could do just about anything I wanted to at any time I wanted to, though that may not be a good thing to some people. What I mean is, let's say if I felt like I hadn't exercised in a particular week, and the feeling hit me at 12 midnight, all I had to do ...