Sosej Halal

In between the mad rush to keep up with so many urgent deadlines (yeah, I'm almost dead now) and trying to be as good father and husband as I could be, this e-mail that I received yesterday managed to make me burst into laughter.

Subject: SENARAI SOSEJ HALAL

Jenama sosej yang halal ialah bernama : "Husband"
Lain-lain nama seperti
" boyfriend"
" tunang " atau
"sugar dady"
adalah haram . Ini disahkan oleh JAWI, JAIS, Jakim dan semua jabatan agama islam seluruh negara. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

MAJULAH SOSEJ UNTUK NEGARA " SOSEJ BOLEH" SELAMAT MALAM DIMANA JUA ANDA BERADA ... SIANG PUN OK GAK

Kah, kah kaah.

She's cute

Introducing my 20mths' old girl - Siti Nursakinah. Always playful.
Picture taken using my MotorolaE398.


she's cute isn't it?
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Missing Link

Bloghopping will never be the same with the sudden demise of GongKapas Times. Aiyoo. At first I thought there must be something wrong with blogger.com when I could not access to GKT for my daily dose of DZ's musings.

It's look like other people are similarly clueless. You may want to read about it here and here.

Haze haze go away

Could not stand the heat and haze for the last few days. KLCC was barely visible from my office last Friday.

Thank God it rained yesterday evening and the night before. Last night, I could see the stars again.

Heartbroken on the V-Day

Came back early from office. Commented to Wife that the auto-gate seemed a bit off.

Beloved Wife smiled and quickly owned up her 'wrongdoings' - she admitted that she had crashed onto the gate while she was maneuvering our new family car to enter the house after fetching kids from school earlier today. The front bumper was dented and damaged a bit about two inches from the plate number.

But what to do? Takkan nak marah kot, tak sengaja.

Dearie, you break my heart on the Valentine's Day! Aduuus, .........

Quote of the day

A hadith quoted in the wedding card of Helmi & Khairiyah (Saturday, 12 Feb 2005/3 Muharam 1426 Hijrah, Taman Ayer Molek Melaka)

Hawa dijadikan daripada tulang rusuk Adam, bukannya daripada kepala untuk menjadi atasnya, bukan dari kaki untuk menjadi alasnya melainkan dari sisinya untuk dijadikan teman hidupnya, dekat dengan lengannya untuk dilindungi dan dekat dihatinya untuk dicintai.

mmmm.

Happy CNY

I was driving home when suddenly I remembered that I have not wished any of my chineses friends and clients with Happy New Year or sent cards to them.

Alamak. How forgetful I am. They never fail to send me Raya cards or wish me Selamat Hari Raya.

Adusss. Quick quick still got time to sms them.

Gong Xi Fa Chai.

Farewell to a friend

Received these messages from a friend,

"kawan kita meninggal mlm td kul 9 mlm eksiden kat KL. arwah FZD. tlg bgtau kawan2. ari ni kebumi kat bkt katil melaka. From: Abu S. 7:43am 1-Feb-05"

"FZD meninggal, accident motor, ada kat hospital universiti, call GTR 4 d detail at <012***>. From: Abu S. 7.45am 1-Feb-05"

I was driving back from sending off my daughter to school when the messages came in. I was stunned. shocked. Wanted to call Abu to verify but that'd not be necessary. I'm sure he would not be playing jokes on this one. Took a while to recover from the initial shock. All thoughts about him came rushing to my mind. I have a lot of memories with FZD. We were classmates from form 1 all the way to form 5 and had spent 5 wonderful years in SDAR. He was good in hockey and played rugby for the school. Was popular among the seniors. Didn't expect to lose a dear friend a day after celebrating my 36th birthday.

Quickly forwarded the messages to other friends. I was surprised that none of my friends called me to verify or asked for further details. Perhaps they were also stunned with the news. Only at about noon Kamal called and we agreed to organise collecting contributions to be forwarded to the family of arwah.

Later, some details trickling in our yahoo e-groups:

aku, LNDL, GTR, guntur dan beberapa lagi kawan kita sempat pergi menziarahi arwah sebelum dikebumikan. menurut landol injuries mostly to the body. arwah was hit and thrown to the opposite lane before being hit by another vehicle. this happened somewhere along LDP near puchong. arwah left behind a wife and 4 beautiful kids. semoga Allah mencucuri rahmat ke atas rohnya.

Another friend wrote,

aku tak leh tido malam tadi mengenangkan arwah, terbayang2 muka dia ditambahkan lagi dengan tangisan anak dia yg paling kecik yg dok jerit "ayah..ayah.." masa arwah sedang dikafankan. Mak dia cium pipi arwah bagai tak nak lepas sampaikan bapa dia cakap "cukup lah tu Ibu...". Alhamdulillah aku sampai ngam2 lepas jenazah baru mandi, dia orang tengah lap dan sikat rambut arwah yg panjang. Kepala dan muka tak de apa2 injury may be becoz arwah pakai fullface helmet. Aku tak sanggup nak selak kain ihram yg diguna untuk lapkan arwah sebab cousin dia kata, bahagian rusuk kanan sampai ke peha dia hancur. Aku sempat tolong angkat arwah dari tempat mandi ke ruang tamu untuk dikafankan. Saat tu le aku tak perasan yg air mata aku rupanya dah meleleh ke pipi bila tengok isteri dia, mak dia, nenek dia dan anak2 dia menatap wajah arwah untuk kali terakhir.

Alhamdulillah jugak, arwah disembahyangkan sebanyak 2 kali, sekali dirumah dan sekali di masjid. Di masjid, sembahyang jenazah diimamkan oleh YDP PAS Melaka iaitu Ustaz Ghani Abd Rahman. Semasa talkin dibacakan di kubur, Ketua Menteri Melaka Datuk Ali Rustam muncul. Setakat yg aku tahu, selain aku, member2 yg sempat sampai ialah TLK,GTR, AYM, BB, LCK, KDK, KYI dan UP. May be ada yg sampai after 3pm , aku sendiri tak sempat jumpa UP.

Al Fatihah. Semoga Allah mencucuri rahamatNya dan menempatkan arwah bersama orang2 yang beriman.

Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday and I'm officially 36.

The staffs from my department organised a small do for me. They ordered pizzas and bought a cake. Even then, as always, I was not really feeling at ease with this birthday celebration thingy - big or small. May be because I came from a simple kampung family where no emphasis was made on birthdays.

When I was a kid, birthday passed by just like any other day. In fact, I always thought that I grew a year older on the first day of the year. You know, when you moved from Darjah Satu to Darjah Dua, Darjah Dua to Darjah Tiga, from primary to secondary school and so on.

You were proud when your father told his friend that you're getting 'bigger' (sudah besar) and that you're entering a new class next year or when you were given certain 'responsibilities' marking your coming of certain age. The responsibilities that were earlier only reserved for your elder siblings.

And I didn't remember any of my friends celebrating birthdays or sending birthday cards when I was in my former secondary school, that's a big no no. Tak Rock lah. We macho guys tak main birthday - birthday nih.

So here I am now at 7.15 ++ p.m, still in the office trying to reflect on this birthday thingy and a client just called asking for favour whether I could draft and send them an urgent document by tonite.

Meanwhile, it's still raining out there and I had just sent my car for wax and polish at the car care centre downstairs. Adusss!!!.

Monday Blues

No, I'm not talking about my Monday blues.

It seemed that my daughter was having problem getting up for school every Monday since she started her formal primary education. I found that she could get extremely difficult to wake up and to a certain extent, protested when I tried to wake he up for school on Monday morning.

This morning was no exception. She even cried when I carried her to the bathroom after all the coaxing and pujuk rayu did not work. But father has to do what father has to do. I poured on her with two gayung(s) of water.

"You don't want to brush your teeth, fine. But I'm still sending you to school".

Wife helped her with the school uniform and I sent her off to school. She was quiet all the way to school and I just put on my 'serious - no nonsense' face. Tak nak bagi can. But once we reached the school compound, suddenly just in a split second, she just changed to her real cheerful self. She salam(ed) with me, kissed my hand and pull her trolley bag towards her classroom - just like that - as if nothing happened at home 30 minutes ago.

Terasa macam buang karan aje pujuk rayu pagi tadi.

Not so good day

To cap the miserable day yesterday, I watched MU being beaten 2-1 by Chelsea in the second leg of the League Cup Semi-final and then watched the beautiful Maria Sharapova lost to Serena Williams (2-6, 7-5 and 8-6) in a thrilling Australian Open semi-final. Arrrgh.

Hope to get good rest during the weekend. Planned to attend my chambie's wedding in Kajang before hitting the highway back to Ayer Keroh in our new family car.

Terkorban before Hari Raya Korban

Alia posted her Raya Korban's picture so I decided to post mine.

The only difference is that, instead of the normal sacrificial animals, the korban in this case is my ....isk, isk... beloved car and yang terkorban is ..... me (read my pockets).

May be my beloved car was mad at me or merajuk because I'd posted another car's pictures in my previous posts on Friday the 14th.

My car was broken into and that someone stole my SmartTag. Can you believe it? And I had to spend close to RM500 to replace it and spent the whole day going to the police station, waiting to make report, waiting for the police's photographer to take pictures of the car, waiting again at the workshop for the replacement parts to arrive, waiting for the cermin to be fixed, waiting waiting and waiting until I dozed off at the workshop. Lucky the workshop has a large and comfortable sofas and I could take a nap while watching AXN channel.

Dah nak jadik - that's what takdir is all about, I suppose. The car was never parked outside my house compound before. But that fateful night (Monday the 17th) when I came back from office, I saw my car was nicely parked by my wife right in front of the gate. Wife has been driving my car for the past few days because I had traded in her Kembara and her replacement car was pending registration. So I parked my borrowed office car at the side of my house.

Next morning, I rushed out to send my daughter to school and was heading to office when I received a panic call from my wife that the driver's screen had been smashed. Made a U-turn and quickly made a call to the nearest police station on what to do next.

Being the first time victim, I was thinking that the police would be coming to my house together with their forensic team to dust my car for fingerprints and searching for clues (too much of CSI I guess), but alas, this was what transpired:

me: saya nak buat report pasal kereta saya kena pecah...
p: kat mana ni Encik?
me: kat Tmn Bukit ........
p: ada apa2 yang hilang?
me: err...rasanya takde
p: boleh ke datang buat report kat balai?
me: tapi...bukannya polis kena datang tengok kat tempat kejadian?
p: kereta tu boleh jalan tak?
me: boleh..(arrgh!!!! memanglah kereta tu masih boleh jalan sebab bukan enjinnya yg rosak)

So, cleaned up the mess in the car and went to make police report even though at that time I was not sure whether or not I wanted to make insurance claim on the damages. More importantly I thought that by making the report, the police will intensify their crime prevention rounds in my neighbourhood.

Stated in the report that no valuables were missing because at that time, I totally didn't realise that the SmartTag was missing. But thank God the thief didn't take away the new sunglasses that I bought for Wife last weekend and also my Motorola Bluetooth earpiece. Those things combined could cost me another RM800. Pheww.

Hello? mana pegi gambar korban aku tadi?
Posted by Hello

The driver's side of my screen that was smashed. The picture was taken after I had cleaned up some of the mess because I need to drive the car to the nearest police station.

The korban before Hari Raya Korban
Posted by Hello

The "korban" before Hari Raya Korban.
Posted by Hello

Testing again
Posted by Hello

Yesss! Jadik, jadik - gambau dia keluau. I'm a genius.... No?

Testing. First time user of hello 

Last Quote on the Last Day of 2004

"He who knows much about others may be learned, but he who understand himself is more intelligent. He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still."

(Quoted from DJ Sassy)

Tsunami - Aftermath Updated

My fear about the victims in Acheh was confirmed as more and more International Relief Organisations reached the most devastated place being the nearest to the ephicentre of the earthquake.

I told my partner when we were having late night discussion with a client in at a mamak restaurant in TTDI last Monday night. I said to him that it just didnot make sense and defied logic if the number of victims of the earthquake from Acheh (as it was reported then) were in the region of 4 thousand people.

My reasoning was simple, the earthquake that hit the city of Bam, in the southern part of Iran at the Richter scale of 6.3 had claimed about 30 thousand lives. Then, there's no way the number could be so much smaller in Acheh if the earthquake registered 9.0 of the Richter scale.

The latest news in print media this morning is that the death toll in Indonesia alone may reach 400 thousand people (via the Star). I am glad to know that Malaysia's MERCY was amongst the earliest international relief team to send their team to Acheh. They have a very dedicated team of volunteers and I have pleasure of knowing a few of them.

A New Phase

Today marked a new phase of my life.

Now I could proudly announce that I am a father of a school going child. Real school you know. Not the Kindie any more.

My first daugther, Syakirah will be in Primary Year One in a couple of days' time. Today is her so-called orientation day at the new school. I am excited. But not so sure about Kak Long since she's always been a quiet type. May be she's a bit worried.

I admit that I'm a bit worried though - all kinds of questions kept palying in my head.

What if Syakirah does not like school

What if she's being bullied by other students

What if she's not interested to learn

What if there is an phsycotic evil teacher at the school and always picking up on her

What if she could not get good grades

Yes, those and many many other questions came to my mind on my way sending my daughter to school. But I kept telling her to make friends, answer properly when being asked by her teacher, how good being in a real school would be bla, bla bla. She just kept quiet. I'm sure she's listening....

It was like a small funfare at the school compound. I could see all kinds of parents, worried mothers ushering their kids to the hall and then to the open assembly area where the briefing was held. Excited parents taking pictures using their camera-phones. A wife frantically calling her husband to come to the front to watch the assembly proceeding - but the husband was seemed disinterested. And yes, rocker Joe of WINGS sent his kid there too.

The orientation session ended at 10.00 a.m and through out the session from afar I saw my daughter looked a bit bored looking around and most of the time, kept to her self.

Now I started to get a bit more worried.