1Malaysia~

Bismillah


Being schooled in MRSM right from Form 1 till Form 5,
my secondary schooling has always been with Malays,
so I must say, it's a pretty new experience to have non-Malay classmates.
I do have non-Malay classmates back in primary school but that was quite a long time ago. Plus, my spoken English was pretty lousy back then, so I have to say I felt some inferiority to them.
I have this one Chinese classmate who I rarely talk to, but she's nice, really.

In that kind of environment, Malays tend to stick to Malays.
Even so when I'm at Uni, there are not that many non-Malays,
so they tend to stick to themselves, and Malays like so.
I personally felt that as something bad,
and often I would feel bad about it, I'd try and join in with the Chinese.
Or try to plan for something that everyone can do together,
to build a bridge, build a bond between us.

Now that we're in the new campus,
each and everyone of us are struggling to fit in to this new environment,
it's kinda funny when even Malays need to translate from English to Malay to talk to Malay patient. Got really used to interviewing and giving instructions to patients in English, I must say. Struggled even with words like palpitations etc etc. A friend of mine kept on directly translating the questions that it sounded pretty awkward. "Adakah makcik pernah cuba menggunakan apa-apa ubat untuk mengurangkan kesakitan". Sounded soooooo weird, right?

And if we are struggling with Malay,
imagine how would the Chinese be.
This one friend of mine said to the patient,
"Makcik, aku tarik langsir aa?"
"Makcik, aku nak tanya soalan ni aa.."
Guess he didn't realize that "aku" is really not appropriate back then.
Now he's alright I think.
Tried to help them translating some questions to Malay since there's quite a lot of patient who can speak only Malay and not English.
But a friend of mine who partnered with another Chinese friend got a Chinese patient, so the two of them talked in Mandarin and my friend just stood there flabbergasted.

It came to me that if they can speak Malay,
how come we didn't take any effort to learn their language?
I remember when we were on our way to our patients' house,
a friend called and I talked in Malay through the phone.
After I'm finished, I dunno why but I asked her, what did she feel listening to me talking in my own language,
and she said that she felt bad and thought it kind of ignorant for them not to even bother to learn other languages when other people can talk in English. I agreed with her, but yeah, I'm suprised to know she felt like that.

Plus, it's a bonus for myself if I can interview Chinese patients.
Patient care could be improved, at least.
And so here I am trying to learn Mandarin.
Asked a friend to teach me, in return I'd help her with her Malay.
Not my 1st attempt to learn Mandarin though.
I remember after PMR, I bought a Mandarin-Malay dictionary (or was it English-Mandarin?) hoping to learn,
but found out that I don't know how to pronounce them. *sigh*. Pretty dumb move, I know =___="
I still have the dictionary at home. Cuz well, I'm a mix of Chinese, Indian and Malay (there you go, 1Malaysia!), but I can only speak Malay. I was forced to watched Hindi movies every Saturday when I was a kid, losing to my mom over the TV, so I kind of caught a few basic Hindi words. I could even sing Kuch Kuch Hota Hai which suprised my Pakistani friend a lot. He often asked me to sing with him. heh. Missing the old days.

Anyway, I've learnt a few basic sentences and questions like how to introduce myself, asking if the patient has any pain, and asking where it is, and more importantly, learnt how to say "I speak little Mandarin!" cuz there would be no use if I can ask and then he would answer with a full story of it, not knowing I don't understand a word he said. So far so good, and it was kinda fun learning.

And I'm not sure since when, I've been pretty sensitive to racism.
I even felt bad when I hear someone used the word Keling instead of Indian cuz I know they don't like it.
And Indon instead of Indonesian. Back abroad, a friend once used the word Indon in front of an Indonesian, and I saw his face changed. And I don't like the word Bangla too. Bangladeshi sounds a lot better.


ps: when we were doing some renovation to our house in Ramadhan as a preparation for raya and my brother's and sister's coming wedding, I was told to clean up the fan. the Bangladeshi who work for the construction came over and helped even though that was not his job and it was lunchtime when he was supposed to get his rest. Kinda touched. Had a brief conversation, and he told me his boss didn't allow him to fast. Pity him. Asked him if he's going back home for raya. He celebrated raya here in Malaysia. *sigh*


with love,
~hS

kejutan

Bismillah


I received a text from mom which says:
"Buka google ************ (a name of a relative) ada kejutan untuk dibaca".

Reading that kind of text, few things came to my mind, and so I rushed to a friend who owns a mobile broadband and googled.
and well, indeed my first few thoughts were right.
Clicked on the very 1st link, to a blog,
they even put her picture in it, so there's no mistake.

She was allegedly labelled as murtad in that blog.
Well, not so trustworthy source, but I'm not suprised to know if that is true.
Knew the family quite well. She's my 2nd cousin (dua pupu, not sure if "2nd cousin" is the appropriate word in English), and I know their story.

Their father, my mom's cousin, married a Chinese lady, their mom, so she reverted to Islam, but he didn't take care of them rightfully, which really disapointed her. I guess from there she left Islam (unofficially), and her children followed suit. She told them not to ever marry a Malay man.

The thing that disappoint my father most is the fact that she was one of those who planned for the Thanksgiving cum majlis berbuka puasa in that church.

I'm not too sure who's fault is it, but I think things would be different if their father did a better job as a Muslim father and husband. Show what Islam really is and what it's not.

We kept a good relationship with them, even though we've had some hints that the mom (not yet the children) has converted back, not to sever any ties, trying to show Islam is not that extreme. I don't know how my dad will treat them knowing that she is one of the committees. *sigh*. I don't know myself. huhu.
I'm not really close to them, but we know each other pretty OK, I guess.
Hope the family will get the guidance from Allah.


with love,
~hS

Dream

Bismillah
I had a dream today, and it woke me up pretty early in the morning.
Won't say it's a nightmare, not a bad dream.
Perhaps it's a sign, and I don't know if I should hope that it won't come true.
Perhaps He wants me to prepare. 

with love,
~hS

mistakes

Bismillah

I am now back in Uni and had a pretty lousy 1st two days.
I don't consider myself as an A-star student, way far from it.
Am not the kind who could memorise everything, especially when there are just thousands of words,
and no pictures.

Landmarks and cardinal signs, I seemed to have missed almost all of them.
The landmarks to look for posterior tibialis pulse, dorsalis pedis, carotid artery,
those kind of stuffs, which I would usually have a wild guess and put my fingers on them,
and I can't describe the landmarks which are pretty basic, I think.
Basic anatomy, basic physiology, basic stuff here and there, lost them all.
Need to revise them all back.
*sigh*
Most of the 1st two years were gone I guess. Kind of dissapointed with myself, but yeah, this is me.
and this is how I learn. I learn more through pictorials, images and flowcharts rather than thousands of words, which rarely stuck in my head. and I learn better through mistakes.

Before, I was really afraid of making mistakes, afraid of what others might think,
like I'm stupid and know nothing,
but now, not sure why, I'm not that afraid of speaking up and make a mistake.
Cuz I think that's the best way for me to remember.
Made a few blunders a few days back in lecture, and it was embarassing at first but I don't care since now I know that what I initially thought was true is wrong. Had a good laugh at myself, and that eased the embarassment a bit. Heh.

And in reality itself, you learn more through mistakes.
You learn to be careful with needles when you once poked yourself when you were a child.
You learn to finish up your homework in time or else you'll get a whip of the cane.
These simple things you get from what you've done,
will tell you that somehow what you've done is either right or wrong,
but I think more often wrong, cuz you seldom get anything when you're right,
cuz you're right.

Commit sins, and you don't realize you've done a sin,
or you don't recognize it as a sin,
then there you go, forever repeating it since you think there is nothing wrong with it.
Realize it's a mistake, then you'll repent. Doesn't mean that you won't ever repeat it,
but realizing that it's a mistake, you'll try your best to avoid it, to keep it at bay.

and I think that is taqwa.
perhaps I've wrote about it in the previous blog, but yeah, I want to remind myself.
Umar (I think), once described taqwa as as if you are walking through this path full of thorns on the side.
You'll try your best to avoid the thorns, calculating every steps you take as to minimize the wounds you'll get at the end of the road.

to realize there are thorns in this road of life, that's taqwa.
if you don't feel the pain, you don't know they're thorns,
then you'll walking so freely not realizing you're bleeding to death.
as if you are "anaesthesized" to the worldly threats to your iman, your heart.

and I think through making mistakes, then you'll know the true value of not doing it.
Had my share of experiences. I agree with a Shaolin phylosophy,
which states that in order to feel something, you will need to feel the opposite.
You don't what happiness felt like if you don't know how sad is.
You don't know invincibility if you've never felt any pain.
You don't know hot if you've never experience cold.
We always compare, to have and to not have.

I guess this is what is lacking with born Muslims.
You just can't really compare how would it be like if you are not a Muslim.
not to say that you should try,
but we should learn the true beauty of Islam, by mainly observation and knowing why such things are designated for us human as a whole. to make sense of it. to see a bigger picture of everything.

ps: will be going to hospital tomorrow, and  we need to have a check on real life patients' heart,
looking into ECGs and Xrays. need to take a full history, including thinking about managements and this is the part I dread the most. hardly remember all those drugs! may Allah make things easy for me, and ease my way into learning all this.

pps: pakcik yang volunteer jadi patient tadi pun cakap "susah eh jadi doktor ni?"
Ya, pakcik!! but yeah, apa je yang senang. Engineer, cikgu, nothing is that easy. there's always a challenge in everything.

with love,
~hS

merdeka raya

Bismillah

Raya tahun ni, nampaknya tersekali dengan sambutan kemerdekaan malaysia.
dan saya personally merasakan sambutan merdeka tenggelam dengan sambutan hari raya.

masa kecik-kecik dulu,
sambutan merdeka antara benda yang dinantikan juga la.
zaman-zaman sekolah dulu, banyak benda sekolah buat untuk pupuk patriotisme.
pertandingan mewarna la, sajak, kawad kaki etc etc.
dan malam merdeka, akan tunggu ramai-ramai nak countdown macam nak new year.
tunggu bunga api.
pagi esoknya tengok perarakan dan sambutan merdeka yang extravaganza la rasa masa tu.
and that's it.

generasi muda saya rasa generally akan rasa macam tu.
(correct me if I'm wrong ya! just a hunch)
possible reason, keperitan perjuangan yang lepas tu kita tak rasa,
maka kurang dapat dihargai.
another reason adalah, jiwa-jiwa muda ramai yang dah sedar betapa kita ni belum sebenar-benar merdeka, dan tahu sebenarnya inilah perjuangan generasi muda sekarang.
they've done their part, merdekakan Malaysia dalam context yang berbeza,
dan kita syukur dan hargai perjuangan mereka,
dan kini sampai giliran jiwa-jiwa muda untuk perjuangkan to the next level.
memerdekakan negara dari sudut lahiriah, ditambah lagi dari sudut rohani dan budaya, spiritual dan akhlaq.
perit mereka dah mereka rasa, sekarang masa jiwa-jiwa muda untuk mengambil alih dan merasa those bittersweet moments towards a better future, a better Malaysia.

saya sangat sukakan novel Manikam Kalbu.
temanya tentang mengembalikan busana Melayu kembali ke akarnya.
fundamentalnya, biarlah menutup aurat secara sempurna.
kenapa baju kurung dinamakan sebegitu, adalah untuk "mengurung" dan menutup kehormatan diri.
jaga elok-elok. itu kata Faisal Tehrani lah. teringat quote dia masa jumpa dalam satu seminar,
kemahiran menulis ni banyak bergantung pada kemahiran menipu juga. sebab bila kita buat cerita (fiksyen lah), itu bukan cerita betul dan we want to make people to believe it as a truth, walaupun an imaginary truth. so kadang-kadang takut nak quote apa-apa dari novel dia. huhuh.

kes Mat Sabu, macam tak tahu apa nak cakap.
Ayah saya sendiri berperang dengan komunis dulu.
Missed bullets merely inches from his head, maka saya syukur hamdanlillah saya masih ada ayah sekarang.
Tak tahu propaganda politik ke apa, saya tak nak ambil pusing sangat, tapi saya rasa macam sangat obvious mainstream media digunakan dengan "sebaik mungkin" untuk diulang-ulang apa kata pembangkang tu.
Saya bukan backup dia ke apa, tapi media dieksploitasi dan bias macam agak jelas kat situ.

Saya respek media UK. Well, banyak la pros and cons. contents dia banyak juga yang tak sesuai untuk kanak-kanak even cartoon pun, tapi kalau game show dia pun banyak yang bagus dan bukan setakat kosong. ada gameshow yang soalan-soalan dia macam unbelievable gak aa soalan, tapi somehow contestants boleh jawab membuatkan lagi kagum.
grab the good, and shun away the bad stuffs.

dan ada satu show, Question Time, yang saya rasa sangat kagum aa kalau ada kat Malaysia.

Politicians and orang-orang kerajaan, menteri-menteri, akan dijemput dan the public can take that chance to ask questions directly terus pada dorang and it's live. dalam keadaan media Malaysia sekarang, I doubted that sort of show is possible. Kalau ada, they'll be in this gigantic bowl of hot soup!
a fair share for both pembangkang mahupun kerajaan. 
and again, media shape the masses vs the masses shape the media.
selalu zaman sekolah kena tulis karangan yang akan dimulakan dengan "di zaman siber dan teknologi ini...",
and here we are, di zaman siber dan teknologi, dan the masses are shaped like how?
quoting matlutfhi, "plastik adalah sampah sarap paling banyak di dunia".
K-pop? Cerita-cerita hantu makin banyak. yang lawak yang horror. lawak kosong.
Merdekakan media, merdekakan cara fikir dan worldview rakyat.

Hamdanlillah, sekarang banyak channel dan rancangan Islami.
TV AlHijrah, TV9 etc etc.
(Suka tengok Imam Suhaib Webb!)
dan setuju dengan quote yang pernah share dalam post sebelum ni,
kalau nak kenal satu-satu masyarakat tu, tengok la rancangan TV dorang.
makin banyak kesedaran, insyaAllah.

macam mana pun, these are all talks.
walking that talk is a different thing.
sekarang masa kita untuk berjuang pula.
taste the bittersweet efforts walau bukan dengan senjata,
walau hanya dengan pena sebatang mahupun ketak ketuk papan kekunci,
terbitkan aksara-aksara menghunjam jiwa-jiwa syabab,
tujukan pada karat-karat di hati kasi bersih semua,
tapi pertama-tama adalah menyental hati pelorek tinta pelirik bahasa.

kerja bukan sikit, tapi pekerja pun bukan sikit insyaAllah.
media. politik. ekonomi. undang-undang. integrasi rakyat.
penguatkuasaan dan perlaksaan.
jangan lari, terus ke depan.


ps: oh oh saya sangat suka movie Alangkah Lucunya Negeriku Ini. sangat menyentuh dan mengkritik tahap tak hengat. especially the part yang dorang nyanyi lagu kebangsaan Indonesia then this one kid datang dan bila dah habis nyanyi, he said Ameen. and that says a lot! do have a watch!

pps: a video by matlutfhi. was thinking about posting a response myself tapi segan la pula. hehe. how my video would have been, no sound. just cardboard messages. 1st cardboad: I'm Malay. 2nd: I'm Chinese. 3rd: I'm Indian. 4th: I'm 1Malaysia!
oh and my friend was in there, in that video! heh

with love,
~hS

touching hearts

Bismillah

a conversation with a good friend of mine brought me back to this topic.
we were talking about video making and made me watch a video me and my friends once made back in college and it brought back memories of how we were. how good the team was with making videos. the teamwork. I miss them all. and more importantly, it reminded me of how I was.

making videos is always about tackling emotions.
to make a good video, you have to know which spot on the audience's heart you want to hit, spot-on.
which emotion you want tackle, you want them to feel. the more specific the better.
and before you can make them feel that emotion, you have to "embrace" that kind of emotion first.
only then, the next step comes: the creativity in conveying that message, no matter how factual they are.
like Petronas' raya adverts, which often a success.
the emotion that you've "embraced" will guide you on how to convey that message.

this is what I've been lacking for the past few years.
what I've lost, and what I've been searching for.

kind of reminded me about the differences between social science and pure sciences.
often people compare between novels and textbooks.
often pengisi ISK.
but here it is. people remember better with emotions attached to it.
learning science or maths can be really boring but incorporate emotions in it,
make them feel happy learning it, and they'll love the subject.
let kids watch documentaries, make them gasp with awe before the creations of the Almighty,
and they'll love discovering new things, and not fixed on lovey dovey fantasy stuffs.

I think I've failed to "embrace" the emotion.
Seemed to have died of emotions these few years, and I don't know why.
Now I'm trying to pick myself up, and write more on reflections on my life accounts,
instead of factual stuffs that I don't really actually felt much about it.
it's like me trying to be someone else, trying to write like someone else.
and it felt so wrong in writing them.
It's not just about the feeling and emotions, but it's about is that really what I believe in?


so some of my future posts you may not find beneficial, but please bear with me.
I don't usually write drafts, often I'll publish it right away, or I'd come back and edit it later, but it'll always be published first.

a quote by a lecturer during our induction week, which I find really interesting:
"Ironically, we can only start to change ourselves when we begin to accept of how we are"
true enough, and ironic as it is, the more we deny of how we are, the harder for us to see what is it in us that needed changing.
and I believed and agree with what a good friend of mine once said, that blogging is a really good way to convey the message of Islam through one's life encounter, for that is the practicality of it, not just merely theories but theories live in action.
and of course, emotions to share, for others to feel as well.
they won't feel 100% like you did, but we're humans and we're able to relate with our own life encounter and we'll feel that similar feelings and we are able to appreciate such events, and our own life events, no matter how small a matter that is.

appreciate and embrace that emotion. share. and care.

with love,
~hS

of adat and relevance

Bismillah

Terasa nak quote lagi peribahasa post yang sebelum ni.
Baru pulang dari majlis pertunangan abang saya.
InsyaAllah, beriparkan orang Rembau saya nanti.

Hamdanlillah, went pretty smoothly.
Saya, as usual. diamanahkan tugas photographer tak bertauliah.
Gambar banyak yang lousy, but I think some are good.
At least not bad.

Anyways, biasanya kalau orang tahu perempuan tu dari Rembau,
orang akan mengelak dan tak nak dekat.
Semua dek adat perpatihnya. Banyak impression buruk la boleh kata.

dan sememangnya, terasa geram juga bila adat macam ni menyusahkan
sesuatu yang sepatutnya senang. Banyak yang tak nampak apa relevannya.
ini cubaan pertunangan kali kedua, sebab kali pertama kena reject.
reject sebab bawak cincin tak cukup syarat.
puas dah ibu saya cari cincin belah rotan, dan jumpa pun,
tapi ibu saya tengok ada yang ada bunga lagi cantik, tapi masih belah rotan.
sebab ada bunga tu saja pun kena reject dan tak boleh proceed dengan perbincangan.
kena balik semula dan tukar cincin, dan datang balik baru boleh bincang.

tak bukan tak terima adat melayu.
Islam pun sefaham saya meraikan adat dan uruf sesuatu kaum selagi tak melanggar syariat.
kita diciptakan berbeza untuk kita saling mengenal, dan adat dan uruf ni antara benda yang membezakan kita.
tapi saya rasa tak perlulah diberatkan sangat sampai menyusahkan urusan yang suci ni.
golongan muda yang berkehendakkan yang halal dah lah disusahkan dengan tuntutan material,
ditambah lagi dengan susahnya nak menepati syarat-syarat ni, makin pening.

dari awal lagi abang saya memang tak suka beradat,
keluarga bakal ipar pula insist. tak pe lah beralah dulu.
tapi saya dari awal lagi pun tak nak beradat.
dari awal dah dinasihatkan, jangan cari orang Negeri Sembilan.
dalam otak tengah fikir, nak cari orang negeri mana ni. heh.

macam mana pun,
teringatkan satu quote yang tak sure siapa sebenarnya yang cakap or if it's a hadith, tapi rasanya bukan.
bunyinya, kahwinilah ibu kepada anak-anakmu, jangan kahwini isteri kamu.
lebih kurang macam tu lah bunyinya.
pendeknya, seharusnya antara objektif yang diletak adalah supaya pasangan tu nanti mampu mendidik anak-anak, dan bukan hanya untuk kepuasan sendiri saja.
tak kisah lah dari mana dia datang pun, biar boleh jadi ibu yang baik, supaya generasi akan datang jadi terbaik dan lebih baik dari yang kita tengah hidup sekarang.

teringatkan nasihat beberapa orang termasuk abang sendiri,
janganlah cari yang sama doktor juga.
takut nanti anak terbiar. at the same time, ramai juga yang nasihat, better cari doktor juga so dia faham nature kerja kita. jadi?

terfikir,
ramai orang kata jangan cari orang negeri sembilan.
kesian perempuan-perempuan nogori, ramai orang lari.
terfikir juga,
kesian doktor-doktor perempuan, orang mengelak juga.
siapa lagi nak kawin doktor-doktor perempuan, kalau bukan doktor lelaki?
yang lain macam susah nak faham nanti. isteri asyik busy. balik letih.
so macam mana?

apa kata anda bakal-bakal doktor perempuan?
fair atau tak?

with love,
~hS