On Living and Leaving a Trace

“The most beloved of people to Allaah is the one who is most helpful” 

(The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh))

It’s that time of the year again, people flock into each others houses, causing so much ruckus; the neighbours upon seeing that there are more than 60 people in that house for 6 can only try to close their eyes and go to sleep, cursing under their breaths, minty after that 2 minute brush before bed.

Haha ok that doesn't happen everywhere, only tonight when I went to an open house by the boys in Cameron St. People were playing table tennis outside and having loud conversations inside. If I were to be their neighbour I would be a bit pissed off. But hey! Its Eid!! Cut us some slack will ya?

Gents of Malay origin. We wear pyjamas with skirts because its Eid and we're so badass !

Yes ladies and gents, yesterday was Eid. A celebration marking the end of Ramadhan, giving thanks and exalting Allah for His Mercy upon us puny human beings as due to His Mercy, we have once again went through (hopefully) rigorous cleansing of our souls, minds and body. 30 days of constant meditation, optimism, anger management, gluttony control and remembering the ubiquitous blessings of Allah unto us.

Matching Baju Melayu. Bromance at its finest.

This year's celebration sees me in a bit of a different situation than years before. Namely, many of the friends I have celebrated Eids with these four years prior weren't there. Literally! Its either they've went back to Malaysia, or a wife, a wife and a kid, gone off to some other state or having a cursed presentation. Yesterday, in the mass of people, I actually felt isolated. And as a lady told me earlier this week "isolation amongst masses is the worst sort of isolation".  For this reason, I guess I would appear a bit smug anytime yesterday, as evident as  the constant checking of my mood by a good friend yesterday to which I answered "yeah…! I'm alright, why wouldn't I be?". I'm the worst mood concealer in the whole world!!!

Not that I am deprived of any friends to enjoy the festivities with, mind you, there were still many friends who were there.  I'm just picky that way. I know I'm really obnoxious.

This is Syafiq. He constantly asks me if I'm ok. I love him.

Owh well, this kinda reminds me of the time I have left here in Newcastle. I don’t know if I would be able to stay here after the end of this year. As heavy as my heart would be to leave this place I have now called home, my brain feels tired to trying to work ways of staying without an offer for a medical internship.

Which brings me to a point, I wonder if my being here for the five years have had any effect on the people around me. Have my presence brought anything positive to anyone at all ? To what degree ? Did I do something that would be made example of, or inspired someone to be better ? Did I make people smile ? Did I make people feel better about themselves ? Have I served to unite or have the things I have done divided ? It’s a question I ask myself whenever I feel like I am leaving somewhere.

Note that I still have 2 rotations to go through before I end med school. So this might be melodramatic, but I cant help to think that I just want an assurance that before I leave, I have done something someone thought really meaningful. This is not trickery to get people to comment on my comment-less blog, haha ! No….seriously…no. It's just a question I constantly ask myself, even before I go to bed at night. If death takes me under his wings before sunrise tomorrow, would I leave knowing that I have done good?

This is Br Kamal. He is so cool.

Owh ~ what is this kind of talk? So serious !!! Lets talk about the kinds of food that I have been shoving down my stomach since yesterday instead!

Ok to those people who feel the need to tell people about whatever food they have had for Eid this year, seriously guys….has there been any year since our births that we have had food any different to what we have ever had for Eid ?

But no I don’t object to talking about food. I just find this passive aggressive part of me really interesting to think about by myself whenever I have made a bitchy statement to someone. Haha !

Back to the topic, I think its something I need to tell people, and probably something that we need to stress more to people who newly arrive into a situation. That we need to make our presences count. To be of use to people around us, to be beneficial, to help to lift the burden off of our friends' shoulders, to be there in moments of despair and moments of happiness. Our presence don’t have to be noticeable, but they need to count. So that one day when your kids asked you "Daddy daddy…when you were in Uni, what did you do?" , instead of saying "Well mate, I studied ! And went to the gym! And then I slept and ate cheap bread because I was not so rich"; you can smile and reminisce on the cherished memories of you making differences in peoples' lives. And you can say "Well sweetie, I used to have lots of good friends, we grew together and taught each other stuff. We wanted to make changes to the world! We helped each other out when we were in trouble, we were more than friends, we were like blood brothers and sisters. And we wanted to make changes to ourselves, so we can make changes to the world so we can have a better place for you to live in "

Me shoving food down my throat. Hanif pointing to the ceiling. 

...the melodramatic kookaburra again flies above our heads... As if you are going to say stuff like that to your children! Well maybe not those exact words, but something similar I hope…Bahahaha !

Ok that’s enough ! I just want to make this point clear to everyone here. I understand that not everyone are suited and pre-programmed to be able to make loud, obvious and apparent contributions to the society they live in, but I believe the single person as the social unit have the power to influence their surroundings enough to make good more prevalent than evil.

I humbly now conclude my blog entry.

Eid during my first year in Newcastle

“The most beloved deed to Allah is making a Muslim happy” 

(Muhammad ibn Abdullah (pbuh))

Hoping to one day video record his room mate sleep talking,

Azfar

 p.s.: photographs taken from tagged photographs on Facebook. Will ask permission from owners tomorrow.

  

It's Tough Being a Girl

Have a listen to this dear ladies. Empowerment is on your way.

In the shade of Ramadhan

Greetings dearest readers, esteemed members of the virtual public who has clicked on the link of my blog for whatever reason.

I have, for many months lost a sense of wanting to write anything at all...~ I must blame this on the 9-5 hours of my clinical placement nowadays, being, to the opinion of my humble self and some of my colleagues and resident doctors in the ward, too dedicated doing bona fide tasks for my team.

Owh well....!! I have this perception (this may well count as a delusion) that if I give it all, maybe....just maybe....I'll be given the chance to start my medical career here. Don't know if that will work, hopeful though, am I.

In case no one noticed, the holy month of Ramadhan has again come, and with it the open doors of Paradise and abundance of forgiveness and rewards for the believing muslim. For this and to do a bit of updating and shoo-ing the spiders (not that I have problems with spiders, I love them) from my website, I have just decided to share this piece of video.

Happy Ramadhan people ! Fast physically and spiritually. Do good not only for yourself, but for others as well. Share more, laugh more, cry more, smile more, say more good things and love a whole lot more.

Love
Azfar

Like paper planes. 

You make it just to watch it fly as far away as it can from you. 

But at least you know that once,

you had something good in your hands.

And you now know,

and hope

that you can make another one, at least just as good 

for you to keep. 

 

 A story short, a love temporary, a memory everlasting.

No airbrushing. No autotune. No unnecessary display of the human flesh. 

Just simple and beautiful music.

p.s: and Zaid mate, this guy reminds me a bit of you. With the "i'm high on something I donno" look when he is singing.

On the Crying Child and the Screaming Maid. An Inconvenient Truth

 I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
O Lord please don't let me be misunderstood
Understood....
Understood....
(Oh Marcello, Regina Spektor)

There's this story about our neighbours, whom even after several years of moving into the house adjacent have never got into the neighbourhood mood with us, or anyone from our house. No exchanges of food during Ramadhan, no talking over the small brick wall that separates our houses, not even a mere greeting upon crossing eyes on the (oh ever so inconvenient) event of us being in front of our houses at the same time.

Upon asking mom about this unusual phenomenon (as I've been away in Australia since they first moved in), she told me about the story of the day everything started. It had to do with my dad.

Once upon a time., the neighbours had a maid at home caring for their children. Maids in Malaysia are basically domestic helpers usually from neighbouring South East Asian countries, who are often entrusted (too much trust I reckon) with the task of keeping the house clean and managing the house chores and also to care for the children. Households with maids are usually those where both parents work the usual office hours.

Being neighbours in the usual terrace house in Malaysia, you cant help but to hear loud noises coming from the adjacent unit, as the houses are just separated by probably some 3 layers of bricks. And on many occasions, my parents used to hear lots of crying and screaming from the house during day time. Specifically , the kids were doing the crying and the maid was doing the screaming.

And upon hearing these events repetitively, my father, being true to his origin of being a Malay, decided that one day we'll break the news to the parents (whom we didn't think knew what was happening while they were away at work) about our suspicion that something dodgy might be happening with the maid and the kids, ever so subtly.

And so one day, upon meeting them outside of the house, dad said, looking at one of the child "oh yang ni ke yg selalu nangis tu?" (which translates to: "oh is this the one that cries all the time?").  All in hopes that the father may pick up on the subtle hint and start thinking about asking further about the issue.

Well that didn’t work.

If anything happened at all, they just stopped interacting with the people from our house. It seemed that they did not appreciate my dad ringing a bell about the probable problem that they were possibly aware of.

However, the maid one day was changed with another maid for some reason I do not know, and do not wish to know, and the crying stopped.

And I heard from mom that she went over to the house next door the other day to visit them and their new baby. Oh joy.

What Im intending to share with you readers today has something to do with that story. Quite recently I was faced with the dilemma of having to tell people about something unpleasant. An inconvenient truth if you will.  Something not fun for the ears to hear, something uncomfortable for the eyes to see, and in this case specifically, something not tasty to the tongue.

This is what I sent two of my friends through the Facebook messaging system (This message had mixed Malay English words in them. Ill translate to English the whole thing):

Salam (friend name)

Just to enlighten (friend name) . incase (friend name) didn’t know. I feel a bit responsible to share with people about this. and I feel a bit hypocritical that we went to sydney for this but didn’t say anything to the people close to us about it.

That day when we went to the Global March to Jerusalem in sydney, the march and the protest was against Max Brenner. Reason being, Max Brenner is a company 100% owned by Israel and it specifically provides benefit and support to branches/teams in the Israeli army.

If you are interested in reading about Max Brenner, you can look up this site:
http://gm2j.com/main/blog/2012/03/30/activists-take-part-in-global-march-to-al-quds-in-australia/

There are companies that are not showing their support to Israel as obviously but the Max Brenner company supports the occupation clearly and proudly.

Just to let you know. (Yes their chocolate is amazing. Ive been there twice before i got to know of this fact) Because in the end the judgment call is wholly individual, based on what we believe and what we think is the right thing to do.

I personally believe that this is a personal choice and people shouldnt have a say on what other people eat or drink or how they spend their money, but just in case you didnt know. I hope though that you knowing this will make a difference.

and even if you decide to not go with this boycott, id appreciate that you dont unknowingly do promotions for them through facebook.

Salam 

Harsh….was it...? Definitely…! Or...

Well some of you may think its harsh, some may not. This depends on how much you know me. And the problem with reading text is that you miss on the intonation and melody of the sentences, you may not get the full picture of what you are reading. And how you interpret what you read unfortunately depends on your emotions at the time. And admittedly, reading something like this, coming out of no where, you would feel offended and hurt. Which is what happened to one of the person I sent this message to. And I'm sorry, dear friend.

Am I to write in length about using words correctly and grammatical and sentence structuring strategies that may be of value when you are trying to write a note to someone about an inconvenient truth? No.

I today would rather write about the struggle that I believe everyone face in this world. You, me, the people next door, the doctors, the politicians, the socialists, the police...Batman…(ok that’s

unnecessary). It’s the struggle of telling people about an inconvenient truth.  

Ignorance is bliss. Something you don’t know wont hurt you. Unfortunately though, something you don’t know may hurt other people. In this instance, us unknowingly spending lots at Max Brenner is directly contributing to the pain and suffering of many Palestinians. But oh well we don’t know them. Their pain and suffering is theirs. Why should I stop doing what I like for people I don’t know and whom I will probably never meet? And as I mentioned in my message to my friends, the decision on how to spend their dollars is their prerogative, no one should have a say in it.

I was merely suggesting that they look up the website in case they didn’t know what was happening, and the latter part, I must admit, sounded unnecessarily  cynical (but that wasn’t my intention at all, the words I used sounded alright to me at the time, honestly. But I have a heart of stone. So pardon me for being direct in my communications most of the time).  

It’s a hard thing really. I mean if you know something is wrong, do you then keep it to yourself; in an effort to make everything appear fun and fluffy and fine. Or do you speak out against it, speak for the truth; at the risk of sparking a misunderstanding  and igniting a relationship problem? It’s like a curse that plagues the people who knows things. Because knowing something and believing in it makes a person want to talk to others about it, its only human.

I guess to simply think about it, many people would have the opinion of consulting yourself about your priorities. Would you rather have something and risk the other? What are your priorities? Would you rather be scorned upon for telling an inconvenient truth? Or would you rather smile and pretend everything is ok? What are your priorities? What are the values that you hold on to?

Does this mean that everyone who are on a mission to tell people about inconvenient truths will be hated? 

Well I don’t think that is necessary. It all comes down to how well are we able to assert ourselves and our opinions to other people. How able are we in singing out sad lyrics in a happy melody? How able are we in tuning our music to our audience. 

An art too hard to master at this young age of mine.

Yours sincerely

Azfar

Its not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me

(The Batman, Batman Begins)

On Words from a Fashion Faux Pas

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

Mahatma Gandhi

We had this English teacher back at prep college. She was one of those people who spoke English with a much thicker accent than anyone you've ever seen on tv, it makes you try hard to not say to yourself that she's overdoing the slang. Notoriously famous for grammatical strictness, lack of aiming capabilities and fashion faux-pas-ing, she was a constant source of ridicule and mean laughter amongst us students, who seemed at the time to always be on a vigilant search for faults and mistakes performed by this woman.

Our English as a class (save a person or two, and I'm not one of them) never did meet her standards. As were our knowledge of Australian addresses and our selection of names to address letters to for in-class formal letter writing exercises.

So one day in class, after an essay exercise she told us to complete several days ago, she called us one by one to the teachers desk to discuss our essays with her. And one by one, we went to the desk, and one by one went back to our seats, resuming our quests to reach Australia for tertiary education or simply to continue sleeping as our classes often went to late afternoons during those days.

My turn soon came and walking to her desk, I already saw the red streaks before I sat down on the chair. On the corners, over the messy handwriting, in between words, everywhere. Looks like my essay has been bloody slaughtered again. If it had a voice its probably shouting out to be euthanized as quickly as possible. And I sat on the chair, my eyes fixed on the paper.

And we went through the essay, bit by bit, her voice always going somewhere into my subconscious, never really reaching my thought centers. And towards the end of the discussion, she said " because you try hard…".

What?  What did she just say? I couldn’t remember what she was saying right before those words, but a bit later that day, after a lot of thinking,  I remembered what she said. She said "you deserve better…because you try hard…" (and she said something about how I needed to improve on several things so I can get better marks and not stay on the same plateau of low marks forever)

Right after she said those words, I felt as if I was caught off guard. And for the first time in a very long period, I looked at her face and into her eyes. I felt really touched. I actually felt like crying in front of her. And so I looked down instead, nodding my head vigorously at every pause of her sentences.

Maybe you, dear respected reader are confused as to why I reacted in such a way at that part of the statement she made. Maybe you, dear reader think that this teacher must have never uttered a single word of praise and hope to her students that upon hearing that I deserved better, I felt so flattered and proud my vanity felt so happy it was making me cry.

But no. She actually said to me something I really craved to hear at that time. By those words, it felt that she saw me. She didn’t see my marks, or my smile, or my laughter.

She saw that I was trying. And indeed, during that time I was really trying.  Then, and years prior. Day and night for a shot at learning medicine in some faraway land.

Sad, but no one before her has ever explicitly expressed that to me. No one has commended my efforts before her. No one ever. Everyone just wanted results; first place, second place, grades, trophies, medals, certificates, money.

It shows our pre-occupation with results, and our lack of appreciation for effort and struggle. Because that’s what we like, we feel like if something doesn't come off something, its not worth much. Because in the end nothing good happened.

But I beg everyone reading this post up till here to open our eyes and see the struggle and efforts of others. And appreciate them. And acknowledge their hard work. Because in a world where everything is fast and competitive, we often forget this. We often say 'good job'  and forget to pat people on their backs for their 'good effort'.  We tell people to 'study hard!!' and we don’t say to them 'take a break, you've studied hard'.

We forget that there is some wisdom in the road trip saying "what matters is the journey, not the destination".

With this I am making a public statement that I shall try to wake up early tomorrow for orthopaedics ward rounds !

Sincerely yours

Azfar