On seeing a beautiful girl on Facebook

Obligingly as always, I browsed through the Facebook page after cooking dinner for two, half an hour after I ran in the unforgiving torrential rain to my car parked on demon hill (refer to previous post) after hospital.

Going through everyone's lives, I saw 2 photos in which my sister was tagged.

The photos were taken on 29th of May 2011, the day of my sister's wedding!! It seems a bit unreal, there she was, in her wedding dress, very beautiful, more beautiful than always, with a guy who is now officially my brother in law!  Hmmmm...brother in law....its weird just saying it. But that was it, my sister is married now! I guess it is a bit weird because during that historic day, I was in Newcastle, reading a book on a rainy day, bored out of my skull, when everyone else were there, coming together, enjoying each others companies, celebrating my sister's wedding. My sister's wedding!! It makes me feel a bit sad looking at all those photos, because I feel a bit like a stranger, who was only able to browse through photographs without being there. If only I own an airplane!!!

Time flies so fast, yesterday we were walking around in a shopping mall holding each others hands (pretending we were lovers), the day before we were on the bus going to school in Putrajaya, the day before we were at school in the school choral speaking team, the day before we were getting on PakCik's bus to primary school, the day before we were children in the day care centre, the day before we were playing outside of the rented home in Gombak. My God!! It still seems unreal!

Anyhows, this quick entry is in the dedication of my sister, the only girl among us five. I wish the biggest Congratulations!! to her and her husband. For her to know that I feel the utmost happiness for her and her husband, and that we are so glad someone was actually willing to marry you!!! Hahaha..!! And to my brother in law, please take care of my sister with your best of abilities, make her happy, and please guide and teach her towards being happy now and in the Hereafter. She's very emotional at times, but she never fails to get back to being happy in a jiffy. Because that's what her name means; 'Joy'. I guess now I can say to Atok who told me "you are the one who's going to take care of your parents, your sister and brothers, no one else": I can say to her "thank God Atok! My bag is now lighter"  To both of you, may your first steps in marriage-hood be good and smooth ones, may you guys step in unity, understanding, coherence and love till the end of your lives and may you guys be able to help each other get up anytime you step on pebbles and stumble. And may babies who spring from you two be faithful and beautiful people, people who will make this world a better place in the future.

 Kalau ke laut susur gelombang, 

Jangan kemudi patah daunnya,

Kalau bertaut kasih dan sayang,

Jangan diuji dalamnya cinta,

Janganlah jangan diuji cinta 

(Joget Senyum Memikat, Siti Nurhaliza)

Can't wait to see the official photographs and videos!
Ahmad

The hidden power of smiling

Ron Gutman: The hidden power of smiling | Video on TED.com

Today is the kind of day I love. The registrar took the day off and the consultant wasn't anywhere to be found. The ward round was done by the intern and I. We went to the patients, asked them how they were going, checked their vital signs, checked that they've pooped earlier in the morning or anytime yesterday and went around smiling and waving around to the patients. Sweet. As sweet as a stolen kiss, as the Irish would say it.

The intern told me that I should go home as soon as possible and I, of course, not wanting to disappoint anyone in my team, obliged.

And so I went home early, switched the computer on and lounged around...for an hour or so. It is very nice.

Later I thought I'd have ample time to have a run before the sun sets. And so after Asr prayers, I took to the streets.

Just to inform all of you who may have never been to Gosford, the terrain here is very hilly. And so up and down I went. Until I met my arch nemesis, the hill going up to the Gosford Hospital. Usually I would just bring myself in baby steps up half the hill, and walk (with a rather comical facial expression, flaring nostrils and over enthusiastic arm swinging) up the other half.

Today however is a good day. And so I thought, I'll run up 3/4 of the hill! Good improvement for a good day! And so I ran (baby stepping still) up the hill, and around half way up the hill, my legs started to scream. Owh great, I dont know if I could do what I wanted to two seconds ago. And my pace started to fall, it was very much comparable to a drunk baby snail's.

But then I remembered this talk up here, and believing in the power of it's magic,(heeehee...) I forced a smile. You should've seen my face, it was twisted. Absolutely laughable. And I wont have anything against you for ROFL-ing at all! I was forcing myself to display my teeth to everyone who passed me in their cars. They must think I was on my way to the Psychiatric ward. But lo and behold! By the time I thought I was going to give up, and my smile was about to fade, I was already very close to the crest of the hill!! And mustering my last bits of strength to maintain a smile and keep my legs running, I made up the crest of the hill!!! *clap clap clap*. The feeling, to conquer that hill is just so great! And immediately I was in the mode: impossible is nothing! (thus this poorly planned entry and the bursts of short sentences)

So people, whenever you feel tired and everything inside you are screaming in pain, you might want to try a smile. You never know which hill it may help you climb.

Run easy
Azfar

On the man shaking in the chapel

 The content of the Friday prayer preach was on death. Given by a dear friend of mine, in the Gosford Hospital chapel, which is reserved for Friday prayers every 1.30 in the afternoon.

The text which he whizzed through was brief, cut short with the lunch time period in mind. It discussed the ever so popular topic of the questions you get asked by the angles in your grave upon your death and burial, the answer to them and the consequences of your answers on your conditions in limbo land.

For the 3 of us (half) listening to the talk, it was rather simply just a talk, a reminder that slightly tapped our souls for that period of time, bound to be forgotten upon seeing the patient waiting in the ED or the medication charts that need to be redone. A good reminder nonetheless.

After finishing the prayers, I was adamant on getting out of the chapel as quickly as possible, as I had a tutorial scheduled at two o'clock. After greeting the angels on both my shoulders, I quickly got up, stuffed my feet into my shoes and headed to the door.

I half-stormed out, nearly got to the exit when I saw a man, sitting in the chair in the furthermost corner of the chapel, slightly graying hair, in a hospital gown with a navy fleece jumper on top. He was looking down and was shaking. Visibly, coarsely shaking in his chair. I thought he must've just been there to pray, and so I thought I'll just slip in front of him in silence. When I was about to exit the chapel, he looked up, gave me the best smile he could've mustered and without prompt, he said "Sorry, I'm just here to thank God. I just had a near death experience a week ago. I died and the doctors brought me back again. Its like God doesn’t want me yet, I still have things to do here. I'm sorry, I didn’t know about this (the reserved chapel for Friday prayers).Its interesting, we're both from different religions but...."

I stood still in the doorway, one hand holding the door open,  the other not knowing what to do, caught dead in thin air. This guy has been listening to the preach. He listened, and was molested. Molested by the words, touched inside so deep, he was shaking from it.

How I wish I could have stayed with him and hear his story, my heart screamed "screw the tute! This guy needs someone to talk to"  but my head whispered "I'm late for tute, I should just say something brief and go". In the end, as always, my head got his way. I gently touched his elbow which he held close to his body, like hugging a long lost friend, and said "you take care" and went out.

The conversation had me thinking a bit while walking to tute. The gravity of his words was colossal. "I still have things to do here".

That had me thinking. When was the last time I shook at the thought of dying with my work here unfulfilled?

I wish I could elaborate more on this, but the medical course awaits. However reader dear, know that this post shall be tended to again sometime in the future. I just thought that it's been a while since I posted an entry, so this half boiled excuse on an entry shall have to do for the time.

Until I get to continue on this post, lets just all  think about what things we have to do in this world and what are our efforts at them. Not many of us are as lucky to learn the lesson of purpose through death and rebirth, but most of us are lucky enough to learn it through the experience of others. 

 "Its like God doesn’t want me yet, I still have things to do here" (The man shaking in the chapel, 2011)

You take care

Azfar

On why The Joker will never stop and the Batman should think of alternatives

And they say that a hero can save us,

I'm not gonna stand here and wait,

I'll hold on to the wings of the eagles,

Watch as we all fly away
(Hero, Chad Kroeger)

In the many years that I've lived, I've been blessed enough to meet many people who thought me, directly through their opinions and indirectly through their actions and experiences, things I have had problems with comprehending. 

I remember one day at school when a dear friend decided to ask a question to our teacher. It was a rather naughty question, which he decided to ask after some friction between the guys and the girls at school about a topic my brain couldn’t retrieve anymore. Obviously it was a rather trivial issue, if not, I think even my humble brain would be able to remember it better.  The question was "do we need to change ourselves in order to join a group?"

The answer to the question, given by Ustaz Azam after the dusk namaz was quite a good one. We were in the Al- Qadisiyah mosque, all a hundred plus of us from the 2005 class, staying at school for the big exam, SPM (Sijil Penentu Masa Depan, as a teacher of ours had once printed on the last page of a trial paper). 

He said change is like driving on the highway. You face only one direction, forwards, and you have 3 lanes. A slow lane for the more relaxed, the right lane for the fast ones who want to get to their destination with only their destination in mind, and the middle lane for the ones in between. It’s ok to choose whichever lane you would like to drive on, but you shouldn’t drive on the opposite direction, because that spells danger and death. Good...isn’t it?

Many people though find it awfully hard to change. Certainly is the case for yours truly. Because it feels better if someone could come and carry us to our destination. Like Batman who catches all the crooks and stuffs them into jail and Oprah who would have her crew clean and makeover a messed up house. But I think even Batman and Oprah would get sick of doing things for people, because they would know that these instant magical remedies are not addressing the root of the problem. So even if Batman could stuff The Joker again and again into Arkham Asylum, The Joker once out will continue to bring trouble, because he doesn’t want to change. 

Which brings me to a point. An uncle of mine once answered my cousin's honest question of "how did you stop smoking?" with a simple "I wanted to stop, and so I stopped". That quick answer probably summarized a longer one in the best of ways.  The thing you probably need most for change to happen is a clear goal. What is it that you truly want? Do you sincerely want the change that you verbalize to others or to yourself? Because if you really want it, you will get it. So when my school counselor asked me about the secret to my SPM result, I didn’t know what to answer him. Because there wasn’t a secret, there was just a goal, the will to achieve it, the effort and the faith that if you believe in God and try as hard as you can, God will not forsake you. But I guess I'll bite my tongue and say that the above was probably an oversimplification.  Because obviously we have variables in our lives, and forces outside of our control that interplay into the whole complex affecting us. As much as we would like to have complete power over our lives, we should understand that in reality, for us humans, there isn't such a thing as complete power. But we can certainly try to woo these factors into helping us to change. But that is a different story altogether, probably someone's social science thesis paper for all I know. So I shall not indulge myself in a typing frenzy for that. 

Believe me dear reader when I say that change is a cyclic process. That is what we learn from psychiatric lectures. That people are bound to relapse in the process of changing. The thing that makes a person finally change is their will and persistence, and a faith that their hard work will not go to waste. So it’s ok if you relapse and fall. You just need to know that you can rise again. If it’s too hard to rise again in that very moment, take a break, reflect and then try again. If it’s too hard to stand up by yourself, hold out your hand and ask for help. Because someone will eventually grasp your hand and help you up. Believe me.  You are worth the efforts of another.

Which brings me to another point. That is about helping people to change. I've heard again and again in dramas, both on TV and in real life, how in arguments, a person would say "you need to change. Unless you change, this is not going anywhere". Look, it’s easy to tell someone to change, and wait for them to reach their destinations by themselves.  But I think it’s more enriching and rewarding if we could hold their hands and walk with them along the way. It will tell the person that "hey! I'm here for you. I'll help you through because I care about you and I want to see you become a better person" and I believe, through personal experience that it means the whole world to them. And who knows, we probably could learn a thing or two from the journey together. So don’t be greedy people! Help each other change! Share and learn from each other! Remind in the spirit of love and brotherhood!  

Which brings me to the final point of this entry. About the power of the individual. We’ve heard again and again that change starts with you. That one person can affect the whole world. One person can send off a tsunami that can shake the whole ocean of people around them. It is possible. At least I believe so. And so if you see something that needs changing, whatever it is, you should take action to change it. And it’s ok to be the one who starts the changing. You will be amazed at how your actions will affect another person and how it can cascade and become larger until finally the change you brought will be practiced by all.  Don’t underestimate the influence you have on others, you have more power than you might think.

Easier said than done. But you'd never know until you try. So give it a try people! Set your end point, look up the road map, get into a car, drive in the lane of your choice, and get to your destination! You don’t have to wait for a hero to get you there.

Because the hero of the story is you.

Always wanted to be an X-Man

Azfar 

p.s.: Reading this before closing it just made me think about how disorganized and messed up this entry is.  Nevertheless I hope that all of us got something from reading this.  As I've constantly said, in hopes of defending my mediocrity in thinking, you've probably read this from a lot of other places with better articles but I'd like to remind myself of this anyways. As a friend of mind kindly told me when I asked them if my blog was boring "it's your blog, who gives a damn anyway?”  Anyhow I'd appreciate comments from whoever it is. As it is written up there, sharing (is supposed to) makes everything better.

On the 7 shirts that I have and the pants to go with them

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. (Kahlil Gibran)

My heart can never have enough.

I mean, there's always the latest gadgets launched, the newer, funner games released, the more comfortable shoes, the warmer jackets, the clearer and bigger media screens, the bigger engined cars, the better looking pair of jeans, the wider and further zooming lens and so many other things that I need to have. If my heart could have his way, my room would've been filled with new things every week, some I may need, more, I do not.

Sadly, and quite to my relief, my financial flow would not allow this to happen. Sad, but I'm alright with that. I mean, surely it would be nice to be able to afford a new laptop when the current one hangs every 15 minutes, and its 'Enter' key dangles around threatening to rob me off my 'enter'ing rights every time I hit it with enthusiasm, or to go to Japan and New York and Istanbul to see the great cities, or to have an SLR camera to finally start following the trend or at least to have a fancy robot alarm clock to wake you up with cheer in the morning that I've wanted for 2 years now!!
http://www.thegreenhead.com/2008/09/temper-tantrum-throwing-alarm-clock.php

But it has come to my realization that I can be absolutely happy without having those things. In fact, I'd probably be happier if I decided to stop thinking about them and direct the energy to my mastication muscles to eat a bar of chocolate instead.

Frankly, I must say that during these years as a medical student on a scholarship, I have been richer than I have ever been throughout my entire life! Not rich enough to be able to afford a swanky new Mac Book Pro or the amusingly overrated IPad or to go to New Zealand or Tokyo for a 2 week trip; but I have enough to never have to go hungry, to be able to drive around in my beloved shared car, to be able to call people without having to constantly glance at the screen to see how long I've been on the line, to have 7 shirts which I could rotate and match with different pants to not appear to wear the same things to work every week, to drink good coffee at Gloria Jean's on a weekly basis and to do so many things. So many things, all at the expense of my own money.

It's a common thing to see in Facebook statuses nowadays, but I don't think I can ever remind myself of this enough.

That the fact that I am here, able to post this entry on a personal laptop, in a house (lets leave the issue of who's paying rent for this particular house aside), safe and sound, with a block of Black Forest chocolate on my side, breathing and beating in health, means that I am much more fortunate than many millions of others in this world.

And the fact that you, dear readers, are able to read this post on whatever it may be, a computer at the Uni, or your laptop or your mobile phone also means the same thing.

That God has granted us so much more in terms of facility and wealth than a lot more of the world's population.

I may not have everything that my heart desire, but I've never not have enough. And it makes life easier when I think of things that way.

So with this in mind, I'd like to thank God for firstly the faith he has granted me, for the Prophet and the message he brought to the world, for the health that I've lived in for 22 years, for my family, my brothers and sisters, for friendships, new, old, forgotten and everlasting, for mentors and teachers, for people I have met and have learned from, for knowledge and the capacity to understand, for opportunities in life, for successes and failures I have lived through, for good memories, for mistakes I have made, for clear and blue skies after a tiring day at hospital, for beautiful fishes, cute pandas and fluttering butterflies, for music and poetry and how good they are at expressing my feelings , and the list goes on. Owh and I almost forgot, for you!  dear reader who spends time reading my posts!!

Try as I might, I'll never be able to count all the favours that God has given me. It's not just my personal opinion, but wisdom from the Divine.

And if you were to count Allah's favors, you would not be able to number them; most surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. [Sūrah al-Nahl: 18]

Just loving it

Azfar

p.s.:

For those book lovers out there and those who read all the time, a nice quote for you:

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing (To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee)

 

On hot gossiping with the surgeons

Throughout my several weeks experience of being a full time clinical student, I've sat with several different teams in the hospital. I've sat with the general surgeons, ENT surgeons, vascular surgeons, anesthetists and radiologists. 

And sometimes quite inevitably, you're drawn into the slimy gossiping session between members of a group although you were there just for a 2 hour session and all you do is sit around hoping to be invisible so no one would ask you questions that the answers to you knew, back when you were in second year that is.

And many of the times the topic of the discussion would be about how people from other departments are not doing justice to the people talking, who are always either the victims or heroes of the situation.

How the radiologists would have five coffee breaks before tending to your request forms, or how the surgeons always want to cut everything out plus at least one unrelated organ and how they don't know anything about medicine, how medics think too much and complicate matters, how nurses are always unnecessarily bitchy about medicine charts and would ask you to do things with an annoying fake smile, how the psychiatrists are themselves nuts and always act like they're important, when everyone knows that they'd like to be, how the samples you send to the pathologists are never enough to draw a diagnosis from, they usually want the whole organ.

The conclusion from these discussions is almost too predictable. It is: We are right, everyone else is wrong. What we do is the best, everyone else is crap. If we could have it our way, all the patients would be better looked after and everyone, ranging from the crappy people we work with to the people who aren't even born yet would be happier.

 I don't think I'm happy with whats happening here.

Because I've seen how these different people work. I've seen their dedication, their sacrifice, their passion and their efforts. All of them contribute to patient care. All of them are striving to achieve that one goal up there, to make sure the patients are, at the end of the day better than when they came in.

I'd take the risk of sounding naive and ask; isn't that what we all want?

So instead us saying "what you guys do don't work, and we know this because we've had training for years on end in what we do and we see no other way that would work best save ours and so, screw everyone else, come, join us, become one of us because when everyone is in our group, all the patients in this world would be healthier and happier"; maybe we should embrace each other and say "Thank you! Thank you for tending to the people whom I cannot reach out to, the people whom I cannot understand and cannot stand to be in the presence with, thank you for doing something that I don't think I'm capable of doing, things that I lack the skills to do, thank you for going further than I can, or closer than I can, thank you for speaking different lingos, thank you for understanding things in a different way because only then can we compare ourselves and see our mistakes. And most of all, thank you for trying to achieve what I too am trying to achieve."

That's life isn't it? We'd love to think what we do is best, but we should know that this world is quite like a hospital. There are young sick people, old sick people, teeny weeny sick people, bleeding people, people with cancer, people with colds and coughs, people who have 'pathological' thinking, people with inherited diseases, people who brought their diseases on to themselves, people who don't want to be treated, people who are difficult, people who are simply...different. Different from each other and thus need different treatments. And so there are the medics who play with drugs, surgeons with their knives, psychiatrists with their words, nurses with their hands, radiologists with their films, anesthetists with their happy serums and security with their 'guns'.

This is an absolutely personal opinion, and I would admit to it being totally arguable and flawed, but I'd like to shout it out anyways.

Instead of putting too much effort in debating who's best, we may all benefit more by actually thinking about getting to the goal together. And if people think that they like to do things in a certain way, the way they can be most comfortable in, taking a slightly different path, instead of condemning their understanding and efforts and saying what they are doing is suboptimal, maybe we should give them a pat on the back and say "hey, if you think you're comfortable with that, go for it! Coz God knows, I don't think I want to do that, so it's good that you are willing to do so.  As long as you're getting there."

They are working hard already to do what they are doing, they deserve to at least be happy with it.

"Allah x tgk result dia Allah tgk usaha kita snanye" (A friend of a friend of a friend...blablabla, date unknown) 


In support of choices and happiness
Azfar

On what its like to be beautiful

Kalau menjerat burung kedidi,
Janganlah senja baru ke taman,
Kalau memikat idaman hati,
Janganlah rupa jadi taruhan,
Janganlah jangan rupa taruhan
(Joget Senyum Memikat, Siti Nurhaliza)

I have a confession.

It may not be the most comfortable thing for me to say this, because I think its quite atypical given the circumstances that I've been brought up in and the surroundings I've been in up till now. And I know many people who would laugh at this, or would just give a semi- hearted, confused "Ay". Actually, I think most people I know would do that.

This has something to do with my preferences in people. An attraction I guess.

I like beautiful people.

There. That's it. I've said it.

Atypical much?

Let me explain.

I have, after so many years of living understood what beauty means. The epiphany came only several weeks ago, when I was in the wards, doing student stuff. And I saw this lady. I think that she's a nurse, I couldn't remember.

She was a bit plump, a bit 'mini' and probably a mother to at least 3 children. Dark skinned, with facial features of a Maori, curly black hair, which was cut short, and a glass framed spectacles dropped low on the bridge of her nose.

She is not, I must admit, the typical beauty. That is, physically she was just ordinary, like most of us. But there were things about her that were so beautiful. I didn't know why, but I kept looking at her the whole time I was in the ward. I saw how she greeted others with a cheerful hello, how she made others laugh and how her eyes twinkled when she laughed, how she bustled around the ward huffing and puffing while humming an easy tune, how she grasped the arm of a nurse that looked devastated after the death of a patient to give comfort, how she offered that fellow nurse a cup of tea to calm her down.

And mostly, I noticed the pure, sincere smile she gave a patient who just crapped himself in bed, too tired to bother about his bowels. I saw her and I thought

"Owh God, how beautiful is this lady". And, without thought, I smiled.

And so right there, in that moment in time, I understood who beautiful people are. They are people that you would never get tired of looking at. Because their nature that is so calming, soothing and comforting.  And their nature bursts out of them like rays of light, shining the people around them. And the people around them respond to them with sincerity and honesty, with so much cheer and happiness, it showed through the shine in their eyes. 

They make smiling a reflex.

It made me understand those odd couples who people shake their heads at, saying how inappropriately matched they are. A beauty and a beast, or a prince and a hag. Generally, a set of appearances at the different extremes of the spectrum. And I then thought, just because the only thing we know about them is their appearance, it doesn't give us any right to say anything. For all we know, those hags and beasts may be more beautiful than the beauty or the prince. And have you seen them princes nowadays? Many of them are just a bunch of fat, lazy, corrupted and broken human beings. Nothing to look up to if you're lucky enough to not have to look at how high those noses are. 

And so I can't tell you what its like to be beautiful, not just yet. I don't think I make people smile on reflex. Not just yet.

But I do know some people who have that affect on me. And I believe that I'm going to find many more from now on. And when I find them, I'll learn from them. On how to be beautiful.

P/S: enjoy this music video. I think there are many beautiful people in there

Prayers for you dear reader, to be and always stay beautiful.
Azfar

“Allah does not look at your figures, nor at your attire but He looks at your hearts [and deeds].” (A man many miss even though they've never met him, several centuries ago)