My Bundle of Joy
It all started on 26 November 2008. That was the day when I received my second promotion and my rank was elevated from a bachelor to a husband and now to a husband and a father. Based on my 6-month experience, I must confess that wearing two hats simultaneously is never an easy job.
That’s right HE is now 7 months old. HE smiles and giggles and coos and stumbles and chews and burps and pees and farts and really poos. It is difficult to explain, but no matter what HE did, everything is a surprise and a very pleasant surprise indeed. I am sure HE still has a bunch of tricks and surprises up his sleeves.
Living in
As Father’s Day is celebrated on different date according to countries, I guess it still relevant and acceptable for me to wish Happy Fathers’s day to all my friends as well as to those-who-gonna-be-father-soon and to-those-who-are-still-single-and-hopefully-will-end-their-bachelorhood-soon. To Mothers and gonna be Moms, what else can I say, thank you for becoming the vessel to bring us Man, this BUNDLE OF JOY!
I don’t know about you guys, but for me HIS magical moment which continues to awe me is the serenity of HIS face when HE sleeps. If only the moment could be shared, I believe it will flush out all the sufferings in this world.
I dedicated this song to all the parents in this world. The song by the group Micheal Learns to Rock (MLTR) called sleeping child, is best to describe my feelings whenever the sun retire.
The Milky Way upon the heavens
is twinkling just for you
and Mr. Moon he came by
to say goodnight to you
I'll sing for you I'll sing for mother
We're praying for the world
and for the people everywhere
gonna show them all we care
Oh my sleeping child the world's so wild
but you've built your own paradise
That's one reason why I'll cover you sleeping child
If all the people around the world
they had a mind like yours
we'd have no fighting and no wars
here would be lasting peace on Earth
If all the kings and all the leaders
could see you here this way
they would hold the Earth in their arms
they would learn to watch you play
Oh my sleeping child the world's so wild but you've build your own paradise
That's one reason why I'll cover you sleeping child
Keep you away from the world so wild
I hate her yet I love her. How could I be so foolish to allow things to reach this stage. I feel miserable and confuse. Lately, she used to grumble and complaint about a lot of things, if not everything. She will jabber, mumble and chatter about something that I can never understand. She puts me in a very difficult situation, I don’t know if I ever did any wrong that might have hurt her feelings or simply ‘I’ am the wrong.
She has changed a lot from the day she first walk into my house. I missed those days when I can spent time together cuddling at the coach while watching my favourite television series: Crime Scene Investigation, or just simply savouring the moment when the wind came rushing at us from our balcony. Where have all the romance gone?
I never complain about her. If things happen that might scratch my feelings, I will try to tolerate and counsel myself that these things will pass. Forgive her, I must. That phrase is my pillar of patients. I never complain about her cook, how can I? She never cooks at home. Everything is from the 7 Eleven or Carrefour. She never did my laundry, ironed my cloth or even woke me up from bed in the morning. And yet I never complaint and blamed her for not doing anything to contribute to the house.
How can a man be nicer than this?
Reconciliation? Yeah, I did try. I wanted to take her out, to have a dinner at a neutral place and later followed by a talk, you know the kind of heart to heart talk, but her refusal left me dumbfounded. To her eyes, it seems that I am trying to lure her to commit something that is not with her consent.
She continues to evade and try to stay away from me though we are living in the same house. How much farther can you get? And when I almost resigned to the helplessness of the situation, when I was just about to throw in the towel, she would approach me and caress me as if trying to assure me that there is still hope for our relationship, without literally saying anything. She then rubbed her body against me, sharing the heat of her body to comfort my despair and chase away my misery. Lastly she would carve the most seductive smile on her face combine with a cuddly facial expression and said, “Miaaaauuuww”.
What more can a man ask?
I wish June 7 had never come.
Sure, there are whispers that he was not happy with the way his successor was running the country especially when he realised that the Prime Minister is no longer dancing to his tune. No one expected June 7 to actually happen in this lifetime.
That was the day when Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad came out from ‘retirement’ and launched a tirade against the Prime Minister. He accused the Prime Minister of backpedalling the country’s economic growth by reversing his policies and withdrawing the government’s commitments, which were endorsed and approved during his office.
Since then, things are no longer the same. Many things have changed. I only wish that things would revert to the way that I used to.
I wish that broom would maintain its original function that is to sweep, rather than becoming a collectible item that people give away as a present for one’s ‘excellent’ service. I wish C4 continues to be used to clear up rocks or to defend the country and not to blow up a foreigner. I wish that red paint is use to paint a Chinese house and not splashed at the Chairman of Election Commission, to intimidate him. I wish that yellow remains as a royal colour and not the official colour of any illegal movement.
I wish I can still brag about
I also wish for a just world and this would end all the sufferings in this world. I wish that I could do something to help the Palestinians. Children who threw stones are being shot dead with live bullets. Is there nothing that we can do? No one tells the Israelis to stop shooting. It is as if the most natural thing for people to do when stones are thrown at them is to shoot the stone throwers dead. And yet these people who tolerate the killing of stone-throwing children advocate endlessly about human right, justice and the rule of law.
I wish that conservative people does not exist. I just hate conservative people who have a rather peculiar habit with innate propensity to discuss an issue with greater alacrity and gusto without having facts to back them up. What a meretricious society they are!
Dear God, please protect me, my family and friends from them.
There are times that I am not sure whether I can really trust others around me. I believed the law of the jungle with the concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ is very much practised and applied everywhere. It is almost impossible to find a ‘purist’ heart and it is so easy to find an imposter.
More often than not, we refuse to qualify ourselves as the imposter. But indeed we are. The evidence is unmistakable.
We curse people who drive slower than us, as lame and sluggish; but at the same time, we condemned those who are faster than us as maniac.
When people have less knowledge than us, we tend to look down to them and we are so convinced that they are stupid, but when people are smarter than us than they are special and gifted.
We seldom say sorry. Even if we do, its just like a staple phrase that we keep on saying to one another but never actually living up to its spirit. Forgiveness is something we should all practise. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”.
We used to point out people mistake but we are hard in admitting that we also made mistakes. We look for people’s hidden skeleton without any sense of guilt and remorse, but when people reciprocate, then we claimed that they are nosy and it is a breach of our privacy.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience
The massive advancement and breakthrough in technology more often than not altered what we believed and how we perceived things around us. It was used to be the case that one knows exactly where the demarcation line lay between the necessary and the necessity, but these days it is getting harder and harder to tell.
I grew up in an the era where things such as wireless internet, mobile phone, camera, home theatre system, and combo DVD player were lumped together as a necessary, or even luxury, these gadgets had never managed to cross the line to become a necessity.
This has certainly changed today. One thing worth observing is the transformation and the transition of mobile phone from being a necessary to a necessity. In my case, mobile phone is no longer a necessity; instead, it has become my lifeline. Never once it occurred to me before, that mobile phone would become this important to me.
I had my first mobile phone when I was 18 years old and that was in the year 1994. Nowadays, if you do not have a mobile phone by the time you celebrated your 10th birthday, technically you are irrelevant to the society. Trying to be at par with the pace of the advancement of technology, I had already changed my mobile phone to a new model, for six times. Every time, I resorted to another phone, due to all kind of reasons, the functions or the capabilities of the mobile phone continue to increase.
Reluctantly, I have to admit that my mobile phone is actually my ‘second wife’. I could not fathom how it reached this stage but I would not survive a day without my mobile phone. Without it, I will become restless, helpless, and lost. Early in the morning, my mobile would assume the role of an alarm clock, which dutifully wakes me up every morning at 6 am without fail. My mobile phone would then morph to become my adviser on what are the things that I should be doing in a particular day. Reminding me to collect my laundry, pay utility bills, my meetings, and most importantly my birthday.
The ability to stay connected to others really provides a strong sense of security and freedom. Whether we like it or not, fact remains that human has become too dependant on technology.
I once planned to have an ‘unplugged’ outing with my wife. Free ourselves from all this electronic and electronic gadgets especially my mobile phone. Sound tempting. On second thought, to be away from technology especially my mobile phone, does spell danger to my family and
I must salute my colleagues who perceived this topic as a straightforward topic that can be approached effortlessly. I find it terribly difficult to anticipate the next 10 years of my life. Not that I suffered from the lack off imaginations or aspirations, but the problem is I have too much of them.
Once, I did imagine myself foraying into the world of fatherhood. I always teased my better half, that I wanted a pair of twin, a boy and a girl. The idea to be blessed with a pair of twin, though sounds very daunting, really stimulates my thoughts to the point of euphoric. Before I got carried away with my thoughts, my wife was quick to point out to me that, though she did not object to the idea of having a twin, there had been no record of twin pregnancy in our family, and I must not be disappointed should the outcome of pregnancy does not concur to my dream.
I told my wife that I could only bear myself with the presence of the children until they are 12 years old. When they reach 13, I would send them to various boarding institutions located in different continent with a clear intention for them to learn other languages, cultures, and values. My wife lamented the idea and argued that if that happened, then there is a possibility that I would not be able to converse with them. I told my wife that if she believed that she had made a correct decision by marrying me, she should, therefore, trust my judgement when it comes to children’s education.
Nevertheless, I promised myself that should I become a father in 10 years time, I would become a loving father. I would raise my child or children as my utmost priority and make it a point to spend quality time with my family no matter how occupied I am with work. Maybe by that time, I would have gain a bit more weight here and there, but it would be just enough to allow me to really “throw my weight” around the house to gain authority and secure command in the house from my children. For now, I could only anticipate that having two little ‘monsters’ that look alike, with different sexuality, in the same house, life could only get better. If not worst.
I always wanted a pair of new shoes until I saw a picture of a man with no feet.
It was nearing the end of school holiday. My parents promised me, that if I finishes top in my class, they would reward me with new pair of shoes. I have been eyeing that particular pair of shoes since I was in standard four.
When the shoes were introduced to the Malaysian market in 1993, it became an instant hit among my friends. They would come to the playground with their new pair of shoes and proudly parading it to others. Determine not to lose to them, I rushed home and demanded my parents that they should get me a pair of it. Though I was screaming and kicking, adamantly trying to convince them, my outburst only falls on deaf ears and caused me dearly as my father grounded me for a week. No play station, no movies and no daily allowances. Seeking vengeance, I vowed that I would not eat, drink even talk to my parents unless they bought me the shoes. Though my parents tried to explain that the shoes were so expensive, it is under my prerogative to demand for it. A promise is still a promise.
Later that night, as I was lying in my bed facing the wall, sulking, I smelled my mother walked into my room and sat at the edge of my bed. I was certain that she wanted to knock some sense into me via mother-son conversation. Pretending to be asleep, I prayed for my mother to leave me alone and surprisingly she did, but not before leaving some things on my bedside table.
I was flabbergasted to see the two things she left for me which is a package of my favourite pizza for my dinner and a newspaper cutting depicting a man with no feet. I quickly read the newspaper cutting to figure out what had happened to that man. My mother highlighted some lines in the articles to point out that among the thing that this man missed most is to wear a pair of shoes.
Though dumbfounded by mother’s approach to instil some sense into me, the unflinching truth that one should not be selfish, really penetrated my ego. Such a profound message that has been conveyed shrewdly. I am fortunate to learn this through my mother’s wisdom and not through the hard way.
For the record, I am writing this without any political inclination and
any intention to undermine any individual or party.
The
Though there are many ways to dissect the outcome of the 12th General Election, one point worth mentioning is the blatant use of electronic media to promote election manifesto as well as to disseminate propagandas. In the case of the opposition, with scarced access to the mainstream media, has tapped the power to reach the masses via the Internet, to their fullest advantage. Words such as blog, bloggers and columnist, which was so ‘alien’ to Malaysian once, has become an indispensable and vital tool for the opposition to stand their ground.
The popularity of the blog was largely due to the factor that for the author of any blog can remain anonymous, should he/she choose to. With almost everything and anything that can be ‘blogged’ in a few minutes and accessed instantly, the mainstream media has now meet its match.
As Malaysian became educated, the sudden shift of people’s trust from the mainstream media to this new domain, was probably due to the boredom and ‘fatigueness’ of the constant supply of one sided coverage via the mainstream media, particularly since Barisan National secured the landslide victory in 2004. This has really pushed the opposition to nurse their political aspiration via the internet particularly by using blogs.
Notwithstanding, one must not be mistaken that the blatant use of media and the internet, or the opposition’s manifestos, as the main factor that propelled the opposition as a victor in the 12th General Election. The main thrust of this change is more likely due to the frustration that has been engulfing the nation since 2004. The victory of the opposition was very much just an escapism from the previous government. Nothing more.
When I first heard the rumour that my named was short-listed, to participate in the Diplomatic Training Course 2008 (DTC 2008), I quickly dismissed its possibility. As my career is still in its infancy, the sense of pessimism was quick to engulf my thoughts, implying that my 2 years of service was nothing compared to those who have served the unspoken ‘3 years mandatory period’, before being ‘sanctioned’ to join the DTC.
I savoured with tremendous jubilation when my nomination form for DTC 2008, was signed by the Undersecretary of Southeast Asia Division, that I almost forgot my manners to thank him for his approval. However, throughout the day, my euphoric condition gradually degrading, that by midnight I was left only with worries and doubts. I found myself waking up the next day feeling so miserable. I could not take my mind off the notion that I am a very young officer, and the connotation that the other 26 officers are better prepared, well equipped, and more polished to rise above the challenges throughout this 4-month course. Struggling to position myself on a more rational ground, I forced myself to view DTC as an opportunity to improve and immerse myself with the essential knowledge of a diplomat, in order to face the rigors of challenge in safeguarding
I officially become a participant of DTC 2008 when I registered successfully for the course at the
Upon the change of mindset, I vowed that I would put my utmost effort in improving myself. I began the improved-myself process by taking the intensive French Lessons offered by the IDFR. Having the privileged to learn French before, and I viewed this as an opportunity to refresh and further strengthen my understanding and proficiency of the language. A senior Malaysian diplomat once told me, that mastering a third language like French would soon prove to be very useful in my career as a diplomat.
Besides French, I was also exposed to the usage of English in the diplomatic world. I started to train myself to use English as a persuasive tool to obtain something from others as well as to deploy English as the most potent weapon that would penetrate even the thickest enemy’s shield without the slightest drops of sweat nor blood. I learned from the pronunciation session that a diplomat has the ability to make nothing sounds like something. I even discovered how to say the nastiest things in the nicest way. After all, I would be expected to be tactful in order to persuade people to lay down their life for my country. I must apologise, did I say people? I actually meant to lay down my life for my country. I am such a cliché.
I believed En. Hanif session on the ‘Attributes of a Diplomat’ can be concluded simply by saying that ‘a diplomat is a person who knows how far to go before he goes too far’. Therefore, before I got carried away in exercising the right to freedom of free speech, and before my openness in writing, be interpreted as sarcasm, allow me to wind up my journal this week, by thanking the Almighty, for the opportunity to join this course, and I pray hard that by the end of this course, I would become better prepared, well equipped, and a more polished diplomat. God Willing.
# 6 0 # *
After you enter the code you will see a new code contain 15 digits:
43 4 5 6 6 1 0 6 7 8 9 4 3 5
IF the digit number Seven & Eight is 02 or 20 that mean it was
assembled on Emirates which is very Bad quality
was manufactured in
IF the digit number Seven & Eight is 01 or 10 that mean it
was manufactured in
in original factory which is the best Mobile Quality...
IF the digit number Seven & Eight is 13 that mean it was assembled
on Azerbaijan which is very Bad quality and very dangerous for health!!!
