Calm At Work

When All Is Said And Done

2011-09-03T10:08:00.001-07:00

Welcome to heli

2011-08-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

There are so many things people do not know about how things work in the oil and gas industry.

For example, people think you can just board a chopper and fly to the oil platforms. No, it's not that simple. You need training before you can go to an oil platform.

This is because the platforms are a sensitive area. One wrong move and things can go *TEBA-BO!!!* -- or however you would spell the sound of explosions.

Also, being hundreds of kilometres away from shore, the sea may not be... well, let's just say the sea may not be the calm, pretty waters you get in Tioman or Perhentian. And in worst case scenarios, you need to know how to stay alive for days, even weeks, in the water before help arrives.

Which is why, oil companies have made it compulsory for everyone going to oil platforms for work or even a short visit to sit for a safety course.

Called BOSET, or Basic Offshore Safety and Emergency Training, the three-day course is designed to equip you with basic skills for handling emergencies.

I was privileged enough to be assigned by my company to attend BOSET in preparation for an offshore study visit.

I learnt useful BOSET skills like firefighting, CPR, sea survival and many more.

But really, the heart of BOSET is HUET, or Helicopter Underwater Escape Training. When people, especially first timers, talk about BOSET, this is what they fear the most.

HUET is supposed to simulate a helicopter crash landing at sea and going below. Once underwater, you're supposed to unbuckle yourself, pop open the window and swim to the surface.

But not before waiting for at least 10 seconds for the main rotor to stop turning, otherwise you risk getting decapitated.

Hence, welcome to heli.

We do not use real helis for the training, only a fibreglass shell with cockpit and windows made to look like a heli.

It's a straightforward affair: you get into the simulator, buckle up and wait for the instructors to submerge the heli. Then you escape.

You do not need to be a good swimmer to do this exercise, but you do need some measure of water confidence.

In the old days, trainees had to hold their breaths during HUET. Not anymore. In 2008, a thingamajig called Emergency Breathing System (EBS) was introduced. It's basically a rebreather integrated into your life jacket that allows you to breath underwater for a good one minute or so.

If you're already a scuba diver, this is kacang putih (piece of cake).

Each of us got to perform the HUET four times, two of which with the heli turned upside-down. It was fun.

Apart from HUET, we also learnt skills such as how to jump from height without having the lifejacket bashing your face and how to minimise heat loss from long hours in the water by using the HELP and Huddle positions.

I passed my BOSET without any problem.

I'm glad I went for BOSET. Apart from enjoying myself, there was a take-home message: that just because you're a diver or swimmer, doesn't mean you automatically know how to save yourself at sea. For your own survival, everyone should be open to learning.

Dedicated to friends and instructors from DSA

2011-07-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Taking to the sky

2011-07-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

I am on my way to obliterating my fear of height.

YT and I went paramotoring the other day. You're probably familiar with paragliding. Well this is something similar but with a motor behind your back.

It's the easiest and cheapest form of powered flight. Only Rocketeer's backpack or Iron Man's suit could beat it!

We flew tandem, of course, since flying a paramotor requires a license issued by the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation.

The flights took place in an open field in Pulau Indah near Port Klang.

It's very simple. You just rest your bum in the tiny seat right in front of the pilot, they strap you in and off you go. You can be airborne in a few minutes.

Well, it should be that simple. But not in my case. The pilot had to abort the first two take-off attempts. The RM12,000 wing had lost its 'power', so to speak.

"It has exceeded its 400 hour flight limit, so we're not getting enough lift," said Pok Soh, my pilot.

Uh-oh. Should I be concerned about this?

"Not to worry. Once we're airborne, it's ok," said Pok Soh, probably sensing my unease.

True enough, we were successful in our third attempt. Although, because of the condition of the wing, it was a very slow ascent.

I looked down. I had little more than this tiny seat and some metal frames below me.

Strangely enough, I wasn't afraid.

"How high up does it go?" I asked Pok Soh through the radio communication. "500ft," he said.

At 400ft (which is apparently the restriction imposed by the DCA for paramotors), Pok Soh switched off the engine and we began to glide like a bird.

Flying in complete silence. It was really, really peaceful.

I looked around and saw the sea and had trouble recognising the tiny cars and cows on the ground.

Pok Soh then got me to take over control. With both arms extended, I was able to control the glider. Pull right to turn right, pull left to turn left. It was effortless.

We spent some time circling the airspace.

After about ten minutes (which was too short!), we went back to the landing field. I had difficulty locating it initially as everything looked different from up there.

Landing was a straightforward affair and does not need a large space.

As soon as we touched down, I wondered when I would get on that RM150 flight again.

They say once you have tasted flight, you'll want to be up there again. It's true.

Standard Chartered run

2011-06-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

The last time I ran the 10k, I injured my left knee.

Which wasn't all bad as it forced me to spend more time at the pool. I became a better swimmer as a result.

But I was worried about my knee. The injury was rather serious. I felt pain in my left knee after long walks. I was worried that the injury was permanent and that I would never run again.

When a FB friend invited me to sign up for a recent Standard Chartered KL Marathon, I said yes.

We trained together. We had about three months before the run, but the training wasn't regular. I felt it wasn't enough.

So I set a modest goal: to finish.

Preferably, to finish running. At the last run (the Mizuno Wave run in 2009), I aggravated my knee injury halfway into the run and limped all the way to the finishing line. It was hell.

It was also nice that this time around, a bunch of fellow divers and swimmers from Dolphin also joined in the run. They, too, claimed to not have enough training and so we said we'd see how it goes (and stop for cendol if we got too tired lol).

Me and my scuba and swimming instructor Cyrena

This was also the first time I took the LRT to a 10k run. I was out of the house by 6am.

I expected the train to be empty. I was so wrong. By the time the LRT reached my station (and it's only the SECOND station), it was packed with people in green running singlets. I just managed to squeeze in.

(Lesson learnt for race organisers: you must get Prasarana to use the four-car LRT on race mornings. That day, it was the shorter two-car LRT.)

The event for 10k started near Tugu Negara at 7am.

By the time I got to the starting line, I was already drenched in sweat because I ran from the Masjid Jamek station to the starting line.

I started my run at a pace that I could maintain comfortably.

One thing that I did differently with this run was I kept running. I did not stop to walk. No matter the route, even when going uphill, I just kept running at a constant pace.

I found that I was able to pass so many people this way.

By the time I remembered to check my mileage, It was already at kilometre 6. I was surprised.

I did feel something in my left knee at kilometre 8 however, so I had to scale down my pace.

But after the final turn on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, the pain somehow went away. I ran a bit faster all the way to the finishing line, with lots of people cheering along the way.

I finished my run in 1hr 10mins -- a personal best.

The rest of my Dolphin teammates, too, did well. The best of us did just over 1hr.

I am running and swimming better now than I did in my 20s.

It was a great day.

How to tackle Table Topics

2011-06-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

I'm no longer active in Toastmasters, but that doesn't mean I no longer take an interest in how they do things at the world's biggest public speaking club. Specifically, I am most intrigued by how some speakers seem to handle Table Topics so effortlessly.

Table Topics is a segment in a Toastmasters meeting in which participants speak off-the-cuff about a given topic for two minutes.

Two minutes is not a very long time, which is precisely why it is very easy to waste the 120 seconds on making feeble arguments or getting sidetracked, generally not able to really say what you want to say.

So how do you deliver a polished Table Topics speech? Here are some techniques employed by seasoned Toastmasters:

1. 5Ws + H
State the what, where, when, who and how of a given topic.

2. PREP
That is, you state your Point on a given topic, then Re-emphasise your point, followed by an Example and lastly, state the Point again. This technique works well with topics that require you to take a stand.

3. Another approach is talk about the Past --> Present --> Future of a given topic.

4. Yet another technique is to use a Cause --> Result approach.

There you have it. Four techniques at your disposal for tackling Table Topics. And remember also the three rules in public speaking:

* Don't apologise
* Don't ramble
* Don't invent

Rubber bricks

2011-04-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

We have started using rubber bricks at the pool lifesaving training these days.

These bricks are about the size of regular bricks but made of rubber. They're quite heavy. Make you wonder if you can hold them up in the water but actually you can.

I have seen people tread water holding up a chair!

Last week, we learnt to duck dive and pick up a brick from the bottom of the pool. Then hold the brick aloft and tread water for 10 seconds. Then dive in again, swim 25m under water and pick up a second brick and repeat the water treading thing.

I couldn't do the 25m underwater swim. Not yet anyway. Underwater breath hold still makes me nervous. When you're nervous, you use up energy. I am therefore going to learn to relax more in the water in the next few weeks.

Lifesaving day 4

2011-03-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

I think I have figured out the efficient way of towing people.

So far, my victims are all bigger than me. Their bodies have a tendency to sink if you don't pull them fast enough.

I had to figure out how to swim faster without using too much energy.

Today I discovered I could do this by kicking twice, followed by a hand sweep.

At the same time, I took care to swim gracefully so as not to splash too much water onto the victim's face.

We did all 3 different towing techniques over a distance of 75m each, so that made a total of 225m.

P.s: I think it's good that my victims are bigger than me. It's an opportunity to get used to having to work twice as hard as other people.

Lifesaving!

2011-03-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, when I just separated from my wife and was lonely, I made a list of the kind of person I would become in five year's time. And on that list, among other things, was "I would be a damn good swimmer, good enough to save people".

I got rid of my fear of water in 2009. Well, the other day, I took another step forward by taking up lifesaving.

Yesterday was our third lesson and I was finally ready to admit: THIS THING IS DAMN DIFFICULT!

The first few lessons were relatively easy. We were taught how to pull our victims onto the poolside and the correct way to jump and swim in lifesaving.

We were also taught the various ways of towing our victims in the water.

Yesterday, we had to do the towing thing, but over a distance of 50m for each technique.

We were also made to water tread using only our legs over a total of 200m.

My legs almost cramped. Also, during the towing exercises, both my victim and I drank some pool water in the process. My victim Azam is bigger than me and not very buoyant.

In the final exercise, a 100m sprint, I was so exhausted from it all and came in last among the guys.

Next week, instructor Dolphin Lee and his assistants are gonna make us swim in jeans and long sleeved shirts. It will be interesting.

This is some of the hardest things I have ever done at the pool but I'm taking it all in my stride. Because I have made my decision. Years ago, I decided that I would get good at this.

Weehoo! :D

2011-02-27T18:42:00.000-08:00

Marine Park jetty, Pulau Perhentian. Picture taken by my colleague Yein. First island trip with my new colleagues at Petrosains.

Bersama pertemuan ini

2011-02-20T02:32:00.000-08:00

Bersama Pertemuan Ini
Francissca Peter & Royston Sta Maria

Berterbangan
Bagai debu tak berhaluan hidupku

Berterbangan
Bagai burung kucari tempat berlindung

Di sini pertemuan
Kiranya ditakdirkan
Engkau dan diriku

Kepahitan
Masa lalu sering memburu hidupku

Kegagalan
Masa silam asyik mengganggu fikiran

Kita insan yang malang
Cuba hapus kenangan
Ingin membina harapan

Mungkin tak sepenuhnya
Keyakinan terbela
Beri pada kami kesempatan
Membentuk kehidupan
Semoga tak terulang
Pengalaman yang meninggalkan kesan

Seandainya
Kusematkan bunga layu di hatimu

Kan ku buka
Keseluruh pintu hatiku untukmu

Bersama pertemuan
Tercipta keyakinan
Meneroka hidup baru

When suffering a setback

2011-01-27T18:27:00.000-08:00

Inna lillaahi wa inna ilaihi raaji’oon. Muslims say this when someone dies, or when they lose something or suffer a setback or harm. It means whatever you have is not really yours but belongs to Allah. The cars you own. The house you live in. Your businesses. Your spouse. Your kids. Your health. Your body and soul. And when He deems fit, the Owner will come and claim what is rightfully His. And we do not mourn our losses. Like a friend who lends you his book and after a few days asks for it back. You give it to him. No sorrow. No regrets. No questions asked.

Goodbye Mimiko

2011-01-22T05:10:00.000-08:00

Well, that was it between me and Mimiko the school teacher.

When we first started out in October, my fear was that it would all end as quickly as it began. You know how relationships are accelerated in the age of emails, text messaging and Facebook. And true enough, it did.

I managed to prolong it by another month though. And honestly, that one month felt like one year.

Cos I was the only one doing the work.

Cos every day I lived with the fear of saying yet another wrong word, starting yet another quarrel.

Cos for the first time in my life, I really, really wanted a relationship to work. I had saving myself for this person for the past four years.

I saw all the warning signs but I ignored them. I thought I was being loyal.

Bah. The price you pay for being too trusting of people..

The big lesson learnt here: never be with someone who is not willing to lay all her cards on the table.

Always on my mind

2011-01-15T23:40:00.001-08:00

The pain of breaking up

2011-01-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

I thought this relationship, this life, would be good for you, I really did. But if God wills otherwise then what can I do. I will just accept it. There is this pain that I'm going through and it's physical. I feel it in my throat. I feel it in the depth of my chest. I thought I had used up all my tears a month ago but I was wrong.

Syakir reached a milestone today

2011-01-01T07:11:00.000-08:00

My son Syakir reached a milestone today at the pool: swimming across non-stop for the first time.

It was completely his own idea. We didn't have class today because it was a public holiday. So I let him do his own thing at the big pool while I went to attend to Farhanah at the kiddie pool.

Later, when I checked on him, I saw him swimming and asked, did you just swim across? He said yes. Then I said show me and then he did. I was impressed.

Then I asked him do you wanna try at the deep end and he said yes. No trace of hesitation whatsoever. We went to the other end and he repeated what he did earlier, with me swimming alongside keeping a close watch. I was very ecstatic!

After a few more times, his confidence level really went up.

Then I said I'm going to go look after Farhanah now so will you be ok swimming alone? He said yes. So I left.

I told Syakir this is excellent. You can show your instructor next week and they'll move you to the class with the better kids.

My son is becoming a swimmer. Best ever way to start the new year. Hopefully by our next island trip together, he'll be brave enough to jump into the sea alongside Daddy.

I.Fucking.Cannot.Read.Your.Mind!

2010-12-24T02:02:00.000-08:00

Let's get something straight. I am not looking to fuck around. I am looking for a WIFE. Which is why, I don't mind so much that we are not in a 'proper' relationship, doing all the things dating couples do. However, I do place importance on communication and respect. Unless you're stuck in a cave, don't go ignoring my phone calls 20 times in a row. Don't go replying to my SMS only after a day or two. Friends don't do that to friends!

All the love in the world

2010-12-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

Getting poked by sea urchins

2010-11-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

Today, again I jumped from the jetty just like yesterday.

But suddenly... ADOI!!! I sudah kena poke dengan sea urchin! The water wasn't deep enough. Bloody hell!

This was the moment when my fingers dug straight into the sea urchins. I felt a sharp pain.

The spines pierced my fingers about 1cm deep.

Souvenirs from Sipadan.

Thankfully, after half an hour and a simple treatment using vinegar, the pain went away and I was back jumping into the sea.

Return to Sipadan

2010-11-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

What a way to spend my last few weeks in NST! I found myself going for eight straight days of diving! A three-day personal trip to Tioman over the Deepavali weekend was followed immediately after by a five-day assignment to Sipadan.

I went to Sipadan with a group from Coral Malaysia, Tourism Malaysia and UMT. Met my former lecturer there, Prof Aziz Deraman. He's now UMT vice-chancellor and fellow diver.

Also in the group was singer Fauziah Latiff, a diver of 10 years.

We stayed Borneo Diver Mabul Resort, which is just next to Sipadan Water Village where I stayed last year.

In memory of the happy trip I had last year at SWV, on the second day I was at Borneo Divers, I jumped off the jetty and swam at the jetty. I jumped and jumped and jumped to my heart's content. And I didn't care if nobody else joined. I am FREE!

Swim 10 laps

2010-11-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today at the pool, the first thing instructor Dolphin Lee got me to do was to swim 10 laps. He knew I could do it. I think my body has been conditioned for swimming.

Goodbye NST

2010-11-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am finally leaving NST. I have tendered my resignation. The following weeks will be my final ones at this company. I'll be joining Petrosains in December as a science copywriter.

People ask me why am I leaving? I've been with NST for 11 years. I seem to have grown attached to this company. I seem to enjoy what I do.

BUT

I have always believed that you leave when you're happy. And I am happy working here. I have forged a good working relationship with my editor. There was a minor hiccup with another recently promoted editor, but that's not the reason why I'm leaving. The reason is simply because it's time and it's for personal growth. I have been looking to do something else in the last few years. I have applied for a job with the Swedish embassy, for example, but to no avail. This Petrosains thing came along and I seem to fit their requirements. On top of that, there's the added incentive of having a fellow scuba diver for my boss.

It's not like I know exactly what I'm doing. I don't. Change brings with it some measure of fear and uncertainties but if my previous experiences with moving are anything to go by, change may also bring untold rewards. When I left Computimes for Life & Times in 2005, it turned out to be a very good move. I got to know Sweden, I made friends with the blind community, I became a diver. The same goes with each of my subsequent desk moves. Each provided me with new experiences and growth. Life became richer as a result.

So, it's been a wonderful 11 years. I am happy working here. I am sad to be leaving. I don't know how else to explain why this is the right thing to do, but it is.

Surviving claustrophobia

2010-07-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Last week I discovered I may have claustrophobia.

It was during a dive. I was in Perhentian for a holiday and we visited this famous dive site called Sugar Wreck, some 20 minutes from Perhentian Kecil.

Sugar Wreck is a 90m long cargo ship that sank in 2001. It now lies on its side some 20m below the sea.

During pre-dive briefing, our dive master informed that the plan was to swim through the ship.

Which means I was aware of what was going to happen.

But I absolutely didn't anticipate getting a panic attack.

We started by exploring the outer part of the ship -- looking at sharks hiding under the mast and things like that.

Visibility wasn't very good.

I saw a pair of yellow fins starting to swim into the ship's belly which I thought was my dive master. Turned out it wasn't him. That diver was part of another group.

Sure enough, that group swam away and I soon found myself alone in the dark.

I looked up and saw a ceiling above me!

Not too far ahead, I saw an opening with blue light and for some reasons, it reminded me of the infamous Turtle Cave.

Turtle Cave, if you don't already know, is an underwater cave in Sipadan where turtles are said to go to die.

Not just turtles. Humans too. In 1997, story has it that two Japanese divers went into the cave and never came out.

Since then, divers have reported seeing two mysterious divers swimming from the open sea -- but without bubbles coming out of them. Malaysia's very own underwater ghost story.

Back to Sugar Wreck. I found myself alone, and inexplicably began to panic.

I began to hyperventilate and had trouble maintaining my buoyancy. My eyes became wide and I had a blank stare.

Surrounded by water, I could hear very clearly my heart beating faster and faster.

Actually, if I just swam towards my left, I would have gotten out of the ship again.

Instead, in my panicky state, I could only see the blue light in front and kept thinking to myself, oh no this is how I'm going to go. This is how I'm going to go. It was irrational.

But -- and this was where I did something right -- I told myself to get a grip of myself, calm down and breathe -- two golden rules I learnt early on in diving. So I just stopped all activities and lied motionless. I felt my body beginning to float. Soon I heard a thud on my back -- the sound of my tank hitting the wreck's ceiling.

Little did I realise all the while that my group had yet to enter the wreck.

When they finally did, from up at the ceiling where I was glued, I could see them down there looking for me but because I was still unstable, I just let them be.

After a while, they saw me at the ceiling but because I didn't look like I was struggling, they too let me be.

It felt like forever but I finally managed to get my breathing back in order. Only then was I able to descend, swim through the opening with the blue light and rejoin my group.

A little embarrassed by the whole thing. But I was thankful to God that I was able to deal with the problem by myself.

Will I ever do wrecks again? Yes. If I ever go to Sugar Wreck again, or any wreck for that matter, I will not run away. I will face it. It's the only way to deal with a phobia.

Syakir's swimming lesson

2010-07-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

There was a big surprise today.

This morning, I went to the UKM pool to fetch my kids. My eldest son and niece started their swimming lesson today with an instructor.

I got to the pool when they were already done with their lesson. I saw a couple of kids jumping into the water at the deep end of the pool. Jumped in, climbed back up, jumped back in again. They looked like they were having fun.

One of the kids looked familiar from afar.

After a while, I realised it was Syakir my son. Nurin my niece was also there.

My son. My flesh and blood. And he wasn't afraid of the water like I was when I was his age. It was a happy moment indeed.

Dear God, when will this ever end?

2010-06-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

I should never have spoken too soon.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and the tingling sensation that I had been having all over my body for weeks was completely gone!

I was ecstatic. Finally! Full recovery from the viral fever and Bell's palsy. I could eat properly, drink, smile, sleep without having to cover my right eye. And now, I was finally ready for the swimming pool!

Or so I thought.

That night, having sat in the office the whole day doing light work, I started feeling feverish again. My temperature was up, my back ached.

After a while, I felt discomfort in -- of all places -- my shoulders.

It soon developed into full-blown pain. Excruciating pain. I lied down in bed, tossing and turning and writhing in pain.

I took some Panadol but the pain refused to go away.

I didn't realise it when I fell asleep.

By morning, the pain was gone. But I am left wondering what's next? Another day at the office, another potentially excruciating night?

God, when will this ever end? :'(

Viral fever and Bell's palsy

2010-06-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

Bell's palsy. I never knew it existed until I fell victim to the illness recently.

Bell's palsy is characterised by a paralysis in one side of the face. Some people might mistake it for a stroke.

There's no readily available explanation as to what causes Bell's palsy.

But it has something to do with the nerves and some kind of trigger.

In my case, it started with a viral fever that lasted about 3 weeks, one of the worst viral fevers I had ever had in my life.

My body was aching all over. I slept with ice wrapped in towel on my forehead at night and during the day, sometimes I felt so cold that I wore a jacket during mid-day. Outdoors.

My blood pressure dipped to 100/60.

I still went on that Mount Kinabalu trip, hoping to get whatever I could from the assignment. I was supposed to climb the mountain with a group of breast cancer survivors.

But, no go. I had to cut short my trip because my condition worsened.

It was a very long journey that day from Mesilau Nature Park to KK and finally to KL.

Then last week, the fever subsided. I was happy. I thought I was on the road to recovery.

I was wrong. One morning, I woke up, brushed my teeth and discovered I could not gargle properly. I just could not hold the water in my mouth.

I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was a little droopy on the right.

I also discovered I couldn't close my right eyelid or purse or pucker my lips. The muscles in the right side of my face had gone 'lazy'.

I panicked! I thought I had a minor stroke!

Got my friend Nurris to send me to hospital.

An extra challenge came in the form of my kids: I was taking care of them all by myself. Their mother had gone to Mecca while my entire family were away in Kota Bharu for a wedding.

I packed my stuff and the kids' stuff in anticipation of getting hospitalized.

Fortunately, a specialist determined that it wasn't stroke and need not be hospitalized. He performed a series of simple tests on the muscles of my body and decided only the right side of my face was affected.

He said the virus from the fever was still in my body and had begun attacking my nervous system.

He gave me some steroids and I was to see him again in a week's time.

I went home having to deal with not having the use of half of my face.

There was no pain but it's amazing how, when God takes away the use of just half of your face, certain things you take for granted like eating, drinking and talking become such a chore.

Tears welled up in my eyes when I ate, partly because of the amount of effort I actually expended and partly because I felt so pathetic (the 'why me?' question).

When drinking, my drink dripped right through my lips.

When facing people, I was embarrassed by my impaired speech. I couldn't pronounce anything with B, P or M in it.

I was overcome by depression.

Through friends on Facebook, I learnt that my condition is called Bell's palsy.

Most people recover from it, some as early as 10 days after the onset.

But others, like former Canadian prime minister Jean Cheretien, never did. Cheretien acquired Bell's palsy in his youth and his face has stayed that way since.

It's tough having to deal with two major illnesses back-to-back: viral fever and Bell's palsy.

Mom said God wanted to tell me something.

She also said I should count myself lucky that it wasn't anything heavier, like a stroke or a major accident.

She, too, suffered from a debilitating illness once. Between 1979 to 1981, when I was too young to remember, Mom suffered from TB.

Back to my Bell's palsy. Apart from taking the medication, I rested and did several other things.

I applied eye ointment and covered my right eye when I sleep at night to protect the cornea.

I heated the affected side of my face with some beach sand wrapped in cloth.

I practiced my smile every day in the mirror. Lifting my right cheek proved to be one of the heaviest liftings I had done in a while.

When performing the solat, I put in extra effort in pronouncing every word instead of just going through the motion like before.

Lastly, I kept my spirits up by thinking happy thoughts, singing along to favourite songs and watching movies that made me laugh.

It helped a little. After a week, I could move my right facial muscles a little. A few milimetres actually. But it was progress.

At the moment, I'm still treating both the viral fever and Bell's palsy. Hope to recover soon enough. The swimming pool and the sea beckon.

Mount Kinabalu and people from my past

2010-06-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

What is it with Mount Kinabalu and me running into people from my past?

In 2007, I was at Kinabalu Park in Kundasang, at the foot of the mountain, for a media familiarization trip. We stayed overnight at the complex. Just overnight.

And that night, during dinner, I noticed a familiar face at the next table. A Chinese girl. She noticed me too.

I walked over and asked, "What on earth are you doing here?!"

She said she was there with her family and they were going to climb the mountain the next day.

Those were the first exchanges of words we had had after so many years. I had known her during my early working years. We became close. But somehow, during the course of the friendship, things turned sour. We stopped talking.

So, even though we both worked in KL, we had to bump into each other in -- of all places -- Mount Kinabalu in Sabah.

The other day, I was at the mountain again for another assignment.

This time with a group of climbers representing Pride Foundation, a breast cancer awareness NGO.

Not everyone in the group were cancer survivors. Some were officials and friends of the NGO. And not everyone in the group were women, obviously. Apart from myself, there were three other male climbers.

I noticed one guy named Suhairy. Quiet fella. Didn't get to speak to him until much later during dinner at Mesilau Nature Resort. That too, because we were seated at the same table.

He told me he worked with Plus and shared stories about his wife and kids. My impression of him: nice guy, a happy family man who could still find time to do what he liked doing: mountain climbing.

That night as I was about to sleep, a thought suddenly came to me: I knew another Suhairy from my uni days and he, too, loved mountain climbing. I wonder if this is the same guy.

The next morning, due to a change in my schedule, I had literally just a few seconds to establish if this guy was indeed whom I thought he was. The questions came thick and fast.

"Suhairy, you didn't happen to study in UIA the last time, did you?"

"Yes I did."

"Class of 96-2000?"

"Yeah.."

"Human Sciences?"

"Yeah.."

"And they used to call you Joko."

"(chuckles) Yeah."

"Omg. You're Haizah's husband!" I gasped quietly.

"Err, yeah?"

"You don't recognize me? We met once many many years ago at the UIA Matric Centre."

At that point, he took another good look at me and blurted, "Oh, you're THAT Ridzwan."

We have a history. To put it plainly, his wife was my ex-gf.

I knew Haizah when we both were studying in Forms 4 and 5 in Kolej Islam Sultan Alam Shah. We liked each other. I made a gigantic raya and hand delivered it to her because it would not fit in the mailbox.

We continued seeing each other through high school, matriculation and the first few years of uni.

When we finally broke up, it was a tearful one. They say you never forget your first love. It's true.

By then, I had already known about this other person in her life.

I never hear from her again after that.

But now I'm completely over the whole thing. In fact, I was actually a little excited to meet the husband, and to be able to guess, based on what I see in him, that they've had a good marriage with two kids.

I would have loved to stick around for breakfast that morning but my transport was waiting for me.

I volunteered for this assignment. I felt very strongly that I should go. Now I know why.

Breathing from both sides

2010-04-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Today I learnt to breathe from my left side for freestyle swimming.

I had been breathing from my right side all along, and was getting the hang of the breathing technique taught by Bee the last time.

I was now able to breathe in a controlled manner, and to relax or hasten my swim as desired.

So Lee thought I should try the other side.

It felt awkward at first because I was so used to turning my body to the right. But after a while, it felt ok.

I was then able to alternate my breathing: right, left, right and so on.

Lee said swimmers in long distance competition breathe from both sides of their body. If they just use one side, they're bound to hurt their neck.

Breathing technique

2010-03-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the pool with a slight fever sustained from last week's trip to Paris.

I really did not feel like swimming. All I wanted to do was go home, make hot Milo and curl up in bed.

But I went anyway and guess what, I came out of it feeling BETTER, not worse.

Sometimes you should listen to your body but other times it is best not to give in to its whining.

Interestingly, coach Lee was also down with fever today.

So it wasn't him who was teaching but his wife Bee.

I told her I was recovering from a fever and let's not push me too hard today.

She got me to do only freestyle swimming.

My stroke was all wrong. It was as though I had not been swimming for months!

One thing I had been struggling with when it comes to freestyle is my breathing. I always run out of breath! I don't understand. I go to the gym regularly.

No matter how much I try to relax, I never can.

Bee taught me the breathing technique that she uses. Essentially, you inhale, hold your breath and only start blowing when you're about to surface.

I tried that and found it to be less taxing than my usual breathing technique.

So I learnt something new today. But I'll need regular practice until it becomes second nature.

Table Topics scare me

2010-03-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

The scariest part of a Toastmasters meeting to me is Table Topics.

Table Topics is a segment in every Toastmasters meeting whereby people volunteer to come up to the front and speak off-the-cuff for two minutes on a given topic.

It teaches you to think on your feet.

What's scary about it is not that your mind might draw a blank. That rarely happens. The scary thing about Table Topics is that it might just expose your innermost thoughts.

If you are racist, for example, or you have a problem with the boss or are obsessed with sex or, for women, you think all men are useless pigs, those things might come out during your Table Topic speech.

You may not say them out right, but people get the drift from you anyway.

Which is why, we should be mindful of what we think about most of the time.

First taste of skin diving

2010-02-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

One of the things I would eventually like to take up in swimming is skin diving. It's an extreme sport involving holding your breath for minutes on end and achieving great depth, times and distances underwater without using scuba. And today, I got my first taste of the activity at the Panasonic pool in Shah Alam.

Instructor Dolphin Lee asked me to swim underwater across the pool on a single breath. That's a distance of 17m.

I couldn't do it at first. My swimming wasn't streamlined and I had to come up for air at halfway point. It was pathetic.

Then he showed me how he would do it. I picked up pointers from his swimming style and my streamlining improved but I still needed that bit of extra push to touch the wall at the other end.

Whereas Lee made it look so effortless.

After a few more failed attempts, Lee finally gave me the tip I needed: hyperventilating.

Hyperventilating is a common trick employed by skin divers. Essentially, you trick your brain into thinking that it does not need oxygen by using a series of quick and deep breaths. Three breaths will do.

But Lee was hesitant to teach me this because of the danger. Hyperventilating may cause you to blackout underwater.

The worst part is there's no bodily sensation whatsoever to warn you of an impending blackout.

I heard of one case at the UKM pool many years ago which I thought sounded very familiar. A man went swimming and as was his usual routine, he went to the deep end of the pool, hold his breath and sit at the bottom of the pool.

Usually, he would come up after a while. But not that day. A few swimmers swam past him and were impressed at how long the guy could stay underwater.

But when they got closer, they saw blood coming out of his nose. He was already dead.

Which is why, they say never skin dive alone.

But then again, as with any useful skill, it will be rewarding once you master it. Lee had shown many times before that he could hold his breath for more than three minutes using this technique.

For me, there could be no better time to give it a try. I took three quick sips of air, then began my descent.

At halfway point, I felt fine. At three-quarter point, still ok. I thought, wow this really works!

I finally managed to swim across the pool on a single breath!

In fact, I finished the swim with some to spare. Or so my brain was led to think.

My Name Is Khan

2010-02-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

I don't normally watch Hindi movies but My Name Is Khan is an exception.

Something about the movie drew me towards it when it began showing in cinemas a week ago.

It was a line. I had heard "My name is Khan and I'm not a terrorist" from a few friends on Facebook and it piqued my curiosity.

I thought it was a comedy in the mould of Harold and Kumar Goes To Guantanamo Bay and I love comedies. Also, friends said the movie played to packed cinemas so I thought it must be good.

So, Friday, off we went to see My Name Is Khan -- me and YT who, like me, had heard good things about the movie.

We didn't even plan to watch a movie that night. We had just finished playing pool when she suggested maybe we could go see a movie.

We went without knowing what it was about, who was in it and where the setting was.

It turned out to be a hugely pleasant surprise!

My Name Is Khan star Bollywood megastars Shahrukh Khan and Kajol and is directed by Karan Johar.

It is bilingual (English/Hindi) and set in San Francisco, California before, during and after 9/11.

Shahrukh plays a Muslim man who suffers from autism while Kajol plays his Hindu love interest.

I remember the pair from their brilliant performances in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

It is nice to see Shahrukh play a Muslim this time around. He can be seen early on in the movie saying good words, prostrating in prayer and having an honest-to-goodness character.

His acting makes it look cool to be Muslim all over again.

So that was the first pleasant surprise. The second was the name of the character. Shahrukh plays this kind-hearted fella named Rizwan Khan.

So throughout the movie you could hear Rizwan this, Rizwan that, my name is Rizwan and I'm not a terrorist.

Never had I had my name mentioned so many times in a movie before and in such a good way! I left the cinema feeling one inch taller. :)

I judge the effectiveness of a movie by whether it left me with anything to ponder on long after the credits have stopped rolling.

In the case of My Name Is Khan, there are two scenes. One is when Rizwan is traveling and on the bus with him is a Muslim couple.

When the bus stops, he is seen checking the time for Zuhur prayer.

When his fellow traveler says you shouldn't pray now, you should consider there are many non-Muslims around, Rizwan simply says, "prayers should be based not on people, but on belief" and proceeds to solat in full view of the other passengers.

This is something I have to work on.

The other scene is when his mother teaches a young Rizwan that the world is divided into two types of people: good people who do good things, and bad people who do bad things.

Nothing else matters.

The butterfly effect

2010-02-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting the hang of the butterfly stroke.

Of the four swimming techniques, the butterfly is the most difficult to master.

It takes a combination of elegance, coordination and explosive power.

My instructor Dolphin Lee said it took him six months to get his butterfly right.

But, said Lee, once you're able to get it right, it will be most rewarding. While the breaststroke is known as the most relaxing style and the freestyle as the fastest, the butterfly has a reputation as the sexiest swimming style out there, especially for men.

A swimmer looks majestic soaring above the water with his arms spread wide. In terms of what it does to your body, a butterfly swimmer also tends to bulk up in the shoulder area.

"Nanti ramai perempuan minat oo.." Lee kept telling me.

That was good enough a reason for me.

So, November last year, I began learning the butterfly from Lee.

The first thing you must learn is something called dolphin kick (not invented by Dolphin Lee). It involves kicking both legs while they are closely together.

And it's not just about a kick. The rest of your body too -- your arms, your torso -- need to be flexible so that you move through the water in a streamlined, elegant manner, like a dolphin.

It was SO difficult to do!

Instead of a dolphin, I must've looked like an ulat bulu trying to wade its way through water.

After a few weeks, we moved to the next phase of the training -- the arms.

This is the part that most people don't get to see -- what happens with the arms underwater. So what does the swimmer do with his arms? Well, he draws a quick gigantic heart shape.

This, combined with the dolphin kick, are what propels the swimmer to sort of fly above the water.

The arm movement proved to be most taxing on the body, because you simply cannot do it like a pondan. You need to be powerful and committed.

The good news is with enough practice, it gets easier as the shoulder muscles get progressively bigger.

In my case, after so many months of training, yes it does feel easier now to lunge above the water.

Funnily enough, I hated the butterfly in the beginning but now I like it. It is easier than even the freestyle.

I have always wanted to do this!

2009-12-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

Jumping off a jetty and swimming in the sea! And I finally got to do it! Sunday at the tail end of the Sipadan trip!

So I was in Sipadan last week for diving. Five days 4 nights, 3-4 dives each day until I got sick of looking at sharks and turtles hehe.

Got to see the school of barracudas at Barracuda Point. On our second attempt. They're huge-ass man, like 2m long each. And there were hundreds of them. I had never seen so many barracudas in my life.

I got very close to them, almost at arm's length. Dunno if that was a good idea. They're predators.

But I did get attacked by a trigger fish during another dive. That was a first. But I did not panic. I was blissfully unaware of everything. My instructor Cyrena told me later. She was behind me and saw the thing going after my fins.

Sipadan was also the first time I tried drift diving. There were mild currents at some of the sites we went.

Because of the currents, it was also the first time I puked after surfacing from a dive.

But interesting tho the dives were, the thing that I took home from this trip was the last day, when we were sitting around at the jetty doing nothing (since you can't dive 24 hours prior to flying).

Suddenly our friend Alyssa said, "Hey let's go swimming!"

The sea was calm.

I thought hey, splendid idea!

So me, Alyssa and her brother Hannan along with Pua and Fauzy, jumped into the water from the jetty.

We did all kinds of styles. Awkward ones too -- Bruce Lee kicks, backflips, somersault. It really was a Sea Games event. Yeah it's called un-synchronised diving haha.

I loved how the water felt. The sun was bright but the water was cool.

Then Alyssa said perhaps we should jump from the top of the jetty -- the deck. That's like 3m above the sea. I thought, whoa.

Earlier this year, I was in Perhentian and I remember one evening standing alone at the jetty looking out to the sea below, wondering if I would ever have the courage to jump.

I was afraid then. Because I didn't know how to tread water.

But for this Sipadan trip, things were different. I was a new person. I had overcome my fear of water.

Alyssa, Hannan and I decided we must do this. We really were like tiga budak kampung. So we took a few steps back, ran towards the sea and leapt high in the air while screaming at the top of our lungs. There was a good few seconds of 'air time' before we hit the water with a huge splash. And then emerged with a big smile.

I had never had so much fun in my life! :D

Yet another breakthrough

2009-12-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

Today, while practicing for an upcoming diving trip to Sipadan (woo-hoo!) I managed another breakthrough, this time for scuba diving.

I learnt to breathe indefinitely with the mask off.

Before today, that was the single most hated thing that I had for scuba diving. Why did I hate it? Becos for the most part, your nose is safely covered under the mask and when you take your mask off, your nose gets exposed and you are prone to sucking water in through your nose.

Do you have any idea how painful that can be, having water rushing into your sinus?

In fact, I went taste of this unpleasant experience early on in diving. Last year while practicing for my first Panasonic marine conservation assignment (practice incidentally was at the same Shah Alam pool), our instructor made us perform a number of skills, one of which was to take off our mask for a few seconds, replace it and clear water from it.

All of us newbies struggled with it. Nobody could do it.

I think it hit me hardest; becos of that one failed skill, I had doubts about my ability to survive diving in the sea and was contemplating pulling out of the assignment. Luckily I did not give in to that fear.

So how did I manage it this time? I decided to believe what the text book says: that it is easy to breathe with the mask off (in the book, they even have a picture of a guy doing that). Pinching my nose at first, I slowly let go of it and started to breathe in a controlled manner. It worked!

Dolphin Lee, my instructor for today, instructed me to swim with the mask off from one end of the pool to the other. That's 50m.

It was a 'wow' moment when I finished that manouevre.

Muslim former Swedish ambassador dies

2009-12-01T00:51:00.000-08:00

I found this while reading on Islam in Sweden.

Muhammad Knut Bernström, former diplomat and translator of the Quran into the Swedish language, passed away recently on October 21, just a day shy of his 90th birthday.

Bernström was Swedish ambassador to Venezuela from 1963-1969, Spain (1973-1976) and Morocco (1976-1983. As a diplomat, he had also worked in France, Soviet Union, United States, Brazil and Colombia.

He converted to Islam in 1986 and took the name Muhammad.

His passions were languages, cultures and human rights issues.

Bernström was also a Muslim scholar. Over a period of ten years, he completed the monumental, self-imposed task of interpreting the Quran from classical Arabic into Swedish.

May Allah have mercy on his soul.

Another breakthrough

2009-11-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

I was at the pool early today, so I took the opportunity to try out a waterproof pouch that Dolphin had shown me some time back.

The pouch allows you to bring your phone with you into the pool. It works even with touchscreen phones.

I was curious to know if it would work with my iPhone. I slipped my phone inside and it did!

So I wasted no more time. I jumped into the pool for the first time with my iPhone. Here's what I discovered:

1. It works above water, yes, but as soon as you dunk the thing in, the iPhone's touchscreen refused to work. At all. I was hoping to snap some underwater photos and do a mobile upload to Facebook, but couldn't.

All the other buttons -- the Home button, volume control, etc -- work fine.

So if your phone has physical buttons for the camera, you should be able to take underwater shots.

2. You can receive calls and hear the caller's voice -- even underwater! But you can't answer. Well you can, but all the person at the other end will hear will be blub blub.

3. You can listen to music while underwater.

Look out for the full review in NST Wednesday next week in Thingamajiggy.

Apart from that, today I made another breakthrough in swimming: I learnt to do the flip. You know, the manouevre that competition swimmers do when they want to change directions at the end of a lap.

The first step is to blow through your nose while flipping. Very important! Oherwise, water will shoot straight into your sinus when you are face up underwater.

I was so happy to have learnt that, that I did the manouevre again and again!

The biggest shock of this year

2009-10-12T03:05:00.000-07:00

I want to remember this moment.

They say you learn about a person's character during moments of stress.

My brother Aswad turns out to be an abusive and emotionally unstable character.

When in argument, he doesn't know how to handle himself.

Talk to him in private and you can be sure he'll bring it out online in no time.

You cannot be safe with this guy.

It all started two weeks ago when we had a chat over teh tarik. He shared with me his recent 'adventure'.

He wanted to put it on his blog. I said not to. He would be embarrassing himself.

I said certain things should remain private. It's just common sense. He agreed.

I thought that was it but the very next day, he did exactly the thing we both had agreed he shouldn't do. He blogged.

As a friend, I was furious! This fu***r is 36 years old and he cannot even protect himself from himself!

I decided I had had enough of this guy's antics. I knew it was going to be unpleasant but I had to tell him off.

I acted swiftly. Gave him a phone number belonging to a shrink. Told him in no uncertain term to deal with his problem "like a man".

And what did he do? He responded by writing a nasty, hit-below-the-belt note about me on FB. Dragged my kids and parents into it. Saying things about me on FB which I can’t defend myself to because he blocked me.

The fact that I had been a loyal friend didn't matter at all to him. That I listened to him when he was sad with his munchkin problems, defended him when people said bad things about him.

Bila dia sakit, aku hantar pegi hospital, bawak pegi beli tongkat.

Introduced him to my friends as my buddy.

All these things didn't matter at all.

So I tried to help. All I did was told him to deal with his problem. But he bit my hand. Big time.

Now he's completely out of control, out of his mind, and hell bent on shaming me online.

This has been the biggest shock of this year. Dia nie rupanya orang gila, cuma aku je yang tak tau.

So this is it for our friendship. Cukuplah. I do not befriend crazy people. If he needs help, he knows where to go.

What's nice about this year's birthday?

2009-10-08T01:08:00.000-07:00

Answer: I'm on my way to obliterate my fear of water.

The day before yesterday, I had my first official swimming lesson at the Panasonic sports complex.

Swimming lesson? But you're a diver, you say.

Well, that may be so but really, swimming and diving are two different animals. There are plenty of divers out there who can't swim. They feel secure in their diving gear, but without it, well, they can swim a little but not very well.

I thought that wasn't right.

Which was what Tuesday's lesson was all about.

Coach Dolphin Lee made us swim breaststroke, a bit of freestyle swimming and corrected our kicks and strokes.

But the highlight of the evening was when he took us to the deep end of the pool -- and told us to jump!

"Get onto the numbered platform and jump," he said.

You mean, jump as in... JUMP? Into the water?

Yes lah.

My girlfriend, who was taking the lesson with me, and I hesitated.

"You go first," she said.

Fuck!

I got onto the platform. Mulled over it.

Coach was already waiting in the water.

"Ok, one, two, three -- jump!" said Lee.

Nothing happened. I was staring at the clear water through my goggles, still mulling over it.

I will come back right up, right? I asked Lee for some assurance.

Some kids sitting nearby started laughing at me.

Fuck, kids laughing at a grown up man. I have no way out of this!

So. Secured my arms over my chest, looked straight ahead and took one step forward like in diving's giant stride. Splash!!!

Bubbles everywhere. Reached the bottom of the pool in an instant. Kicked a little. Got back to the surface in no time, with a smile on me face.

Yes! I did it!

And for some reasons, water treading feels a lot easier after you have overcome that fear of jumping.

After a few more jumps, I had pretty much overcame my fear for the deep end of the pool. Can't wait to jump again next week. Hee.

Happy Birthday to me.

We could be together

2009-10-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend sent me this Debbie Gibson video recently.

Debbie Gibson is a late-80s, early-90s teen pop icon who wrote, produced and performed her own songs.

I haven't heard that song for a long time, and only remember the chorus.

If you said "Jump", I'd say "How high?"
If you said "Run" I'd run and fly
Just for the chance
Just for the moment should moment pass us by
And if you ask once I'll tell you twice
I'll ignore the world's advise
If we could be together for a while

That video just made my day. Girlfriend and I are both in our thirties, and this just made us feel all teeny and carefree all over again. ^_^

Never mind all those photos I saw on the Net.

I am now a certified scuba diver

2009-08-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

I look like an idiot in this photo but yes, I have completed my PADI Open Water Scuba Diver course! Last weekend in Redang!

Went with instructors Dolphin Lee and Shaiful, along with four other students Wei Ling, Khafiah, Mr Yong and Rose Yasmin.

The youngest in the group was 16 years old while the oldest was 60. I guess you could say ours was a diver(se) group.

We did four dives altogether, the last of which was a boat dive at the Bahagia shipwreck about 10 minutes from our resort (15m deep).

Unlike last year when I went for that DSD thing in Perhentian and thought I was going to die, my confidence level this time around was at an all-time high.

Swimming through the ship's toilet without having to pay 30 sen.

Alamak, dah jauh dari toilet baru terasa nak buang air.

Checking on my buddy, Wei Ling. You ok, buddy?

She's ok.

Shiny happy people.

Good news all around as everyone in our group was able to perform the required skills.

Next step for me is Advanced Open Water. And swimming. I wanna get good at this.

I got married today!

2009-08-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

Friends were utterly shocked when I put on my Facebook status update last night: Ridzwan A. Rahim is getting married tomorrow!

Adding to the controversy was a FB friend who claimed to be the person taking the plunge with me.

Of course, it wasn't at all what my friends thought it was. I wasn't getting MARRIED. I was just getting my scuba diver license done.

So what's with that marriage thing? Allow me to explain.

A month ago, it occured to me just how much my encounter with scuba diving has been something like a love affair. Consider the following:

1. Last year when I had my first taste of the activity, via discovery scuba dive (DSD), it was like a very memorable fling.

2. Since that first experience, and now that i knew it could be done, I kept coming back to the island for more. So it was becoming like a relationship. You're having fun. You know that whenever you want 'it', it's there. But you're not yet willing to commit.

3. Then, about a month ago, I bought a bunch of diving equipment -- mask, wetsuit, booties, fins. The first sign that I was taking this thing seriously. At that stage, I was getting engaged.

4. Today, I began my confined water scuba course. This will be followed by an open water course in two weeks' time which, if completed as planned, will make me a certified scuba diver. This is marriage. I'm saying my till death do us part.

I shared this observation a few weeks ago in Perhentian, with Ariel, a writer from Virtual Malaysia along with Meena from The Sun and my instructor Simon from Universal Diver.

So when Ariel saw what I wrote on my FB, she knew exactly what I was talking about. And it was true that she was taking the plunge -- joining me in the confined water course!

A year ago, I was convinced that I would never take up scuba diving. At the end of the Panasonic marine conservation project, I was just happy to come back alive, because that was a big achivement in itself.

I was convinced I would never take up scuba diving because I thought it would just take too much of my time and money.

So what made me change my mind? Three things:

1. Overcoming fear
I like it that this activity teaches me to overcome my fear. I used to be scared of large bodies of water. Not anymore.

Over time, I hope to also take up advanced open water scuba diving, rescue diving and ultimately swimming and lifesaving. I want to save people's life.

2. That magical sight
One of the sights during that first dive in Perhentian that I will carry with me for the rest of my life is when Charlie my intructor told me to stay on the sea floor while she went to help another newbie.

After waiting for a while, I looked up and saw Charlie descending towards me. The sun was shining behind her and she was surrounded by thousands of small fish. Definitely not something you can get at Aquaria KLCC.

3. Scuba diving is also where I met some of the most beatiful and confident women. Unfortunately, most of them are married.

Michael Jackson makes me smile

2009-07-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

So Michael Jackson was buried yesterday (early this morning Malaysian time). Finally, we could say our farewell. Finally, it was time to let go.

Yeah of course I like his songs. I grew up listening to them. I especially like 'Man In The Mirror'.

I'm gonna make a change, for once in my life
It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right

But it's not just his songs that make me smile: Michael Jackson was also a big part of how I ended up working at NST today. I am not kidding!

In 1996, I was a freshie at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. As with most first-year students, I was looking for a scholarship.

One day, I chanced upon a walk-in interview for an NST scholarship.

I gave it a try. One guy interviewed me. Two things I remember from that interview: first, the guy was all smiling, all laidback and made me feel at ease.

Second, I was the only computer science student who applied for that scholarship.

Soon afterwards, I was invited for a second interview at Balai Berita. This was when it got interesting.

There were five NST executives in the room. Five pairs of eyes looking at me.

One guy, who was sitting in the middle, said nothing throughout the interview. All he did was stare.

I was pretty sure that I didn't impress any of them.

To make matters worse, towards the end of the interview I was asked a current issues question.

"Apa dia event yang sedang berlaku sekarang nie yang orang betul-betul nak tahu, kalau boleh setiap minit kita nak tahu perkembangannya?" asked one of the execs (the interview was conducted in both English and BM).

I thought for a while, then suddenly remembered something and blurted out:

"Michael Jackson nak datang Malaysia ke?"

I must've seem so earnest, because immediately all of them, including the middle guy who said nothing, burst out laughing!

There was nothing wrong with that answer, because Michael Jackson really was coming to Malaysia. But it wasn't the answer they were looking for.

"American presidential election lah. Apalah kamu nie," said the exec, still laughing.

I think when I left the room, they were still laughing.

And I thought well that was it -- I just blew my chances at getting an NST scholarship.

Which is why, it was indeed a pleasant surprise to learn some time later that I actually got it!

Thirteen years down the road, I am now working at the best job I can imagine.

Somehow, I felt Michael Jackson had a hand in it.

Varsiti Kita

2009-07-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

Found this video on YouTube today. Varsiti Kita is one of two official songs of my alma mater, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

For most students, the orientation week is perhaps the only time in their life that they get to listen to this song performed live.

It is a soothing experience. Just before the choir starts singing, there is pin-drop silence and calmness descends on the fresh-faced Dectar assembly.

As the performance gets under way, your spirit gets lifted when the group reaches crescendo and sings, "Bagai tanda perjuangan kita".

After the performance, you are left with this inexplicable warm and fuzzy feeling that makes you want to weep and hug your lecturers.

When I enrolled in UKM in 1996, Varsiti Kita was about the only part of the orientation week that I enjoyed. Becos the rest of the week is chaotic and stressful. Bangun pukul 2-3 pagi la, pakai baju busuk la. Benci, BENCI!

Varsiti Kita trivia: Did you know that the multiracial choir group used the word taqwa (God-consciousness) long before Saudara Lim Guan Eng started using it in his speeches?

Woman, handicapped in both arms and both legs, finds her man, makes six children

2009-06-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

This is a story that I wrote for NST's Life & Times. It appeared in March 2006.

My editor Joan and I were extremely proud of this story, because it made a difference in this woman's life. Ever since the story came out, Aminah has gone on a trip to Makkah to perform the umrah, courtesy of an NST reader. She has also had her life story published in a book.

Although my editor and I made a difference in her life, she in turn made a difference in countless other people's life by inspiring them.

Raising six children as a single parent is no mean feat. Now try doing the same but without hands and feet. Gutsy Aminah Md Tahir tells her story to RIDZWAN A. RAHIM.

It's a love story that you won't hear every day. Boy meets girl. They fall in love but here's the punchline: the woman is handicapped. She has no hands or feet. Not only that, they're from different religious backgrounds. She's Muslim and he a Hindu.

She keeps questioning his choice, given her disability but he persists. The feeling between them grows stronger. Eventually, they get married and live happily... for a while.

After 12 years of marriage, tragedy strikes. He dies. The woman is forced to raise their children - all six of them - alone and with much difficulty. But she never complains.

This is the story of Aminah Md Tahir.

Born in Segamat in 1935, Aminah received a traditional Islamic education, attending Segamat Arabic School until Standard Three. It was at the school that she overcame her handicap and taught herself to write in Jawi.

Her right leg is more like a stump while her left leg, which is slightly longer, has something that looks like a foot, and barely at that.

When she walks, she limps.

The youngest of four siblings and the only one in the family who is handicapped, Aminah spent most of her time at home helping with chores. She did not have many friends. At 15, she enrolled in a cooking school in Johor Baru for two years. She was in her 20s when she met Abdul Rashid Abdullah @ Maniam Ramanair, a Segamat hospital attendant of Malayalee origin.

Aminah was teaching the Quran to children of the workers at the hospital where Rashid was working. Before long, they fell in love.

"Kenapa nak kawan dengan saya? Saya nie orang cacat. Ramai lagi perempuan lain. (Why do you want to be friends with me? I'm a handicap. There are so many other girls.)," she would ask him. But those words only fell on deaf ears.

So what exactly attracted him to her?

Aminah was shy about details about their courtship, but judging from old photos of her, she was a good-looking woman.

"Dah jodoh (It was fated)," was all she would say.

Maniam converted to Islam and they married in 1963. She was 24 at the time.

He proved to be a kind and gentle husband and they had no problems at home. Aminah was to a large extent independent and she did everything on her own - washing, ironing, cooking, sewing.

She was proud of the fact that she never sent any of her husband's clothes to the dhobi.

However, 12 years of marital bliss came to an end when one day, somebody broke the news to Aminah that Rashid had died after an asthma attack while in Johor Baru. He was buried at Mahmudiah Muslim Cemetery in the city.

After her husband's death, Aminah supported her family by working as a maid for a family friend.

Every day, she would walk barefoot along a gravel road to the house. It was just 1km away but for somebody with her disability, the journey took half an hour.

There, Aminah did the usual housework and also took care of the family's two children. She was paid about RM150 a month. She gained the trust of her employer and was favoured for being a meticulous and honest worker.

Aminah's children, all of whom are normal, are grown up now and successful in their own right.

Two of her children, Abdul Rahman and Suseela, are hoteliers while sons Samsuddin and Abdul Razak are self-employed.

Another daughter Shakila is a housewife. Jaleel, the youngest in the family, is head of PR and media for H2O Sports Sdn Bhd, the organiser of F1 Powerboat in Malaysia.

But when they were growing up, the family was poor. Chicken for dinner was a luxury, and there were times when they had to survive on rice eaten with salt water.

Aminah broke down while recalling how she had to walk to town or travel alone to Johor Baru and Kuala Lumpur to seek assistance from the Government.

Her relatives and employer had been kind though. They chipped in by donating rice, sugar and other essential goods, and new clothes for the children when it was Hari Raya.

But asking for help wasn't something she liked to do.

Jaleel, who described his mother as fiercely independent, recalled one incident where she really blew her top after finding out that he had been eating at a friend's house.

"She was very angry. When I got home, she beat me with a belt and pinched me with both her arms. She hated it if people thought she could not feed her own children," said Jaleel.

He said his mother would always insist that her children be neatly dressed all the time.

Even if you're poor, you don't have to let the whole world know, she would tell them. And what he said after that contained some clues about how his mother managed to get her man.

"Mak is a stickler for nice clothing and she'll try to get herself new clothes as often as possible. She used to tell me that being pretty is important, and also the way you carry yourself.

"You also need to have a pure heart. My mother doesn't like to beat around the bush. She's always truthful about how she feels and expects the same from others. Kalau suka, cakap suka (If you like me, tell me so)," said Jaleel.

After meeting this remarkable woman, I can only say, "Yes, suka."

TF Animated Elite Guard Bumblebee

2009-05-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

I got myself this Bumblebee action figure last week.

Um, it's for work. Really. I reviewed this for Thingamajiggy. The story came out today.

As with all my previous Transformers reviews, the story came with Comic Life panels. Here are the ones that came out today.

I'm beginning to really like TF Animated figures. Their vehicle modes especially are excellent. They are firm, the parts hold together nicely and the tyres roll very well.

Here's a video of the conversion plus a short stop-motion animation.

In today's political climate, cooler heads must prevail

2009-05-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

Before:

After:

New Media Lesson #1

2009-04-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Three simple steps to shooting video with your handphone:

1. Decide what you want to shoot.
2. Press capture.
3. Hold still.

Don't pan, don't zoom. Just hold still. Somehow this makes your video look professional.

Eija's getting the hang of FB

2009-04-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

My friend Eija, who had been resisting joining Facebook since time immemorial, finally succumbed to it a few weeks ago. While nothing much happened since, yesterday I saw that she was getting the hang of updating her status. This was what she wrote as of April 21:

It's a goddamn novel.

Wrote a whole story on me iPhone

2009-04-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to hand in a Thingamajiggy piece on Monday. Told the office I would send it by email. I didn't actually have Internet access at home but I was testing a P1 Wimax product so I thought I could use that. Unfortunately, I learnt that same morning that my area was not covered by the P1 service.

In desperation, I turned to my iPhone for help. I wrote a whole Thingamajiggy piece on my phone that day and mailed it via 3G to the office.

My verdict: It can be done of course, this writing stories on the iPhone. At the same time however I don't want this to be a regular thing. It's quite painful, you see; my eyes were really affected after squinting for a few hours on the small screen.

So all things considered, the iPhone is a nice computer to have lying around the house but for real work, you still need a full-fledged computer.

Bukit Gantang by-election

2009-04-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

Came back yesterday from the Bukit Gantang by-election. Completely exhausted; my colleague Izwan and I were there for more than a week starting from the nomination day. I also camped for two straight days under the sun in front of the Kamunting detention centre waiting for the release of the ISA 13.

But it was a fruitful outing. We learnt all sorts of things about applying New Media in reporting. Izwan's getting good at video editing. I got to try Coverit Live for the first time in the field.

So what exactly did we learn? That's for next time. Btw, this post was created on my iPhone.

Transformers Animated Soundwave review

2009-02-17T23:31:00.000-08:00

I did a review of a Transformers recently for Thingamajiggy: Soundwave from the TF Animated series.

In addition to the print version, I also made a conversion video and a Comic Life piece of the toy.

But I didn't know where to put the Comic Life panels on the NST website, so here they are:

Here's the video, btw:

Arab man who speaks Kelantanese

2009-01-26T21:30:00.000-08:00

I remember as a child, reading an article where the writer used a phrase, macam orang Arab cakap Kelantan, to describe something completely out of this world.

But today on YouTube, we have a living specimen of an Arab who speaks Kelantanese. And he does not come across as bizarre at all. Watch this video.

Isn't he a natural?

Ustaz Mohamad Abdul Aziz is a shariah graduate from Al-Azhar University who came to teach in Malaysia in 2003.

He began learning Kelantanese from the many Malaysian students in Al-Azhar and spent 10 years perfecting his accent.

The first word he learnt was kecek (speak).

To master a language, says Mohamad, you need to mix with the people and eat their food. And watch P. Ramlee movies.

In the video, the ustaz also comments on the Mat Rempit menace in Kota Bharu. "Saya tengok macam tak ccayo. Pelek-pelek la diaorang buat. Kalu kat sini mana boleh buat gitu, kena tangkap ppoleh lah. (I couldn't believe my eyes. They did all sorts of stunts. You can't do those things here, the police will come after you.)"

Annual Dinner & Awards Night 2008

2008-12-24T22:32:00.000-08:00

I was in the organising committee of this year's NST Annual Dinner & Awards Night, which took place on a Friday two weeks ago.

Was in charge of sponsorship for lucky draw prizes and preparing multimedia presentations for the awards.

It was my first time working on a company annual dinner so I struggled a great deal. I hate organising! Any kind of organising! The only reason I agreed to the job was because I wanted to see if I could do it.

I expected a lot of work, and that was exactly what I got. I actually fell sick on the last day, the day of the event.

But I must say, I was happy with the outcome.

In particular, with how I managed to pull off the multimedia presentations despite tremendous pressure and time constraint. Expectation was high; I was to move to a new multimedia-related department next year and so I considered this my first assignment. Thankfully, I received plenty of support from Leslie, Fred, Kenneth and Agnetha (my MacBook). It would not have been possible without you guys!

I think pretty much everyone had a good time that night.

To top it all off, I won an award that night: for Best Lifestyle Story of the Year for a story that I wrote on telemarketing (a separate committee decided on the awards). Yes, I worked hard on that story and so the recognition was very much appreciated.

I have yet to decide what to do with the RM1,000 prize money.

3D paper modelling: Starship Enterprise

2008-11-29T09:22:00.000-08:00

3D paper modelling is something that I do on and off. It's a great way to de-stress.

Recently while going through my archive, I stumbled on this video clip that shows me building Starship Enterprise using templates obtained from the Internet.

The video must've been recorded around 2004-2005 when I was still with Computimes.

Shot this video during office hours. Ah, the good old days. I played a lot during those days and got away with pretty much anything as long as it was 'for work'.

I made this video because we were doing a cover on video editing. I remember we ran a few pages of stuff on the subject, including hardware and software requirement, tips and tricks, step-by-step guide... and on top of that, this video.

But I also remember thinking how on Earth was I gonna share this video with our readers? YouTube wasn't around yet at the time.

Allah covers for you

2008-11-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

In Islam, if you have been guilty of a sin and nobody knows about it, do not uncover the veil that Allah has placed over your sin.

This is the principle behind a question I found at Islam Online. A user by the name M has asked:

"A person has committed zina (fornication) outside of marriage and does not intend to marry the woman. The person considers the action a grave mistake and has repented by asking Allah for forgiveness, resolving never to perform the act again, and feeling remorse for the action.

"The sin is still concealed and only known to the two involved. Does the person need to be given 100 lashes in order to complete the repentance and gain forgiveness from Allah?"

The answer is no.

In answering the question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Canada, states:

"If you have been guilty of a sin and Allah has covered for you, then don’t uncover the veil that Allah has placed over your sin.

"Rather, ask forgiveness of Him and repent to Him sincerely, for He is, above all, all-Compassionate, All-Merciful, All-Forgiving. Allah says, 'I am most assuredly Most Forgiving to those who repent, cherish faith and do good works.' (Ta-ha: 82)"

According to Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, it is wrong to say that sin of adultery is expiated and forgiven only if the person were stoned to death or given hundred lashes.

In fact, such punishments are extreme measures that can only be applied in extremely rare cases; they are exceptions that require stringent measures to execute.

Moreover, they are simply not applicable in non-Muslim countries or societies where such laws are not enforced. "You must therefore take it to your heart that Allah’s forgiveness is not at all conditional on submitting yourself to such punishments," he writes.

So what should you do? Take the following necessary steps towards true and sincere repentance:

1. Feel deep remorse for your sin.
2. Refrain from the sin as well as from all the leads and circumstances that led you to the same in the first place.
3. Resolve firmly in your mind never to do it again.
4. Finally, do whatever good you can to expiate for your sin. Allah says, "Verily good deeds wipe out bad deeds." (Hud: 114).

Once you have followed these steps, have the confidence that your sin has been blotted out. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, "A person who has repented (sincerely) is like one who has never sinned."

Budak Kelantan

2008-11-12T04:58:00.000-08:00

So Julia and I went to see Budak Kelantan the other day.

It was her idea. Really. She saw the poster many weeks before and ever since then had been eagerly anticipating the movie. Even called me budak Kelantan in the days leading up to our outing.

Why the interest in this local flick? It was because she was learning BM. Once she demonstrated her knowledge by reading an article from Hai magazine and explaining to me what it was about. What Que Haidar said, what Fazura said and so on. I was impressed!

But then again, Budak Kelantan is not your typical Malay movie. It's a feature-length film shot entirely in Dolby Digital Kelantanese.

So I guess therein lies the novelty.

We planned weeks in advance to see the movie.

But even the best laid plans can go awry. For some reasons, my friend decided to get tickets to one of the earlier shows that day. I, on my part, managed to get myself stuck after-hours at the office and ended up being very late to the movie. Like half an hour late.

"You missed a rape scene," Julia whispered as I joined her, huffing and puffing after walking briskly from NST to Mid Valley.

The hall was half-full (me being optimistic) and my educated guess would put the audience at 83 percent Kelantanese and 1 percent German. The rest consisted of people whose Kelantanese bf/gf/spouse made them come.

And yes, it was quite a novelty to watch an entire movie in Kelantanese. Even I learnt a few new words that day, one of which was kachik. Which means getting high on drugs.

Thank God for the BM and English subtitles. Otherwise someone like me would have been left to my own devices as to what kachik really means.

I like the Buchek character. He is always excusing himself to go for prayers. "Kawe tupae semayae buleh?"

I like the antagonist too, Jaha. He is so evil, he might as well have been called Jahak.

Overall, we both liked the movie except maybe for the jerky camera work, which was overused, and the abrupt ending.

And Julia was furious about the reference to Amerika during the rape scene. "What are they saying, that Westerners condone rape??"

First accident with the Swift

2008-10-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

Had my first accident yesterday with the Suzuki Swift.

It was morning. I was going to a makan at a relative's house in Bangi.

When I got there, there were already several cars parked in front of the house.

I found an empty spot and went over to parallel park.

There was another car in front facing me, waiting to pass. So I thought I'd just do a quick job of this.

I stopped, engaged the reverse gear and pressed the accelerator. And suddenly, "Prak!"

I looked in the rear view mirror and my heart sank: there was another car behind me with the driver not looking very pleased.

I had no idea when he sneaked up behind me and so had absent-mindedly reversed into his nose.

So I parked my car and got out to inspect the damages. Fortunately, they were minor: my car wasn't damaged although I managed to break the other guy's bumper and grille (it was a Satria).

We exchanged phone numbers and I promised to pay for the repair.

Was I upset? Of course, but not overly so. I believe in life you cannot design a system that does not allow for people to make mistakes.

Funny thing about the incident was that I was listening to ABBA's When All Is Said And Done when it happened.

Standing calmly at the crossroads, no desire to run
There's no hurry anymore when all is said and done

OMG, I can levitate!

2008-10-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

It's 4am and I just woke up from a lucid dream.

I dreamt that I have figured out how to levitate.

I was in my parents home and was standing up. I lifted one leg and then something said I should try lifting the other as well.

This I did. Slowly. And I discovered that my butt did not come crashing to the ground.

I thought, "whoa, this is new." I held both legs up with my arms and started floating around the house in this position.

I moved at walking pace and was waist-high up in the air and therefore was able to glide over some of the furniture, which was really cool.

But I couldn't just float in one spot. I learnt that I needed to carry some speed in order to maintain the levitation. It was sort of like riding a bike where the only way to stay upright is to have some forward movement.

At one point, I saw my brother Dudin and demo-ed to him my latest trick. He just said, "well, that's cool", got into his Toyota Wish and drove off.

I got back on terra firma after a while and was able to repeat the levitation feat a few more times. At will.

The thing is, I did not feel overly ecstatic about my newfound ability. Instead, what I felt was that I had tapped into an unused part of the human mind, the floating part.

That there was some sort of scientific explanation for how levitation is possible.

And that anyone can learn this if they want to.

This must be the best birthday I've ever had

2008-10-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

Because:

1. My friends and I tried something different this year: karaoke.
2. Went to see Mamma Mia with someone I REALLY like. It was fun.
3. Someone sent me flowers on my birthday.

So a bunch of us -- me, Aswad, Gerald, Christian and Julia along with Julia's housemate Jena -- decided to do something different this year: we went to karaoke at Red Box in Low Yat.

I organised everything, which was a big deal as I had never organised anything in my life. I was always happy to go with other people's plans.

Everyone had a great time singing their favourite kind of music.

Julia in fact gave me a 'preview' of her singing earlier in the day when she called and sang Happy Birthday over the phone -- a repeat of last year's performance. ;)

Jena, who is a Muslim from China, turned out to be an excellent singer, belting out a couple of Chinese songs. We were looking at the video while she sang, and it really looked as though it was the person in the video that was singing.

But, nothing beat this: I stunned everyone including myself when I sang Micheal Buble's Everything without the aid of lyrics.

We stayed at Red Box past midnight. Everyone went home happy.

I love my friends.

On top of that karaoke thing, a nameless person gave me a bouquet of a dozen white roses and made cupcakes for me on my birthday.

I had never received cupcakes or flowers on my birthday so thank you, whoever she is. That was a big deal.

It reminded me of an Agnetha Faltskog song, If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind.

I would bring you flowers in the morning
Wild roses as the sun begins to shine
Sweet perfume in tiny jeweled caskets
If I thought you'd ever change your mind

I would take you where the music's sweetest
And feed you winter fruits and summer wine
Show you things you've only read in storybooks
If I thought you'd ever change your mind

I would bring you happiness
Wrapped up in a box and tied with a yellow bow
I would bring you summer rain and rainbow skies to make your garden grow
And in the winter snow my songs would keep you from the cold

Activators Bumblebee review

2008-10-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

Saw this at Toys R Us while shopping for Zuhayr's birthday the other day, and decided to get one -- for myself!

Yes, yes, you've probably heard it before: I plan to feature this in Thingamajiggy. It's not for fun, it's work. Right.

Yes it's true. In fact, the review already came out. Last week in NST on the first day of Hari Raya.

Activators is a new line of Transformers that boasts a spring-loaded one-touch conversion. Sort of like an idiot-proof Automorph. For just RM34.90, you get a Transformer that, at the touch of a button, pops into a robot from its alt mode. And at Toys R Us, you have a choice of between Bumblebee, Ratchet and (that big green guy, whattisname) Bulkhead.

As was the case with my previous Bumblebee review, poor Moussa the Moose has yet again been subjected to abuse but it's a crime I can't refuse.

OMG, shall we try that again?

Poor Moussa the Moose
Has yet again been subjected to abuse
It's a crime I can't refuse!

My review of the Suzuki Swift

2008-09-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Erm, rasanya malas la pulak nak tulih a proper review of the car, so why don't I do a swift job of it and just let these Comic Life panels explain to you my take on the car.

I've had the car for one and a half month now. Honestly, it has been blissful.

OMG, I can scuba dive!

2008-08-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Yes it's true: I went scuba diving last week. Me - the one who is afraid of large bodies of water.

The dive was for an assignment. I went with Panasonic Malaysia to see their marine conservation project in Pulau Perhentian.

Prior to the trip, Panasonic offered a crash course on scuba diving at their sports complex in Shah Alam, to all the newbies who were going.

I went, and by the end of the few hours course, I had doubts whether I could do it.

Not because I couldn't swim, no. My fear centred around whether I would be able to surface quickly enough should anything go wrong underwater.

The answer is no, I can't. You're not supposed to race to the surface when scuba diving, it's dangerous. It will do things to your body.

I had visions of sea water rushing through my mouth and nose and into my lungs, complete with all the terrifying sounds of death.

In my mind, the fear was real. "I don't know if I can do this," I told my best friend Julia before the trip. "If I don't come back from the trip, tell my kids I love them," I said, half-jokingly.

Sweet Julia played down the concern and told me to focus on the fish.

The day before the trip, I thought of pulling out but couldn't find any credible excuse.

So I went ahead with it. There were about 20-30 people in the entourage, including the media, Panasonic officials, volunteer divers and some Japanese people who were shooting videos and still pictures of the project.

We arrived in Perhentian Wednesday morning and with our luggages still not checked in, they took us on our first dive.

We were divided into two groups: divers and DSD divers. That's Discovery Scuba Diving, a term not commonly known outside the scuba diving fraternity. Everyone seems to think you need a certificate in order to dive. You don't. DSD is a course for those just getting acquainted with the activity.

Like proper divers, DSD divers get a certificate from PADI, the international scuba diving organisation. However, they are not to go on a dive without an instructor (sometimes called dive master).

For the trip, each dive master took care of two or three media people. I was in a group with Amir from Harian Metro and Nurul from Bernama and our dive master was a girl from Belgium known only as Charlie.

At the beach, clad in our diving gear and clumsy as we were, Charlie refreshed us on the basic skills: how to breathe, how to flush water from inside our mask and our mouth, how to equalise the air pressure inside our ears, how to walk with the flippers on (walking backwards, as it turned out, is the easiest), how to communicate.

Yet I was still afraid. Fortunately, I was good at following instructions. Every single thing that Charlie told me to do, I did.

If there were just two things about underwater survival that I took home from that trip, they would be these:

1. Don't panic
2. Breathe

So then Charlie took us from the shore to the deeper water and we began our descent.

Before long, I felt water trickling into my mask. I told Charlie about what I thought was my 'predicament' and signalled that I wanted to surface. She refused my request. Instead, she told me to flush the water out with the skill I just learnt. This I did, and the water was gone and suddenly, everything was fine.

From then onwards, at no point during that dive and the subsequent two more that I felt my life was in danger.

Yes, I did gulp some sea water. All of us did. But a bit of discomfort was okay.

We were underwater for up to 45 minutes at a time, which was incredible for someone who didn't think it could be done before the trip.

Me, I was elated at having overcome my fears. I was enjoying every minute of the dive!

We went as deep as 10 metres. I saw all those magical looking corals and many types of fish, most of which I couldn't recognise except for the distinctive parrotfish, angelfish and Nemo.

I also saw a clam at work (as opposed to Calm At Work).

You know, you will never fully appreciate the kind treasures we have in our marine backyards unless you dive. I believe that now.

After three dives, the only thing I couldn't do was navigation. I find that I get disoriented easily when underwater. I couldn't figure out where the beach was and where the deeper sea was, where the rock was and where the shark was, and was completely dependent on my dive master to move around.

If she had left me on the seabed, I would probably still be there now, waiting patiently while breathing like Darth Vader.

My car, my first ever car!

2008-08-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

So my Suzuki Swift finally arrived on Wednesday. Red coloured. Modified it to look like a Swift Sport.

It costs me about RM70,000. Swifts used to cost about RM90,000 but ever since Suzuki started assembling the car in Pekan, Pahang, the price has gone down considerably.

A lot more people can now afford a Swift. Alhamdulillah.

It's one hell of a cute looking car but not in a girly sort of way like, say, Toyota Yaris.

Me, what sold me to this car was the look and the handling. And the price.

All in all, it's the closest you can get to a MINI Cooper if you are on a budget.

I was actually quite happy with taking public transportation. I had been doing that for the nine years that I had been working.

But public transportation in Malaysia is fine if it's you alone. If you have kids, you'll want a set of wheels.

I had been borrowing my parents' and siblings' cars ever since the divorce. It got to a point when my second son Zuai would ask me each time we were going out, "So which car are you taking this time, daddy?"

That really bugged me and so, once I finished paying off my cards, and with a little bit of money that I made from cartooning, I decided it was high time I bought my own car.

But which car? Now that was not a swift decision.

I wanted it to be a good buy, just like Agnetha and my Crumpler. I wanted something similar to what other people have but just slightly nicer.

I looked at the options in the market. Boy, there were many. After a while, I decided on the Swift.

I also splurged a bit on the accessories: body kit, seats, window tint. I don't want to reveal the exact figure here. My mom might be reading this. She would not be amused. That kind of money is better off spent on going to Makkah to perform the haj, she would say.

Anyway, I will come up with a proper review of the car plus more photos once I come back from Perhentian next week.

Am I going bonkers?

2008-07-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Am I going bonkers? I am 31, single and I don't believe in relationships anymore.

The other day, I had a lunchtime conversation with a friend and the topic was knowing what you know today, what would you do differently in your 20s?

Without hesitation, I said I would put less emphasis on having a girlfriend. That's right. I would delay finding myself a steady and see how long I could keep that up.

But why would anyone want to do that?

I dunno. But I have been having these weird ideas in my head lately. Ideas that say marriage is the only real solution and that sex is best done within its confines and that perhaps delayed gratification is not such a bad thing after all.

Ideas that suggest maybe what I want for myself is to stay single and commit only when the right person comes along. Commit, as in marry. No long-drawn courtships, no trying out different girlfriends, nothing.

Ideas that say maybe, instead of excitement, what I want for myself is peace of mind and stability.

OMG, I've become a boring person. How did it get to this?

I'm not sure. But I do remember years ago when I got divorced, one of the things I set out wanting to understand was the intricacies of the relationship between man and woman.

Why, for example, does God prohibit free mingling between the sexes?

I prayed. I read. I reflected and I spoke to like-minded friends.

My education is by no means complete but these are what I have learnt:

1. Words of love are not to be thrown around freely.
2. The nights that you spend with that special person before marriage are better off spent after marriage.
3. There is no such thing as only one person is right for you.
4. We are put on this Earth for a purpose and, compared to that bigger purpose, 'love' is way insignificant.

Which is why, when I look at today's young couples, I tell myself this is not for me.

So yes, if I were in my 20s, I would postpone having a girlfriend.

Open letter to the Malaysian government

2008-07-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

Today they arrested Anwar outside his home before he was due to appear at the police station.

Oh my God, it's 1998 all over again. I never thought this day would come.

This is a sad.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Islamica Magazine. Some 40 leading Muslim religious scholars and leaders from around the world has signed an open letter, urging the Malaysian government to guarantee the civil rights of whom they refer to as brother Anwar Ibrahim.

Among the signatories is Yusuf Islam.

"We, the undersigned, believe the honorable brother Datuk Seri Dr Anwar Ibrahim to be of the highest ethical and moral integrity, a devout Muslim and a devoted father and husband," says the letter.

"We have no wish to interfere in the internal politics of Malaysia, or in civil and criminal accusations within the country, which we reiterate are ultimately the business only of the Malaysian state and people. However, the spectacle, ten years go, of our respected brother Datuk Seri Dr Anwar Ibrahim sitting patiently in court after having been personally and illegally beaten up by then Police Chief of Malaysia is still fresh within our minds as a travesty of justice and impartiality under the law of a leading Muslim country."

"We are all still ashamed of that image, which will ever be indelibly engraved in our memories."

Elsewhere, the letter makes references to Musa Hasan and Gani Patail:

"..we feel morally obliged to also state our deep concern about the prospects of true justice for Anwar Ibrahim in the current authorities in the police and prosecution departments (whose leadership was personally involved in Dr Anwar Ibrahim's previous unjust accusations) without deliberate, careful, impartial and independent political oversight."

And finally, it states Islam's approach regarding false accusations:

"In fact, under Islamic Law, accusations of this magnitude that are not substantiated by four eye-witnesses of impeccable character (such as did not occur neither with these accusations nor with the previous ones) incur severe legal punishment only for the accusers themselves.

The full letter can be read here.

Do I believe in the accusation? No. And my reason for not believing centres around one thing:

The timing is way too convenient.

It was true in 1998 and it is true now.

A little Muslim kid at heart

2008-06-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a little known fact about me: I enjoy listening to Islamic kiddie songs.

It began with Mirwana, the band founded by singer Yasin Sulaiman, who in the early 90s was a junior at Maahad Hamidiah religious school in Kajang.

Mirwana had a string of albums while Yasin was there. The first album was rather crude but I could see that their music increased in sophistication with each new album.

My favourite was Mirwana Generations, a collection of songs with beautiful harmony and backed by synthesizer-infused music which was unheard of for a nasyid album in those days.

These days, I listen a lot to I Look, I See, an album featuring the pupils of London's Islamia Primary School which is best known for its founder and chairman Yusuf Islam.

I have the album on my iPod and also listen to the songs while driving, either alone or with my kids.

I thought I was unique. Turned out I wasn't. Recently I discovered that my colleague and good friend Aswad also enjoys listening to Islamic kiddie songs!

Incidentally, he also counts I Look, I See as his favourite and we both like this particular song, Your Mother, about according respect to your mother.

Your Mother

Who should I give my love to
My respect and my honour to
Who should I pay good mind to
After Allah and Rasulullah
Comes your mother
Who next? Your mother
Who next? Your mother
And then your father

'Cos who used to hold you
And clean you and clothe you
Who used to feed you
And always be with you
When you were sick stay up all night
Holding you tight
That's right, no other
My mother

Who should I take good care of
Giving all my love
Who should I think the most of
After Allah and Rasulullah
Comes your mother
Who next? Your mother
Who next? Your mother
And then your father

'Cos who used to hear you
Before you could talk
Who used to hold you
Before you could walk
And when you fell who'd pick you up
Clean your cut
No one but your mother
My mother

Who should I stay right close to
Listen most to
Never say no to
After Allah and Rasulullah
Comes your mother
Who next? Your mother
Who next? Your mother
And then your father

'Cos who used to hug you
And buy you new clothes
Comb your hair and
Blow your nose
And when you cried who wiped your tears
Knows your fears
Who really cares
My mother

Say Alhamdulillah
Thank you Allah
Thank you Allah for my mother

Notice the repetition of "your mother" in the song. That's because in Islam, the position of the mother in the eyes of her sons and daughters should be three times higher than that of the father. In a famous incident, a man came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and asked to whom should he show kindness. The Prophet replied your mother and he repeated this another two times before saying your father.

Chris got married

2008-05-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris got married yesterday. I know because I was at his wedding.

This is Chris Chong, I must add. I have quite a number of Chrises for my friend. Chris Chong, Christian K, Christian Berg. They tend to Chris Cross so I do have to be specific sometimes.

The Chris who got married was formerly of Star's In-Tech. Back when we were both in tech journalism, we shared a common interest in Macs. I think we still do.

I went to Macworld San Francisco with him in 2005. It was a trip that I will remember for a very long time.

Chris met and fell in love with Elaine Ho fairly recently, I was told. May last year he proposed to her on Mount Kinabalu. Nothing new there, I'm sure many guys have proposed on top of Mount Kinabalu before. But what was weird about their story is how they never ran into each other despite:

1. living just 5 minutes from each other in PJ
2. Elaine being a friend of Chris' brother since they were kids
3. and a few other mutual friends/connections that I am now unable to tell you because they forgot to give me the Press kit on the wedding day.

One day, one of these mutual friends asked him out for a game of basketball. There, he met this particular girl who plays basketball against the guys. "I must have her!" he said and things moved pretty quickly from there.

What struck me about the marriage is that it seems to be a coming together of two very happy individuals. While I can't say I know Elaine, I have known Chris for quite some time as a journalist and there was never a moment when life was just going through the motions. He was always trying new things, giving 100 percent at work and was always enthusiastic about something.

Chris if you are reading this, I remember clearly what it was like when we first set foot at Macworld SF: I wanted to dance in front of Moscone Centre and kiss the ground beneath my feet for the opportunity that God had given me. Well, today it's more or less the same feeling. I'm very happy for the two of you and that is an understatement.

Could it be the same guy?

2008-05-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote a story in NST about gyms, specifically on the techniques they use to make you sign up and then to make it incredibly difficult for you to terminate your membership.

As part of my research, I went undercover. Posing as a potential customer looking to 'bulk up', I visited two gyms in KL, one of which was California Fitness in Mid Valley.

At CF, the fitness consultant/counsellor/salesman (choose one) who attended to me was a guy who only wanted to be known as Amed. Very pleasant guy. He showed me around the gym, answered my questions and later as expected tried to close the sale of the membership. But he was a professional; at no point did I sense that I was being coerced into signing up.

We have not reached the punch line yet. Bear with me.

Anyway, where Amed was a professional, I was also smart so I left without signing up.

The next day -- and here's where it gets interesting because this part never came out in the newspaper article -- I saw a program on TV1 called Tilawah Interaktif.

Guess who I saw hosting the program? I almost fell out of my chair. It was the guy I met the previous day at the gym!

I thought, why would the host of a religious program sell gym memberships? On the one hand, you try to get people to read the Quran properly. On the other, you try to convince people into parting with their future income, often for no good reason. These goals do not go hand-in-hand!

I tried to rationalise it. Maybe he needed the extra money. Maybe RTM does not pay enough so he figured he could put his interpersonal skills to some use. After all, ini bukannya jual dadah.

So was it or was it not Amed? It was a real VK Lingam moment for me. The guy looked like Amed, sounded like Amed, but I wasn't sure if it was 100 percent Amed.

So I waited until the end credit and learnt that the host's name was Hafiz Hamidun, a former singer with nasyid group, Unic.

Aha, so that must be it -- 'Amed' must've come from the Hamidun part of his name! I was extremely pleased by how smart I was.

I decided to call the guy up to expose him for the fake that he was. We reporters love this sort of thing. Twice I tried. The first time, I tried to shock him by asking for Hafiz Hamidun. It didn't work. He just said salah nombor lah.

The second time, I did it properly. I asked for Amed, introduced myself and then asked my question. I got my answer. No, he's NOT Hafiz Hamidun. In fact, he works full-time at CF and sounded quite amused by the whole thing.

Really ah?

Sometimes we tend to believe what we want to believe.

Steve Jobs' Stanford speech

2008-04-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is the transcript of Steve Jobs' commencement address delivered at Stanford University in June 2005. It was timely, because a few months after he delivered the speech, I was asking God for a source of inspiration while contemplating going for a divorce. This was one of the few answers that He gave.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Oh that's original.

2008-04-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

Now you've heard of the Nigerian e-mail scam. Maybe you have received the e-mail before. Well yesterday, I received the following e-mail.

See what got my attention was the subject. I actually opened the e-mail and read it before realising that oh God, this is one of those e-mails.

From: (e-mail withheld)
Subject: Assalamualaikum

From Mrs. Almirah Ahmed.
Center De Santa Bethesda Hospital
83BP: 1730 Gbejromede
Cotonou Benin Republic

Assalamualaikum,

It is with tears and pains that I write this mail from my sick bed in a hospital. I believe you have never met such a condition before. My name is Mrs.Almira Ahmed, widow to late Mr. Khalid Ahmed, former owner of PETROLEUM AND GAS Company, here in Benin Republic. I am 68 years old, suffering from long time cancer of the breast. From all indications my condition is really deteriorating and it's quite obvious that I won't live more than 2 months according to my doctors. This is because the cancer stage has gotten to a very bad stage. I don't want your pity me, but I need your trust.

My late husband died in December 2003 in a plane crash in Benin.

During the period of our marriage we couldn't produce any child. My late husband was very wealthy and after his death, I inherited all his business and wealth. The doctor has advised me that I will not live for more than 2 months, so I have now decided to spread all my wealth, to contribute mainly to the development of charity in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Am sorry if you are embarrassed by my mail.

I found your e-mail address as a real Child of God for over a month now that I have been investigating about you to know if really you are working according to the direction of God so after all my investigation I am convince, and I have decided to contact you, but if for any reason you find this mail offensive, you can ignore it and please accept my apology before my late husband died he was a major oil tycoon, in Benin and deposited the sum of US$3 Million (Three Million Dollars only) in Asia years ago, That's all I have left now, I need your help to collect this funds and distribute it yourself to charity homes.So that when I die my soul will rest in peace.

The funds will be entirely in hands and management hope God gives you the wisdom to touch very many lives that is my main concern. 20% of this fund will be for your time and effort, while 80% goes to charity. Please you can reply with this email (e-mail withheld).

God bless you.
Mrs.Almira Ahmed

The thing is, I got the e-mail hours after I updated my Facebook profile to include Islam as one of my interests. You say, could there be a connection? Maybe. I have been visiting Islam Online a lot. There are probably bots on my PC or the Internet tracking my browsing habits.

Maybe it was the work of a Muslim bot.

And guess what? Something similar happened on my phone - TODAY. I sent out a joke SMS. I fully support an immediate n smooth power transfer in UMNO. Pak Lah shud step down as PM... and Najib shud be made Opposition Leader! Muahahahaha!

The next thing I knew, I got an SMS from 26000: Dapatkan berita tempatan terkini termasuk berita politik, perniagaan, ekonomi, dadada..

How to marry the wrong person

2008-04-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

1. Expect the other person to change after you're married.
Never marry potential. If you can't be happy with the person the way he or she is now, don't get married. When it comes to the other person's spirituality, character, personal hygiene, communication skills and habits, make sure you can live with these as they are now.

2. Focus on chemistry rather than character.
Chemistry ignites the fire, but good character keeps it burning. Beware of the "I'm in love" syndrome. Even when the attraction is there, have you carefully checked out this person's character?

Here are four character traits to definitely check for:

Humility: Does this person believe that doing the right thing is more important than personal comfort? Do I want to be more like this person? Would I like my child to turn out like him or her?

Kindness: Does this person enjoy giving pleasure to other people? How does s/he treat people s/he doesn't have to be nice to? Does s/he do volunteer work? Give charity?

Responsibility: Can I depend on this person to do what s/he says s/he's going to do?

Happiness: Does this person like himself? Does s/he enjoy life? Is s/he emotionally stable? Ask yourself: Do I want to be more like this person? Do I want to have a child with this person? Would I like my child to turn out like him or her?

3. Pick someone who does not share your life goals.
There are three basic ways we connect with another person: chemistry and compatibility, share common interests and share common life goal. Make sure you share the deeper level of connection that sharing life goals provides.

After marriage, the two of you will either grow together or grow apart. To avoid growing apart, you must figure out what you're living for - while you're single - and then find someone who has come to the same conclusion as you. This is the true definition of a soul mate. A soul mate is a goal mate - two people who ultimately share the same understanding of life's purpose and therefore share the same priorities, values and goals.

4. Pay no attention to that deeper emotional connection.
Do I respect and admire this person? It is not the same as being impressed by the person. We are impressed by a Mercedes; we do not respect someone because they own one. You should look for qualities such as creativity, loyalty and determination.

5. Choose someone with whom you do not feel emotionally safe.
Ask yourself the following questions: Do I feel calm, peaceful and relaxed with this person? Can I fully express myself with this person? Does this person make me feel good about myself?

Do you have a really close friend who does make you feel this way? Make sure the person you marry makes you feel the same way!

Are you afraid of this person in any way? You should not feel you need to monitor what you say because you are afraid of how the other person will view it. If you're afraid to express your feelings and opinions openly, there's a problem with the relationship.

Another aspect of feeling safe is that you do not feel the other person is trying to control you. Controlling behaviors are a sign of an abusive person. There's a big difference between controlling and making suggestions. A suggestion is made for your benefit; a control statement is made for the other person's benefit.

6. Do not put everything on the table.
Anything that bothers you about the relationship must be brought up for discussion. Bringing up the uncomfortable stuff is the only way to evaluate how well the two of you communicate, negotiate, and work together. Over the course of a lifetime, difficulties will inevitably arise. You need to know now, before making a commitment, whether you resolve your differences and find compromises that work for both of you.

Never be afraid to let the person know what bothers you. This is also a way for you to test how vulnerable you can be with this person. If you can't be vulnerable, then you can't be intimate. The two go hand in hand.

7. Use the marriage to escape from personal problems and unhappiness.
If you are unhappy and single, you'll probably be unhappy and married, too. Marriage does not fix personal, psychological and emotional problems. If anything, marriage will exacerbate them. If you are not happy with yourself and your life, take responsibility to fix it now while you are single. You'll feel better, and your future spouse will thank you.

8. Pick someone who is involved in a triangle.
A person who is involved in a triangle is who is emotionally dependent on someone or something else while trying to develop another relationship. A classic example is someone who hasn't separated from his or her parents.

People can also be triangulated with things as well, such as work, drugs, Internet, hobbies, sports or money. Be careful that you and your partner are free of triangles. The person caught in the triangle cannot be fully emotionally available to you. You will not be their number one priority. And that's no basis for a marriage.

Post-election commentary? Not quite

2008-04-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ever since March 9 dawned on our beloved Malaysia, everyone and their mother has been blogging about the 12th General Election results, so I'm not gonna do the same. First of all, it'll be a waste of my time and your time. Second, I'm already late to the party anyway. But I have been enjoying reading other people's blogs, like this posting on my friend Ismail's blog. And this one too. Hilarious!

Eamon Sullivan, world's fastest swimmer

2008-03-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Last week, Australia's Eamon Sullivan broke the world record for 50m freestyle swimming.

Four years ago, Sullivan and I were sharing a table at KFC KL Sentral.

Really, I am not making this up. He and two of his team mates, Adam Lucas and Jim Piper were on their way back from the Athens Olympics. They were on a 4-hour transit at KLIA so I guess they came to the city to lepak.

At exactly the same time, Cedric, Wong and I were having our weekly cartoonist meeting at KFC. It was fasting month and we were waiting for buka puasa.

As is normally the case during fasting month, the restaurant was packed with people waiting to buka puasa.

That was when these three young Mat Sallehs approached us and asked if they could share our table. We said sure.

We didn't know who they were but during small talk, Cedric asked "So what do you guys do?" and they said, "Oh, we're swimmers."

Australian Olympic swimmers, no less. We almost fell out of our chairs.

Moral of the story #1: When you meet people, ask what they do. You might be surprised.

I'm sure the swimmers were equally surprised to be sharing a table with a group of Malaysian cartoonists. So we all had a lot to talk about.

Cedric, Wong and I showed them our cartoon works. They... had no cartoon work to show, so they showed us their new Athens 2004 tattoos instead.

Even so, we still wanted to check if they were telling the truth so the next day we googled their names. True enough, they were in the Australian swim team. Although they were not as famous as Ian Thorpe, they were already winning medals at the Commonwealth level.

Sullivan, at 18, was 'just' a junior member of the star-studded Australian team but today he is a leading contender for gold at this year's Olympics.

Moral of the story #2: You can eat KFC and still be Olympic champion.

The story doesn't end there. Unbeknownst to us, it was raining cats and dogs outside.

By the time I got home to Kajang (my wife and I were living with my parents at the time), I discovered that the house was flooded! Water was almost knee-deep inside the house!

Books and carpets were soaked and some of the furnitures were damaged. Cars had to be parked elsewhere.

I was reviewing a new iMac at the time. Luckily nothing bad happened to it.

We spent the whole night pushing muddy water out of the house, which was nothing compared to some other families in Kajang whom we heard had to be evacuated to the dewan orang ramai that night.

Like the chance meeting with the swimmers, it wasn't something that happens every day in Kajang.

Moral of the story #3: If you bump into Australian Olympic swimmers and it's raining, get the hell out of there and rush home. Because chances are, your house is about to get flooded.

Paris je t'aime

2008-03-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Saw a movie called Paris je t'aime Friday night. It's a French movie that consists of 18 short films (about 5 minutes each) featuring famous international directors and actors.

The title has the word Paris in it and it has the word love in it so I guess you know more or less what to expect.

Nonono, this has nothing to do with Paris Hilton's sex tape! The 18 short stories revolve around Paris' 20 or so arrondissements (neighbourhoods, from what I understand) and the directors use them as the settings to tell the audience what their idea on the subject of love is.

I mainly wanted to see one particular story about hijab.

So how did it go? Most people in the cinema were couples who must've thought they were in for a lovey-dovey time. Which they were. But they also saw a young woman in a hijab and her grandfather in a skullcap extolling the virtues of covering up. And they were both speaking the Language of Love. And it's a movie that has Hollywood actors in it. It must've been surreal.

Overall however, Paris je t'aime is an entertaining movie. Some funny parts, some sad parts. Some of the stories I didn't quite understand so I'll try to catch it again if I'm permitted by the twists and turns of next week.

Optimus Prime for Syakir

2008-02-23T03:23:00.000-08:00

It was Syakir's birthday the other day and this time, we threw him a party. Just a simple one at McDonald's but I think it really made his day.

And as a gift, I bought him an Optimus Prime toy. It was something that he had always wanted but if you think that I did it for my own benefit, you're absolutely korek-korek-korek also. I bought the thing so that I, too, can play with it.

Besides, I was planning to feature the toy in Thingamajiggy so it's also for work, you know!

Let's get on with that important matter.

My verdict about this toy:

1. Price RM99.90 (at Jusco) is not bad at all. I thought all the Transformers' prices would have inflated like nobody's business by now.

2. Conversion is simple enough that even Syakir could figure it out on his own (and teach me some more!).

3. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of articulation the robot has to offer. The thing looks kinda stiff in brochures.

4. What I don't get however is why they decided to go with a paint job that is a throwback to the original Optimus Prime from the 1980s? Syakir didn't get it too (he also used the word 'throwback' in his statement).

The joys of being a parent

2008-02-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

This is why kids are great to have.

Last weekend, which was a particularly long one, I got the boys to spend some time at my place in PJ.

It was Friday so I brought them to the mosque for Friday prayers. Big mistake. Kids this age can never sit still. Worse still if you have two of them together.

My boys were playing, teasing each other, rolling around, generally being an annoyance to the rest of the congregation who were trying to pray. This was especially true of my three-year-old, Zuhayr.

I was furious but waited until we got home to express my disapproval. Then I called Zuhayr over. I remember as a child, my father would pull me by the ear in this kind of situation. For my son, I decided to go with a scolding and a good -- real good -- spanking.

It was enough to send him on the verge of tears.

Then I sent him off and went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. The next thing I knew, he was fast asleep on the armrest of the sofa like this:

Tiba2 jadi kesian pulak. Really, how can you not go 'awww' when you see something like this?

If you rotate the picture like this, he looks like the son of a koala bear.

New column and this year's Theme

2008-01-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

So we have yet another new year.

Again - and I keep telling this to people every new year - I don't have resolutions. What I have are themes. There are no absolute objectives; all I have to do is be aware of my actions throughout the year so as to conform to the theme that I have chosen myself earlier in the year.

Last year's theme was punctuality. Reeeally difficult, I tell you. There were hits and misses but overall, I think there were more hits than misses. So that's good. Plus, I ended the year on the right note: New Year's Eve, I had a meeting with Cedric about our cartoon book project and I'm happy to report that I managed to be on time, even though I had only 15 minutes to get from NST to Taman Bahagia LRT.

This year, I haven't decided on a theme yet but I think it's gonna be 'relax'. As in I want to be less uptight about things. For example, I'm a perfectionist and it has cost me countless minutes which in turn contributed to my being late for appointments or meeting deadlines.

I also tend to worry unnecessarily about things that might happen in the future. For example, tomorrow I'm going to Las Vegas for a week and already I'm worried about some kind of sin that I'll be committing next week (despite the fact that I'm such a damn nice guy). If life were 'Minority Report', the authorities in Malaysia can arrest me right now. Now I say relax. You know, they say 95 percent of the things we worry about are not gonna happen. The other 5 percent, like death and income tax, are going to happen anyway. So why worry?

I have also just started writing a weekly column in NST called 'Living Outside The Idiot Box'. It's about living without TV. Basically I'm subjecting myself to three whole months of not watching TV and I'm supposed to relate my experience. It's pretty controversial. When I told my friends about the experiment, opinions were divided. Some said, "Dude, I haven't been watching much TV for quite some time now so it's nothing new to me" while others went, "OMG! How am I gonna watch my EPL??".

Quite a few have also pointed out that there are so many ways for me to cheat: DVDs, YouTube, online TV shows. I hope after a month or so, they'll be able to see the column for what it is: a front for me to practice humour writing and stripping (the column comes with a related comic strip). Besides, I'm really not that big into watching TV. I'm not like the guy in the Astro ad. I've got no time!

Alhan Farhanah Mohd Ridzwan

2008-01-03T07:33:00.000-08:00

at age one year-plus.

The week that was

2007-12-15T05:25:00.000-08:00

It's almost the end of my one-week leave. One week! It was all I got. It's not that I didn't have enough annual leave days left, it's just that I'm terrible at planning my leave. It's December. A lot of people have already applied for their Christmas or year-end leave. Someone has to stay back and hold fort, said the editor.

Guess who gets to do the honours? The guy who did not have the foresight to apply for leave before everyone else does, of course. Every year I never manage to use up my annual leave days due to bad planning.

But anyway, what a week it has been! Especially for someone who leads for the most part a boring life:

1. Got my boys to come over and stay with me for 2 days. Cooked nasi goreng for them. They hated it. "Wek... tak sedap!" (It's awful!), said my eldest son Syakir. Kids can be so cruel. Note to self: go easy on the chili boh next time you cook for the kids. That, or have it (the chili boh) handy to smother them with the moment they say awful things about your cooking.

2. Went karting with a girl that I met through work. Waited 6 months for it. She's a music teacher in Bangsar. 26. Petite. Actually had a crush on her once. The day went well. Perfect weather, the rain stopped just in time. Would have been a karting date except that she decided last minute to bring along a guy friend. Bummer. But the fella was also nice to talk to (he's a fellow techie) so that was okay. Overall, fun outing.

3. Had 2 las chicas guapas (pretty girls) over at my place for dinner on Thursday. One from Germany, the other from Finland. Julia and Tiia. They're very good friends of mine.

Tiia's in KL to spend Christmas with her family, who have been living in KL for the past 8 years, while Julia works here with a foreign news agency.

Tiia is a vegetarian, so the challenge was for me to come up with something vegetarian for the dinner. I decided to experiment with vegetarian tom yam. I say experiment becos it's something unheard of in Malaysia.

So I bought all sorts of vegetables plus mushroom and tofu and basically just chucked them into the soup. Didn't turn out very well. It was quite tawar (tasteless). I know now that baby corn, pepper and tofu don't go very well with tom yam.

Good thing I whipped up a quick nasi goreng as backup material, otherwise both women would've ran off to nearby Kayu Nasi Kandar for their dinner.

OMG, I love to dance!

2007-12-08T05:58:00.000-08:00

And I didn't know it until last Friday!

We had our NST dinner and dance thing that Friday night. I went there mainly for the lucky draw. Well, maybe also hoping to chat up a few of the office babes.

I did win something from the lucky draw! Gasp -- what did I win? Cordless phone. Oklah I guess, better than nothing.

And then, they opened the dance floor. I was never into dancing. Like many people, I was afraid of looking stupid. So I just watched from afar the NST people having fun.

One guy literally stood out. My friend Pari from graphics looked smooth with his moves and he was dancing with one of the major babes from newsdesk. Lucky bugger.

But then, to my horror, another friend from graphics just had to basically pull me to the dance floor. I was kicking and screaming in protest! Alright, it wasn't exactly like that. I had always thought that dancing was fun and was ready to make a fool of myself that night. All I needed was someone to invite me. It also helped that they turned the lights down so the whole prospect looked less embarrassing.

I wasn't sure how I looked on the dance floor though. Maybe like a boxer sparring with my partner. Kadang2 rasa macam joget pun ada. Harhar!

But I guess only when you become less conscious about how you look that you can begin to have some real fun. When the heart started pumping hard and the adrenaline started flowing, I couldn't stop anymore. I was dancing and dancing and dancing like the whole thing was on auto-pilot. I was basically dancing the night away!

I really let my hair down that night... or, since I'm a baldy, whatever of it that's left on my head. It was so fun that I was still dancing when I got home at 3am.

The joys of being single

2007-11-07T04:05:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet the past couple weeks, and if you're wondering why, it's because I've been busy living.

First there was this school reunion that we had a few weekends back. I was a student of SMKA Selangor (or Sekolah Menengah Agama Selangor or SMAS, as we like to call our school) from 1989-91 for my Forms 1 to 3.

It was nice to see some of my former schoolmates again after all these years. The girls still looked as good as they were 15 years ago. I was impressed! Apparently, we had a lot of good djinns those days in the school.

(Maybe what I meant was genes, good genes.)

It was also nice to attend the function as a single for a change. Most of the ex-SMASians there were married and they brought along their kids. I like kids and I like family but I also like singlehood. It's exactly where I want to be at the moment.

Afida didn't manage to attend the reunion even though she was back in KL for a while from NZ. She had to be at the UMNO general assembly. Not to deliver a speech this time, I was told, although she was busy running around. Bakal pemimpin negara (future national leader) from the looks of it! Having said that, I do believe there is no shortage of honest, dedicated and professional young people like her among those working with the Opposition too.

And then there was the China Open Badminton Super Series over the weekend. Well ok, watching TV is not exactly 'living', and watching badminton at that. But it's like this: the joys of being single, right? Wong Mew Choo is THE current last word in women's singles. She beat three top Chinese players en route to winning the China Open. One is the current world champion, one Olympic champion and the last one is the current world number 1. And this was in their own backyard and she was trailing in the final game and the Chinese girl was much taller. But she refused to be defeated by all these. Obviously it paid off in the end. US$17,250, to be exact. Phwoar!

I'm still shaking my head nowadays thinking of Mew Choo's feat. Unbelieavable!

And last night, I went to my first ever concert. Yeah, sad, isn't it? Never been to a concert all my life. Anyway, that is now fixed. I went to see James Ingram and Kool and The Gang with my colleague Nurris. Gotta love 80s music!

Come to think of it, maybe last night wasn't exactly my first concert. In 1998, I was at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony and they had a concert towards the end, where they introduced a couple new acts from the Commonwealth countries. You might recognise some of them... people like The Corrs and Donna Lewis (I Love You Always Forever, remember?) and a few others.

Even Raihan was there and I remember watching this funny incident involving a Mat Salleh spectator, who went onstage uninvited, put him arm around Nazrey Johani and attempted to sing along to the Raihan tunes. Nazrey looked shocked from where I was seated. Hehe. But he still managed to finish the song.

What a perfect weekend it was!

2007-10-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

And I'm referring to the weekend of October 20 and 21.

1. It was success all around at the Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day. My friends who organised the event managed to get a full house participation. I finished my 24 pages of comic.
2. Kimi Raikkonen and his Ferrari team provided a most perfect ending to this year's F1 season.

I was previously a McLaren supporter but I switched camps this year. I had been supporting them so many years but with the exception of Hakkinen's world title some time ago, it was to no avail.

Interestingly, just as I swore allegiance to my new team, McLaren improved a lot this year. They had arguably the most reliable car on the grid. They had two of the most talented drivers working for them. They gave both these drivers equal treatment...

and that last bit proved to be their undoing. You can't let teammates fight it out. There has to be a bit of team order. Alonso should have been given preferrential treatment. He came to McLaren having done a swell job at Renault. He deserves some respect.

In the end, McLaren got nothing.

Come to think of it, maybe I was more of a driver supporter. First it was Hakkinen and when he left, Kimi came in just in time to fill the void. So when Kimi switched to Ferrari, I switched accordingly.

All in all, the manner in which Kimi won the championship -- leapfrogging the top two contenders at the very last GP -- is stuff legends are made of. This year's championship will be remembered for a very long time.

Participants at the Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day, as seen from the third floor of Cineleisure Damansara. There are two empty seats in the picture. Can you guess which one is mine?

This year's 24 Hour Comics Day was held at the concourse area of Cineleisure so Cedric and Wong were able to seat us in a circle to form a clock. And the clock 'ticked' every hour from 1 to 24. It was cute and clever at the same time. I'll bet this was something they had dreamt of doing for quite some time!

I went into the challenge with basically the same strategy as last year's: go with an empty mind. No character, no story, no plan whatsoever. Just my pen and a stack of blank paper.

If I could do it last year, I could do it again this year. So I thought.

But I (made the mistake of picking) a subject that I was not familiar with: punctuality. Because of that, I lost the first two hours trying to create a character and to piece together a story out of thin air.

Dinner time came and by then, I was doubtful whether I would be able to finish this year’s 24 hour comic. I had done basically 4 pages, had a character called Punktual Punk, but apart from those, nothing much to show for.

It was pretty scary.

At that point of time however, I realised it was still within me to decide whether I could finish this challenge or not. I decided that yes, I would go all out to finish this year's challenge.

As with many things in life, it takes a decision to finish a 24 hour comic.

It helped that somebody bought me coffee just before midnight (you know who you are!) because after that coffee, everything became clear as to what I had to do. :)

In the end, I got my 24 pages. I wasn't happy with my story (it will not win the Pulitzer prize) but I achieved what I had set out to do.

Here's what I came up with at the event.

Tomorrow is the Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day

2007-10-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

and I will be participating again this year.

What: The Malaysian 24 Hour Comics Day 2007
It's an: international celebration of comics creation. This is the day when cartoonists all over the world take the challenge to create a 24-page comics story, normally months of work, in 24 hours straight.
Date: October 20 - 21, 2007
Time: 12noon Satuday to 12noon Sunday
Venue: Cineleisure Damansara

My friends from Cedko are organising the event. We had a similar event last year where I was also a participant, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of my life.

This year tho, it's even better. We're gonna have this simultaneously with the rest of the world. 16 countries altogether. And Cedko is targeting 50 participants and the latest news is that they have already secured all 50 seats. Now try to get that in your head. 50 people with nothing on their mind but to finish their 24 pages in 24 hours! They're not gonna sleep, they're not gonna bathe. It's gonna be awesome!

I am both excited and nervous about tomorrow. I know more or less what I'm gonna write about but I don't know if I should develop the idea into a more detailed one. Maybe not. I think I'll just go in there with an empty mind. It's more fun that way.

See you at Cineleisure!

Get well soon, Allan

2007-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

It was a real shocker the other day when I learnt that my good friend Allan K met with a road accident.

Nak jadi cerita, this happened just before his birthday. I SMSed him on that day asking how he was celebrating the day. No reply.

Little did I know that he was already in hospital after the cab that he was riding in was involved in an accident with what eyewitnesses said a street racer. It was a head-on collision: the other car went up the divider and went straight for the cab. And I think Allan told me it collected a few other cars as well before coming to a stop.

I went to visit Allan on the third day of Raya at his home in Klang. He looked a lot better than I had expected: his left arm was in a sling and there were bruises on his forehead and shin (it was an open wound before this. God that must've hurt). But I suspect this wasn't telling the whole story. Allan said judging by the condition of the cab after the crash, he considered himself lucky to have survived. The cab driver lost both legs. His 11-year-old son, who was seated in the front passenger seat (yes, there was a kid in there!) was warded next to Allan at the hospital. He was drifting in and out of consciousness and each time he came to, he would scream and then faint again.

And what of the pelumba haram? No idea, but if he really did race, I have nothing else to say than good riddance. I think people who race on public roads have small dicks. They show off on the road to make up for their shortcomings.

So because of that pelumba haram, my friend is now bored at home. Good thing there's Facebook. Well Allan, get well soon okay. Then we can go stalk Rebecca at the Swedish embassy. :P

It was a nice little birthday celebration last nite

2007-10-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

when 5 of us went out to Chili's at BSC for buka puasa.

In this picture: Gerald, Julia, Azira. Partially hidden: Azira's sister Nadia. The glum-looking guy on the right is the birthday boy.

Birthday boy's face finally lights up during this photo op.

This is what some of us had. It's really huge! I couldn't finish mine. Note to self: next time ask for their Happy Meal instead.

My birthday was actually on Sunday but I decided that Sunday was for me to stay home with the kids.

Also, Sunday was race day in Shanghai so it was just a nice excuse to laze around the house watching F1.

I can't remember when was the last time I celebrated my birthday with people other than my family. Usually it's just a quiet affair: we'd go out for makan and that was it.

It has always been a quiet affair because we are quiet people.

But this year was different. On Sunday Julia called and asked "are you free to talk?" and I said yes. Then she and Chris sang the birthday song over the phone. And they did that in public, at a bus station somewhere in KL.

Nobody had ever done that to me so that really made my day.

The next morning at the office, there was this coffeetable book on my desk, 'Living in Finland'. Apparently Joan left it there the week before in anticipation of my birthday.

Maybe becos I was always telling her about my Finnish (girl)friends and she remembered. Anyway, that was a nice gesture on Joan's part, especially since it was also her last week at NST.

And that night at Chili's was really fun. The pictures don't tell the whole story. These people really are a bunch of nice people to hang out with. Too bad Gary couldn't make it. And Chris, cos he went to Perhentian.

To top it all off, after we were done devouring our food, Chili's staff came out marching with a small cake, singing the birthday song. Guess who it was for? God, this was too much already! I waited for them to finish the song and I honestly thought they were gonna go, "happy birthday dear whathisname" becos there was no way they could know my name.

But they did!

Maybe they saw me on Facebook. :P

p.s: on that note, if any of the BSC Chili's staff is reading this, thanks guys!

Traveler's mental notes: Madrid and Granada

2007-09-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I went to Spain the other day for about a week. The first half was to Madrid, for a MINI Cooper assignment; I was to drive the car on the wrong side of the road, come back in one piece and write a review of it before The Star does. The second half I went to Granada to see the Alhambra, something that I had wanted to do since I was a child.

I'm happy to report that mission was accomplished on both counts!

It was a dream assignment because, as I keep telling people, MINI Cooper is the only car I really care about. But Mom encouraged me to go one better: to stay for a few days and go see a bit of Spain. As a student, she used to hitchhike across Spain. She's quite cool that way.

But I was quite anxious -- very anxious, actually -- before the trip. For various reasons that, looking back, seem quite silly now. I wasn't worried about Madrid, I was worried about Granada. For 3 days, I would be left behind by my fellow Malaysians to fend for myself and I had never traveled alone in a foreign country. I was absolutely constipated about where to stay and how to get around, about costs, about getting mugged, about food. I worried about missing my flight and getting stranded without any money. I worried about the fact that the people there don't really speak English.

It would have been a lot easier to just go for the MINI Cooper thing and come back.

But now that I'm back from the trip, I've learnt these things:

1. Getting out of your comfort zone is always good.
2. Even when you don't have a proper plan, things have a way of falling into place.
3. Nice senoritas do pop out of nowhere to offer their assistance.

Madrid

We stayed at Hotel Puerta America. The first thing I did when we arrived at the hotel was to find out about getting around. Good thing we didn't have any agenda for that day, so I had the whole day to explore the city.

Madrid has an elaborate underground train system with about 15 metro lines (I don't remember Stockholm having this many lines) but you can roam freely under the city for just 1e, which is good.

The not so good thing is you have to change trains so many times. I wanted to go to the Atocha Renfe station to buy a train ticket to Granada. From my hotel, I had to change trains 3 times to get there.

(Atocha, as you may recall, was the site of the 2004 train bombing in Madrid which killed 191 people and wounded 2,050.)

Renfe is the company that operates the intercity trains in Spain. Sort of like our KTM. Their train schedule doesn't seem to be fixed, so you have to get the latest schedule before you book. Some trains are direct, some have many stops. Some only travel on weekdays, some only Sunday. I managed to get a ticket to Granada for a Sunday Altaria train but to come back from Granada, there was no train that would help me arrive on time for my flight. So I had to look for another mode of transportation.

The Madrid-Granada train ticket cost me a whopping 59e (about RM283). A bus would've cost just 15e as I later discovered but I wouldn't have it any other way. I simply had to see what the train ride was like.

The language problem was real. I find myself asking people "habla usted ingles?" (do you speak English) all the time. And when they said "noa" I was in trouble, like this one time when I wanted to buy a ticket. Fortunately, a nice senorita popped into the picture. "I can help you translate," she offered.

Another problem in Madrid was food. Of course BMW did their best for the two Muslim journos in our group, but meat was pretty much out of the question. I did however manage to find a Turkish kebab restaurant near our hotel.

(Kebab is fast building a reputation as the staple diet for this Muslim traveler.)

Anyway, this restaurant was located near a hotel called Abba Hotel. Wonder what's the story behind the name.

Went there once for buka puasa (the Turkish restaurant, not Abba Hotel). There was a man there who looked like the owner. He spoke little English, I spoke little Spanish. So the conversation went: muslim food? si, muslim. muslim? si, muslim. muslim. muslim! ah, ramadan! yes, ramadan! err... sahur? open? sahur, si.

Mom later said she didn't think the meat at Turkish restaurants was halal. But I told her I went there in good faith.

MINI Cooper drive

We tested a new model called MINI Cooper Clubman which is coming to Malaysia in March next year. At first blush, there's nothing unusual about the car. It's 24cm longer than the normal MINI so you have more legroom for the backseat passenger. Fine, but the unusual part comes out when you start playing with the doors. This is an asymmetrical animal. The Clubman has an additional 'suicide door' (BMW doesn't like the word suicide door, they call it the Clubdoor) but only on the right hand side of the car.

There were about 70 to 80 journalists from various parts of the world that day, and about 40 cars so each car had two drivers. I partnered Adrian Yap from KLue magazine. We went along some of the best routes we had ever seen, especially the mountain roads of Rascafria where the highest point was 1700m above sea level.

The roads were narrow and twisty. There were quite a number of tight hairpins too. Some of the cliffside roads reminded me of James Bond movies: if you go off the cliff, that's it -- game over.

We encountered a classic car convoy during our drive. This is a 1970s Porsche I think.

We were wondering what this place used to be before it was abandoned.

Adrian really pushed the car, at one point going at 200km/h. I didn't go that fast. Every time I wanted to push the car, the faces of my kids popped into my mind. It would've been different I guess if we were on a track. This was a public road. Sure, there was not much traffic save for a few other cars and groups of cyclists, but I didn't want to push my luck. My kids need me alive.

Granada

The journey to Granada took about 4.5 hours on board that Altaria train. It was off-peak season and the train was empty.

The first thing I noticed when I boarded the train was that it smelled of urine! Turned out that the aseos (toilet) was located right next to the door.

This is the Granada train station. It is smaller than even the one in my hometown Kajang.

I stayed at Macia Plaza (pronounced mathia plafa) which was recommended to me by the reception people at our hotel in Madrid. Paid about 130e for 2 nights for it, which was very expensive. But I wasn't complaining. The hotel is located smack in the middle of Plaza Nueva, arguably one of the most happening places in Granada. It is close to both the Alhambra and the historical village of Albaicin.

There is a shortcut from in front of my hotel straight up to the Alhambra. I loved walking up.

But if I felt lazy, these buses cost just 1 euro. Their small size allows them to ply the narrow streets up the Alhambra and the cobblestoned labyrinth that is Albaicin.

Anyway, this was my reason for visiting Granada: to see the "alambra", the last bastion of Muslim Spain which fell to the Christians in 1492.

I'm not gonna go into details about the fortress. You can get those from Lonely Planet. But just to share that I almost didn't make it into the walls. See, normally you need to book your Alhambra ticket (10e) in advance because they limit the number of visitors in order to protect the place. Due to bad planning, when I arrived in Granada I still didn't have any ticket. I tried Internet booking when I was in Madrid but apparently you need to allow one week. I tried buying through an appointed bank (Caixa) but the ATM machine wasn't working properly. Plus, at some point, the menu switched involuntarily to Spanish. So there was a lot of drama.

My last resort was to go to the Alhambra early in the morning and queue up. I was there by 7.30am. There was already a long line but eventually I got my ticket.

While queueing up, I got to know the couple behind me. Robert and Evelyn (can't remember their surname) traveled from LA, California to see Spain. They were originally from the Philipines. We got along really well and talked about many subjects. It was inevitable I guess that the conversation veered towards religion. He said something thought provoking: "If the Spanish didn't land in the Philipines but in Malaysia, things might have been different. I might be Muslim now and you might be Christian".

A section of the old Moorish quarter of Albaicin, viewed from the Alhambra.

With the Alhambra visit out of the way, I thought I'd just go around and find out how the Muslims in Granada live.

Islam is well reperesented in Granada. There is a growing Muslim population in the city consisting people from North African countries like Algeria and Morocco and Spanish converts. This means what? Food isn't a problem. Yay!

I found plenty of halal restaurants, including this shop selling halal meat. Many of them are located in the back alleys.

There was however a bit of a language barrier. They speak Spanish, French and Arabic, but very little English, while I speak English but very little Spanish, French and Arabic. So often we had to switch back and forth between these four languages.

I was in a restaurant once and wanted to order kebab. Guy didn't understand English. All of a sudden a cheerful looking senorita appeared. "I can help you translate," she said. I didn't get her name but she said she was from Italy and had been living and working in Granada for so many years.

While waiting for my kebab, I tried to make small talk. "Is this a Muslim restaurant?" I asked her and she said "Yeah, but you can eat here. They're okay." :)

I also found two mosques, one is located just behind my hotel (converted from a shoplot) and the other is the Mezquita Mayor de Granada (the Great Mosque of Granada).

This is the Great Mosque. Actually It's quite small lah.

The Granada Mosque was opened in 2003. It is located in Albaicin, side-by-side with Mirador de San Nicolas (the Church of San Nicolas).

It is built on a higher part of Granada, affording it this magnificent view of the Alhambra. So people like to come here for this and the mosque authority has built a nice little garden to accomodate them.

Here is an interesting article by the New York Times on the mosque.

The media likes to potray the mosque as though it was the first to be opened in Spain in last 500 years, but that's not really true. According to the kebab guy, there were already about 5 other mosques in the city.

I went to the one behind my hotel. They were so happy to have a visitor from Malaysia and since it was Ramadan, invited me to a their buka puasa (breaking of fast) which I attended.

The meal was simple: some kind of meat soup dish eaten with bread. I was so hungry, I ate a lot and drank a lot. After the buka puasa, I went back to my hotel room and watched some TV. Big mistake. I dozed off and missed the tarawih prayer at the mosque.

Funny signs from Spain

This was at the metro in Madrid. Pitis is a Kelantanese word for money. So go left for free money.

Here's another one from the metro.

Madrid. Let me help you read that: Hornimans Tea.

Granada. Hotel room.

Granada. Sahur time.

I've been tagged

2007-09-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a trip to Madrid. MINI Cooper test drive. Dream assignment, nothing less.

Also extended my stay in Spain and went south to Granada. Would like to tell about it now but something more urgent just came up: apparently I have been tagged, courtesy of my good friend Arni. I've never been tagged before but I think I'm getting the hang of what this is all about. So here goes:

5 things in my bag:
- Agnetha, my laptop
- capal yang baru dibeli dari Granada
- 2 iPods
- camera and charger
- bills to be paid

5 things in my wallet:
- the usual cards
- McDonald's voucher (have a McChicken on us, it says)
- receipts from Spain trip
- old Komuter tickets with stuff scribbled on the back (my account number, my ex's account number -- I have these with me all the time to make it easy to pay child support -- and also some joke ideas and the phone number of a friend in America
- photos of my eldest son Syakir

5 favourite things in my favourite room:
that would be my bedroom
- books on ABBA and Steve Jobs
- Bumblebee
- a radio controlled toy car (Mercedes SLR McLaren)
- miniature MINI Cooper Convertible
- a sketch book from my university days

5 things I would like to do:
- work in Sweden
- marry a Swede
- compose a song
- raise confident kids
- go see the Alhambra (oh wait, I just did)

5 things I'm currently doing:
- fasting
- reeling from the 2-day journey from Granada. No it wasn't exactly 2 days but it sure felt like it.
- thinking about the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the new Nano that I got to play with today
- helping Cedric with a cartoonist convention
- thinking about where to bring the family for makan for my second son Zuhayr's birthday

I would now like to tag Chris, Afida, Kluxorious, Syed and Allan.

Chris just got a MacBook

2007-09-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris just got himself a MacBook.

It was his first Mac, I was told. He had been using Windows all along and had heard good things about Macs, particularly about how it would benefit people like him who are into photography. I'm sure he had toyed with the idea of switching in the past, but kept putting it off for whatever reason.

Maybe he's a firm believer in the adage 'don't put off till tomorrow what you can put off today'.

But the deal breaker came in the form of two recent events:

1. The generic laptop which he bought in China started to develop problems that are mission-critical in nature (hey, when all you want to do is write your thesis and your laptop won't let you do it, it IS mission-critical).

2. I showed him and Julia the silly 5-minute video.. Or at least it is what I'd like to believe.

Hence the MacBook.

The day after he bought it, Chris called to say that he was having a great time with his new toy, that he had already made a video and was about to post it on YouTube, and that perhaps we should organise a little MacBook party soon.

Wait a minute. What happened to that thesis thing?

Chris' purchase came on the heels of another friend's purchase. Eija got her MacBook soon after returning home to Helsinki in July.

In her case, she turned out to be a closet Mac user. Apparently, she had been secretly lusting after my Agnetha and only confessed to me about it when she went back to her home city.

What the?

2007-09-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

Think this is a Photoshop job? Think again.

The 5-minute music video

2007-08-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

OK so I'm finally gonna put this video up here.

The title of this post is very misleading. Five minutes doesn't refer to the length of this video as you probably think. Five minutes refers to the time it took to MAKE the video, from shooting to editing to exporting.

I am not kidding. I made this video some time back, shortly after Apple introduced the MacBook with its tiny built-in camera.

The first thing I did when I got my hands on the MacBook was to fire up iMovie, hold it up with both hands so I could see myself in the camera and start shooting while walking around the office.

If you see me talking in the video, it was because people kept asking me what I was doing.

Everything

2007-08-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

I don't normally post song lyrics, but this is what is playing on my mind a lot lately.

Maybe becos I'm currently playing with a TV tuner and happened to be recording a Michael Bublé video on my Mac the other day, and was just fooling around with the video, editing, putting my name into it and just generally enjoying bits and pieces of the song.

It's weird having this song playing over and over again in my head and not thinking about anyone in particular.

"Everything"
Michael Bublé

You're a falling star, you're the getaway car
You're the line in the sand when I go too far
You're the swimming pool, on an August day
And you're the perfect thing to say

And you play your card, but it's kinda cute
Ah, when you smile at me you know exactly what you do
Baby don't pretend, that you don't know it's true
Cause you can see it when I look at you

And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It's you, it's you
You make me sing
You're every line, you're every word, you're everything

You're a carousel, you're a wishing well
And you light me up, when you ring my bell
You're a mystery, you're from outer space
You're every minute of my everyday

And I can't believe, uh that I'm your man
And I get to kiss you baby just because I can
Whatever comes our way, ah we'll see it through
And you know that's what our love can do

And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It's you, it's you
You make me sing
You're every line, you're every word, you're everything
You're every song, and I sing along
Cause you're my everything

So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La
So, La, La, La, La, La, La, La

Masuk macam pencuri, keluar macam pencuri

2007-08-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

Are we losing our common decency?

About a month ago, my brother brought in a friend to stay in our house. Said it was temporary. Fine. After all, we did have an empty room.

Brother told me on a Saturday. Friend came in the next day. But the guy didn’t even introduce himself. Just unloaded his stuff in the house and buggered off for the night.

That’s like saying, “I got this room and this parking space because of your brother. You do not matter.”

Still, I decided to give him the benefit of a doubt. Maybe he was shy.

A week passed by. Then two weeks. I still didn’t know this guy’s name or where he’s from or what he does.

It didn’t help that we had very minimal contact becos he does what many young Malay guys do: sleep during the day and go out at night.

Then one night last week, I caught him loading some of his stuff into his car, with someone he called his girlfriend waiting in the car.

A few days later, brother told me friend had left. Said he had found a new place to stay.

No thank you, no goodbye, nothing whatsoever.

As the person who helps keep the household running, I couldn't help feeling a little upset especially since I paid for his electricity and water and the occasional cooked food.

He came in like a thief and he left like a thief.

Alhan Farhanah Mohd Ridzwan (at 7 months)

2007-07-24T01:41:00.000-07:00

My first Transformer

2007-07-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

I bought my first Transformer recently: a RM49.90 Bumblebee based on the character from the movie.

I was lucky -- very lucky -- to have had the opportunity to buy the Bumblebee before the movie came out. Becos these past few days I went around town to see how the Transformers are selling and guess what? Couldn't find a single Bumblebee or for that matter Optimus Prime. I heard these two are so popular, they're sold out and people now would have to wait for two weeks for the new batch to come.

The guy who sold me the Bumblebee said he wasn't supposed to be selling that particular version of the Bumblebee yet (there are two versions of Bumblebee in the movie). He could only sell it after the movie. But since I was pestering him about it and nobody was around anyway, he quietly pulled out a unit that he had stashed somewhere in the shop. Even gave me a little discount. Maybe becos I told him I might want to write about his shop one day. ;)

I am not a big fan of Transformers. No seriously. I won't spend hundreds of ringgit on a toy just because it can change forms. No sir, that's not good enough. I am however a big fan of well thought-out designs and this Bumblebee here is a good example of that.

To begin with, whoever worked on character design for the movie IMHO have done an excellent job of it. At least in the cases of Bumblebee, Prime, Megatron and a few other characters not including Scorponok (what's the deal with that?) becos now these Transformers have become more elaborate, more organic and more Gundam-ish. They have certainly come a long way from the chunky, boxy characters of the Generation 1 Transformers.

At the same time, the designers did not attempt to humanise these robots too much. Bumblebee, for example, has joints on his legs that do not conform to the human anatomy but they work well for a robot. 10 out of 10 for design philosophy!

The next good point about the toy is articulation. I can spend hours with my Bumblebee experimenting with different poses as you see in this Comic Life piece here. That thing has ball joints everywhere, even for his neck. And it's fairly sturdy, unlike the Meister that I reviewed the other day.

Lastly, the designers have built into Bumblee and the other new Transformers this feature called Automorph Technology which I imagine must've been a painstaking process. At first blush, Automorph might seem like just another marketing gimmick, but no. It really does aid in the transformation. What Automorph is about is a set of tiny gears and springs put together in such a way that when you move one part of the robot, another part moves into place all by itself. Slick!

And all these for just RM50? That's what most people pay each time they fill up their cars nowadays. This is seriously one of the best purchases I've made in recent times after Agnetha.

And here's a video showing how Bumblebee transforms from car to robot, plus a little fun with stop-motion animation.

The origin of Gua Cherita

2007-06-29T01:02:00.001-07:00

I was in Langkawi the other day for an assignment when I discovered there's a place on the island called Gua Cherita.

Here's the story behind how the name of the cave came about. Some time back in the 80s, a group of Mat Rock went into the cave to have a drink and talk cock, generally having a good time. So they laughed and traded stories. And then at one point, one of them said:

"Ok ok. Sekarang gua cerita, lu dengar."

And that's how it became Gua Cherita. And yes, you're right. I made that up.

Transformers fever

2007-06-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

Through my own initiative, I managed to get a few Transformers for review. The story came out on Wednesday in Thingamajiggy.

I got three units from Hasbro Malaysia, namely Meister, Rodimus Prime and Bumblebee (Peugeot 206) but in the end decided only Meister was worth the space in NST.

Meister is some sort of a reincarnation of the Autobot Jazz. If you can remember, Jazz was a Porsche in the 80s but this one is a Mazda RX-8. Only the robot's head has been retained. And in terms of transformation, it's a lot more complicated than the original Jazz.

To be sure, it was my first experience with a Transformer. As a child, I loved Transformers but I had never owned any because they seemed so darned expensive. Either that, or I had a deprived childhood.

For some reasons, my favourite Transformer at the time was not Optimus Prime, but the Decepticon Starscream. I also liked Thundercracker. Maybe because the name sounds like some kind of biscuit.

But now as an adult, my favourite Transformer is the movie Bumblebee (2008 Chevrolet Camaro). In fact, I just bought one yesterday. Awesome toy! I'll tell more about that in the next post.

Have you looked at your keyboard lately?

2007-05-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

I mean like really looked, as in by popping off the key caps and looking at the debris accumulated from years of no cleaning?

No?

Well these are some pictures that I took of my colleagues' keyboards. This is Ruslina's keyboard

This is Meena's keyboard

Suzanna's keyboard

Suzanna's again

Yet another view of Suzanna's keyboard.

I felt like a CSI when I was taking those pictures.

What was I doing looking at people's keyboard? I had actually been practising cleaning keyboard, timing myself to see how fast I could do the job. I have learnt that it takes roughly half an hour for me to pop off all the key caps and clean the 'naked' keyboard.

The key caps are then brought home, where I put them in a pillow case, tie it and throw it into the washing machine together with the rest of my laundry.

When the key caps come out, somehow they become clean. There's no need to clean them individually.

After the key caps are dry, it takes another 15 minutes for me to put them back on again.

I'm thinking maybe I can start a business cleaning people's keyboard. Any takers?

My homework

2007-05-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

These are my homework nowadays: children's storybooks in Swedish.

Can you guess what Sagan om en katt mean? The story of a cat. Can you guess what Sagan om en val mean? Exactly - the story of a whale. See? You're getting the hang of Swedish already.

The whale story is quite funny. This whale goes around eating fish at first, but one day for no apparent reason he decides to catch en haj (a shark) using - of all things - a fishing net. The shark becomes angry, bites the whale and swims away. The whale is sad. Then a mermaid comes up to him and says "Whales cannot eat sharks. Whales eat small fish". So the whale eats small fish and becomes happy.

Recent pictures of the kids

2007-05-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

These pix were taken earlier this year.

My eldest, Ahmad Syakir. Notice the Monalisa smile.

My second one, Ahmad Zuhayr.

And this little bugger is my daughter, Alhan Farhanah. But her brothers call her Baby Luigi. Ntah papa tah.