Compassion

I was having lunch with my colleague and another friend at Sri Petaling last Friday. It was a typical mamak shop, crowded, sweaty, oily and congested with pungent smell of spices and curry. Anyway, while i'm happily eating my briyanni rice, suddenly i felt someone approached me from the sideway. I turned and saw this beggar, a very old man with filthy clothes, holding a cane on one hand and a cup on another asking for money.

To be frank, i usually dont give money to beggar, in my definition, its a crime to give to a person of right age, with no apparent mental in capabilities. But for some reason, i have a soft spot for those old ones/kids. Whenever i look at them, the picture of loneliness and unwanted sprung up my mind.

When i was in Jakarta last year, i have to mentally confronted this feeling everytime the taxi stops, whether its in the middle of the traffic jam or infront of the traffic light, there is always someone, some child, persistently knocking on the glass window, extending their hands out. To turn away my eyes from them is one of the cruelest thing i felt i've done. After 3 days of staying in the city, i felt like wanna run away and never return again.

Back to my story, i was searching my purse for small cash to give to the old man, but only to find that the smallest note i have is RM5, without second thought i took it out and put into his can. and thats when my colleague gave me the "i cant believe you have just did that" look. They were shaking their head in disbelief as though i've done something bizarre and outrageous. In order to knock some sense into me, my colleague told me another incident happened in Bangsar quite sometime ago.

In was the same mamak setting and there was this old man who begged for money from table to table. The only difference was that this old man was hunching, it seems like his back was somehow deformed and he was having difficulties in walking around. My colleague's friend felt pity for him and took out a 50 cents and gave to the old man.

Then miracles happened, as soon as the old man received the 50 cents, he straighten his back and walk out of the restaurant like any other normal person. My colleague was utterly speechless, he felt so amused and told his friend that he is Jesus, cuz he healed the hunchback with 50 cents.

Although it sounds rare, but the fact is there are some people who do feel compassionate towards the disabled and poor. But with these kind of incidents actually occuring, i am sure people's heart will soon be hardened. And this is sad, people cannot do good without worrying being cheated. Good qualities such as compassionate and charitable are killed easily in the society we live today, there are no chance for these qualities to be nurtured so that it can bless more people.

This is definitely sad.

On being Adult

I was rushing in and out of the office for the past few days trying to sort out the accommodation/flight bookings for for my family Christmas holiday trip to Langkawi, as well as their 2 days stay in KL right after the trip. Well, lets just say it this way, its not as easy as log into www.airasia.com, click, click, click, key in your credit card number, click to confirm and wala ... DONE!

Its complicated, headachingly complicated.

My parents are traveling on government servants subsidized holiday package (yes, there are such entitlement for government servants, bet you dont know that!), and there are many terms and condition into it. One of the most difficult term is that there is strictly NO flying with Airasia! (see, not EVERYONE CAN FLY with airasia). On top of that, it was a last minute decision and most of the holiday resort/hotels in Langkawi and around Bukit Bintang area were fully booked, not to mention the rates were sky high since its peak season.

not EVERYONE CAN FLY with airasia

The thing is the Langkawi trip was decided last minute, but the idea of having a family Christmas trip was conceived, lets say ONE YEAR ago. Due to my dad indecisiveness, i'm only able to start the planning and booking a week ago. To make it worse, during that week, my dad was determined to crash my phone (and my sanity) by bombarding me with calls 24-7 to check on the status.

As the result of that, my mood wasnt that pleasant the whole of last week (ok, BAD is the word), when i phone-chit chating with my sister about it, she was laughing her head off as she knows my dad is capable of pussyfooting around when it comes to money spending decision.

It was then a million dollar question crossed my mind: Am i expecting too much from my dad?

Of course i know well that my dad tends to hesitate endlessly before he finally makes a last minute decision. In fact it's already a norm in my family that situation like this happens, whether its buying a new house or a new car, my dad will do his routine of pacing around up and down, in and out before he finally decide. Most of the time, we all felt those consequences, and yes, we grumble, complain, slam doors to vent the frustration, but still, we go through the situation together as a family.

Its funny that we see our parents as someone who is bigger than ourselves as they are the one we always look up to. As we growing up inch by inch over the years, the parent figure was engraved so deeply in our heart to an extent that we perceived them as Giant who SHOULD and WILL always know more and better than us.

When i was young, i keep thinking that one day when i'm finally an adult, i shall be mature enough to have my own child, and i'll be able to take good care of them, just like my mom. So i spent my teenage days counting fingers, waiting for the moment of transformation to come. In short, i was under the illusion that one day there will be an enlightment in a form of sudden ray of thunder or lightnings which able to make this ugly caterpillar to spread her wings and fly.

But the truth is THE MOMENT never comes. In fact, there is no clear demarcation or delinearation which says that you are now an adult and no more child. At the age of 26, when i'm doing all the things an adult does, working, paying loans and bills, buying cars.... it finally occured to me that there is no such thing call "adult thinking" or "adult Modus Operandi" for a person to function as an adult, and there is no one specific changing point whereby things suddenly fall into its place and life become easy.

Of course i'm getting 'wiser' over the years of learning and experience, but when it comes to taking up new responsibilities and to say that i'm my own woman, it doesnt matter whether its 16 or 26, there will still be fears and struggles inside of me. If being adult means keeping ourselves healthy, being financially independent, servicing my car regularly... well, that is no big deal. But if being adult means to become like my mother, who is the epitome of patience momly figure, thats spells I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E. In fact at my current age, my mom had already conceived her first child. And i asked myself, if i am in my mom's shoes, will i be able to raise up my sister to the woman she is today?

I dont think there is a need for me to repeat the word.

Its indeed a lesson i've learnt today, to never forget that my parents are human being too. There are times when they dont know, and they are capable of feeling hurt just like us.

And a note to myself, being an adult means doing things which i should do and may not be really prepared to do. But its fine as long as i'm taking responsability for my actions, and moreover my life. yes, it’s frightening but am sure its exciting as well.

Medical Anatomy

With my frequent ranting and bitching about my job, i guess its no more secret that i'm currently managing a team in developing a Semantic cum visualisation technology based teaching and learning software for medical anatomy.

A few days ago, my team members and I were in our weekly technical meeting, discussing on the User interface of the software system. As you all know, the best way of brain storming is always through our Master Google. So everyone bring their laptop into the meeting room and surfing for ideas.

Whats in our mind is something like this:

Everyone was professional (FINALLY!!), generously and actively contributing their inputs. All i heard was words of sophisticated and tongue twisting IT jargon, of which 80% i failed to appreciate. But when I stood back and looked at my team, a sense of proudness engulfed me, finally.... my kids have grown up.

Until one of my team member accidently found something interesting on the internet and started to scream at 100 decibel: "holy shit.... this is so cute, come look at this!". Everyone rushed to her side to take a peek at her screen and within seconds, the professional group of software engineers had turn back to a bunch of kids.

In the middle of " ooo... so cute." " kawaiii." ....., I heard the last bit of proudness in me shattered into pieces.

Anyway, this is what they are so excited about: Anatomy of cute toys and stuffed animals by Jason Freeny (moistproduction.com)

Gummy bears and baloon dogs (click to enlarge)

There's even anatomy for Lego!

Seriously, i think medical students will find learning anatomy is fun if they have these compare to the dull and boring human skeletal model we had in our secondary school's old dark biology laboratory.

Anyway, you can buy those online if you are interested. Pretty neat for a wall paper.