15 July 2018



The developer for my future home held an open house of sort earlier this month for house buyers and also the public in general. Since my wife is enthusiastic when it comes to everything concerning our new home, I thought why not. Who doesn’t like free food right? Actually she’s been aiming at the door gift which is a little blanket sheet. The event started at noon but we only got there an hour later. Lucky for us the door gift is still available. The food? Not so much. I mean all the good food like roasted lamb and satay anyway. Apparently they were serving those two dishes in stages, like at the beginning of the event and towards the end. We had to wait until 2:00PM before they serve those again which really piss me off. Are they saving the good food for the VIP guests like Amyra Rosli? If so then bloody hell, we should be the VVIP guest since we’re the one buying the place. I don’t care about no half-baked actress/singer, I just want my roast lamb dammit!

Anyway sucky food aside, the other main purpose of our visit was to take a sneak peek at our finished home. For one day only, they’re letting all home-buyers entrance to their respective neighbourhood so we took that chance to take a look at ours. It looked slightly smaller than the showroom but it is still nice. I don’t know whether to look forward to moving in to the new house because of the impending cost associated with it. But like it or not we’ll have to move in the new house because we can’t afford to pay for two houses at once. Our old Casa Riana home will be out for rent, hopefully as soon as we moved to Serene Heights. But first the bank will have to release the full amount of our loan to the developer and only then will they handover the keys to our new home.

Back to our new home, we didn't really plan on going into the house since we don't have the keys yet. But as luck would have it, the sliding doors wasn't locked so I just push it open and have a little tour of the house. First impression: it was a lot bigger than our current home (obviously) and the bathrooms were really nice. It will take a lot of our time and money to turn this one into a proper home. To be honest, I still don't where will we get all the money to do that.

15 June 2018



A few weeks before this Hari Raya, I was dreading going back home to our home towns. This year we were going to spend the Raya eve in Tanah Merah as per our rotational arrangement. I have no problem staying in Tanah Merah but rumours has it that our usual room will be occupied by somebody else and me and family will have to sleep in the living room/family area. It's an uncomfortable thought. I was so used to being in the room all the time, now how am I supposed to hide, I mean sleep during daylight or play with my laptop all day long? It's a nightmare scenario. Like it or now, there are another new addition to the extended family now and the veterans like us will have to make way. That I understand very well but still the thought had me in full dread mode.

Much to my surprise, the moment we arrived in kampung Sat, we were ushered to our usual room. Apparently somebody else will have to make way which is fine by me. That said I know it's a matter of time before my family and I will be ousted from our room. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Perhaps I should consider going back and spending more time in Pasir Mas instead, my own home town which I've been neglecting to return so often after I got married. Either way will it surprise anybody if I am ever so more reluctant to go back home to Kelantan after this?

This year is the first time my siblings and I celebrate Hari Raya without our Dad, you know, since he's been gone. Gone are the days we were forced to meet at a restaurant or mall somewhere since Mother and Grandma were not so keen to see us visiting our stepmother's place. The only place that we can visit now is his grave in Lorong Kubur Piah next to the primary school. It almost break our hearts to see the dilapidated state of his burial site. There were still no headstone or /belindan/ so to speak and overgrown with bush. I guess his wife don't even bother anymore. I heard she has moved to Rantau Panjang and doesn't live in that village anymore. So it is up to us, his sons and daughters to take care of his gravesite. Which we will do in due time. I worry if we don't act soon, somebody might accidentally dig his gravesite and bury another body there. Remind me to not get divorce and live far away from my children so that they don't neglect my gravesite when I die.

The journey back to KL is the usual nightmare scenario. Even after taking the East-West highway via Grik, we were still caught in a crawl from Ipoh to Rawang. Did I tell you I don't like going back to Kelantan?

23 March 2018



We sped to Kemaman that morning from Bukit Gambang Resort City. I don’t know how many speed camera I sped through along the LPT highway in order to get to Kemaman in time before 10:00AM. Turn out, we were the first group to arrive at 10:10AM. The rest gradually arrive half an hour later including the groom who arrived well after 11:00AM. So much for being on time. I became the unofficial family photographer that day, taking pictures without pay of course. Glad to do it.

Faris and Myra wedding almost didn’t happen due to my aunt’s objection some time ago. She never liked her for some reason and were adamant that Faris should choose anybody but her. Over time thanks to reasoning with her family, she relented. But you could tell behind that smirk, I mean smile deep down inside she’s not totally happy with the proceedings.

Anyway we hung around for an hour or so before leaving for Cherating. Yes I already book an Airbnb there and planned to spend the night there. But before the 3:00PM check we decided to visit the Kemaman Zoo. Unfortunately the zoo was closed for a while for Friday prayers when we got there which was a real bummer. They don’t open until an hour an a half later and I thought it was too long to wait. So made our way slowly from Kemaman to Cherating, arriving 10 minutes before 3:00. I booked a one bedroom apartment at Samsuria Beach Resort. It was a nice studio suite with a sizeable living room, kitchen and bath tub to the delight of the kids. The kids didn’t mind sleeping in the living room since they were all air-conditioned. The host even throw in a free Digi broadband modem to use. Too bad I only found out about the free Internet in the bedroom drawer as we were leaving. There’s already free resort Wi-Fi but the Internet was horrible.

The resort is situated right beside the beach so we could just take a five minute walk from our apartment to the seaside. We flew a kite and bathed in the sea. In the evening we had dinner at Aiman Kitchen Seafood and paid for a 34 ringgit steamed siakap fish. It was the most expensive fish we’d ever had and the total damage for the night was 85 ringgit. Remind me to be wary of seafood places in far away places.

The next morning Linda and I woke up early to catch the sunrise. Although there were not much sunrise to see due to the cloud, it was a beautiful morning nevertheless. The kids enjoyed another dip in the beach, then the swimming pool. Later that afternoon we head home to KL. Just like last time, my legs fell prey to merciless sandflies. I was itchy all over that evening. Cherating and its sandflies got no chill. It was a short but refreshing 2 days getaway to Gambang and Cherating. I would highly recommend Samsuria Beach Resort especially at this Airbnb unit that I stayed at. It’s on the ground floor and the host provided a few things extra apart from the excellent amenities.

11 March 2018



In memorium

After all the tears have been shed and dried it’s time to look back at my father’s short but eventful life.

The last time I saw my father alive was at my stepmother’s kampung home in Pasir Pekan near Kota Bharu. By then he has lost a lot of weight and we could barely recognized him from his usual chubby and large size. Normally we would celebrate somebody losing weight so drastically but in this case the cancer has spread to many parts of his stomach making it painful for him to even have a regular meal. All he could swallow is a little bit of soft liquid food just to barely survive.

When I got word of my father dying conditions from my stepmother related to my sister, my first thought was that is this my stepmother being dramatic again. Sadly she was not because moments after that my father passed away in the wards of Kota Bharu hospital. I was working overtime that Sunday morning and when I got home, I embraced my wife while passing to her the sad news. At first we thought about driving straight away to Pasir Mas that night. Linda and I will have our compassionate leaves so that shouldn’t be a problem. However, Mia and Hana have to take their mid year exam all that week and it would not be fair for them to have zero marks for their first two subjects at least. After much debate it was decided that I took the last bus to Pasir Mas that night all by myself.

After getting the news of my father’s demise, I didn’t cry right away. My mind was prepared in advance for this news ever since the doctor confirmed his disease. To be honest, I was still somewhat mad at my stepmother for bringing him into this predicament. If she hadn’t cause him to lose his good job at the plantation that time, he would have had medical benefits or at least or better health care prospect. The doctors could have detected his cancer during one of his regular company-sanctioned medical checkup and he could have been treated earlier and lived longer. Looking back now, I realized I can’t really blame just one person for something as complex and interrelated as my father’s entire life. There’s probably a million things and circumstances that has happened in the past that led to his demise and there’s nothing much I or anyone in the world can do about it.

For the first time in years, my siblings were all together reunited at my stepmother’s house in Pasir Pekan for the funeral. I didn’t hold back with the waterworks the moment I saw my father’s cold dead body in the living room. I don’t usually cry for anything but when I do, I really cried. My learned brain taught me dying is a completely natural phenomena in the cycle of life but the solemn atmosphere and the thought of seeing someone I hold so dear for the last time ever was just too much for me.

Washing my father’s body, preparing his corpse for burial, carrying and laying him to rest in the cemetery is a lesson in humility for me. No matter how advanced, enlightened and liberal you think you are, when it comes to death of your loved one, you will still need the community to give you a helping hand. You just couldn’t do it all by yourself. And for that I am eternally grateful for the community that I and my family are living with.

Pancreatic cancer has the worst survival rate of any cancers. The median survival rate for untreated advance pancreatic cancer is about 3.5 months which exactly how long it took from the day my father was diagnosed with the disease and the time he passed away yesterday. My father has been a regular smoker for the most part of his life. Like many Malaysian, he is not known to lead a healthy eating habit, lots of sugar and cholesterol in his daily diet. So it is no surprise that towards the later stage of his life, he started to exhibit a myriad of diseases.

My father has been absent for much of my life. My parent was separated when I was seven, divorced two years later and from then on I only seen a glimpse of him every now and then. Growing up without a father-figure around in the house could be difficult sometimes. I hate to explain to people that my parent is divorced and why my father is never around. When filling out forms, I have no idea what my father does as a living. His last known occupation was as an assistant manager in an estate in Sepang so that’s what I usually write. But then he is not really around and don’t contribute much to our well being. My mother does most of the heavy-lifting. Sometimes I tell people my father is gone for good just to shut them up.

That said, although brief, I can say those few days that we spent together are some of the happier days of my childhood because he would usually shower us with treats or take us sightseeing in his hometown in Penang. Even after he married and started a new family, he still managed to see us from time to time.He is the definition of a part time father. Life goes on as usual for us in our separate ways and it seems to go that way until the day my mother came up with the plan to reunite with my father.

With the support of all my family members, my parent remarried some time in 2003.I myself was a big proponent of this reunion. After growing up without my father all these while, who wouldn’t? My father was doing really well in his career, got a good position in a plantation down south. His other wife however had no inkling of his new life here. He routinely come to Serdang where we lived together in a rented house. But once his wife finds out, things started to go downhill from there.

My stepmother literally made our life a living hell. She harassed us non-stop with vulgar phone calls and letters. She even somehow got my father fired from his cushy job in the plantation despite the fact it will probably jeopardize her livelihood as well. In retrospect while what she did was totally insane, I could understand her predicament. Here is an estranged wife with a small child in tow having to share his husband with another woman. She would have none of it. My father was firmly behind my mother and us in this turbulence stage of our family struggle. He even went on to unofficially divorce his other wife after a particularly serious fight. The right thing in one’s eye could be the totally wrong thing to do and an injustice in somebody else’s view.

If you’ve thought that would be the end of the drama, you’d be sorely mistaken. Separated from his second wife, my father now unemployed and without any career prospect started to do odd jobs to contribute to the family. I remember the mornings when he would put up a stall in front of Central Market selling nasi lemak. And the time I helped him manning the pasar ramadan stall selling local delicacies.It must have been one of the lowest point of his life and he’s had many low points. My mother did her best to be the single breadwinner of the family but there’s only so much she could do. She’s just transferred from her comfy management job at the district education office to become a regular teacher in Serdang in order to be closer with us. That would also mean three months delayed salary in this country’s notoriously bureaucratic civil service. Add those two together, it didn’t take long for financial issues to put a strain in our new family relationship. As our struggle goes on, my mother despite all her patience and self-restraint, started to get on the nerve of my father. One day, my father packed a few of his belonging in his car and left all of us to rejoin his other wife. That fateful day effectively ended our family reunion.

My father unofficially remarried my stepmother, something she’s really proud to say in graphic detail in one of her toxic letter to us. However, he made no effort to release or divorce my mother and left her stranded on her own. It took years of sharia court proceedings for my mother to file for divorce because of that. My father could have let her go easily and swiftly at the courts but he didn’t and I despise him for that. Mother being the resilient and strong-willed woman that she is, goes on to rebuild her career and care for all of us siblings until we all graduated (me being the last to graduate) and goes on teaching until her retirement day.

My father however has not been so lucky with his career. The only job he’s really ever good at is managing plantations and he did got one or two jobs in the industry but they all didn’t end well for him. More than often, his employers managed to cheat and con their way out of paying him. One time they didn’t pay my father for months until he had to leave and find another job somewhere. Let’s not even get into his business ventures. His first foray into entrepreneurship got him into bankruptcy which led to his divorce with my mother. His other little projects and ventures almost always don’t seem to end well. To be frank, my father just don’t have the knack for business. His last known job was selling koran wakafs at markets and sidewalks.

Perhaps my father has been unlucky in life. He made a few career and life choices that didn’t really end well for him or his family. However to say that he has not contributed at all to this family would be a lie. When he’s got the means to shower his family with happiness, he would. When he doesn’t, he’ll just shy away and disappear from our sight. Now that I’ve got a family of my own I understand perfectly what he has gone through.

My father spend a little fortune getting me my first computer in 1997. I wouldn’t be in the IT position I am now in my career if it wasn’t for him. When I wanted to get married to my wife but didn’t have much money for it, he made a major contribution which I could never repay until now. Also the time when we wanted to buy our first home but was a few hundred ringgit short to pay the deposit, he didn’t hesitate to help. But most of all, I’m grateful of all the life lessons that he has directly or indirectly shown for me and for giving me the chance to live in this world in the first place.

My father may have not been the perfect father but I know he tried his best. My only wish is that I could do more for him in his dying days but then again my hands are tied. His cancer was already so advanced even the doctors refused to operate on him. Rest in peace father, I will surely miss you.