Thursday, December 10, 2015

Don't Let Your Life be Veiled in Mystery

There is a house in a small village, lived by an old couple with their two daughters. The other 6 children of the couple are mostly married and left the house to live with their spouse. If not, they are elsewhere out of the town studying or working. They only come home during the weekend fortnightly, and sometimes once in a month. The younger sister is too scared to sleep alone, therefore the two share a bedroom on the second floor of the house while their parents use the one on the ground floor. Hence, other rooms in the house are usually empty most of the time.
On one chilly night when everyone had fallen asleep, the elder sister woke up to an unfamiliar sound from the next room. She had no idea what it was so she tried to listen to it very carefully. It was a scratching sound of furniture being pushed on tiled floor! The elder sister was scared to death that she closed her eyes so tightly and read some ayah from the Holy Quran until she unbeknownstly fell to her sleep again. The next morning, she opened the next room's door only to see it was all in tidy and neat condition. She decided not to make any slip of the tongue on what happened that night, nevertheless. Not to the parents, neither to the younger sister.
Few nights later, when the two sisters were getting ready for bed, the younger one  in out of the blue told her elder sister that she felt like sleeping downstairs with their parents and asked if she's okay with that. The elder sister who has been acting brave and sound, suddenly lost her guts imagining herself alone in the room throughout the whole night, to where she replied that the younger sister was acting childish and asked her to behave. And so they stayed in the room....
The room got darker and darker as the night went-by while the blown-off bulb of the bedlamps from two days before had not been replaced just yet. The elder sister was in her bed trying very hard to fall asleep but her eyes just wouldn't allow. Suddenly, she heard someone getting off the bed and jumped onto hers. Felt like losing her life in a flash, she finally got back to her senses after she realized that it was her younger sister wanting to sleep next to her. Seeing how icy cold her younger sister's hands were, she asked her if anything happens. The younger sister said she was too scared to talk about it. The elder sister then checked on her phone to look at the time. It was only an hour past midnight. The night they were having was still long way to go before the dawn, so she decided to take her younger sister to the parents' room and sleep there until the sun rises.

The next day, the elder sister asked her younger sister again to tell her on what actually happened that night. She said that she had been having a hard time falling asleep recently and that she felt extra uneasy last night which was why she asked the elder sister to sleep downstairs. As true as her gut was telling her, that same night when she was still struggling  to sleep, she felt like a hand with long nails was slowly running on her palm. That was when she got insanely scared and before she knew it, she had already jumped off her bed...... 

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Because Islamic Banking and Finance is not my thing

I was scrolling the phone mindlessly when my brother-in-law came and sat on the opposite couch. Only two of us were there in the living room.

Dead silent the atmosphere was, I started off a conversation to break through the cricket's krikk-ing sound after a good topic popped out on my mind. 

He whom I see as someone who earns good money and has better knowledge in Islam than the rest in the house, had just got back home with a new-but-doesn't-quite-look-like-it (read: second-hand) car. So rather than having an empty chat, it slowly headed towards what I prefered it to be - an intellectual discourse. While I was at it, one-line questions were just not enough to shoosh my curiousness away. Hence I deliberately extended the initiated topic to the next level.

Done sentencising my words as I scared it could be of his sensitivities, I carefully asked him why wouldn't he buy a new car when his former second-hand car had costed him big amount of money on maintanence (lots of time I saw him failing to start the engine). Or buy an imported one of which best known for their excellent performance. With his salary, he could easily afford a 6-digit worth of car. But instead, he bought a used Proton by lump sum.

And here were his answers and explanations: 

1) He doesn't want to live a life surrounded by debts. It takes years for middle-class people to settle their today's-must loans - house loan, car loan, study loan and etc. No one knows when they are going to die, so passing a tremendous sum of debts as inheritances to his kids is just as cruel as physically abusing them.

2) He sees no problem with driving a second-hand car. The maintenance issue seems a bit too small to a man who used to work in a workshop in his teenage days. Well he practically knows everything about car. So point 2 is kinda invalid.

3) It is undeniable that he too, has desires on worldly materials. Cool outfits, big cars, luxurious bungalow, etc2. But he wants to keep everything down to earth, so he'd be able to walk looking at his toes. While owning things that make people glance at us twice will toughen our road towards staying humble, he chooses to stay with his 'motor kapcai' from his matric year and still rides it to work. 

4) Last but not least, the subtle involvement with riba' when making loans. Car loans, house loans. You name it all. Unless you are a millionaire, never think of having decent car and house without signing loan's agreement.

So the conversation went on with me questioning him over and over again. Point 4 seemed arguable at that moment, thus I picked him on that. I said, Bank Islam is riba' free so why didn't he? Abah is an ex-manager of Bank Islam, hence explaining on how is Bank Islam safe from interest-based profit making and that how is it different from other conventional banks is something at his very own finger tips.

Previously when being asked, Abah was saying that they charge no interest, rather, they take share of profits. But sadly, I can't totally relate this to paying loans higher than what we were actually lent. Of which my brother-in-law's reply made me ponder upon my life-asset plannings - that loan shall never be made profit out it. You lend RM10, you get back RM10. Sounds seemingly true. But arghhh, how then would the majority middle-class Malaysians be able to own a house and a car while staying free from riba'?

Need to start digging into this further.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

My wish

I wish, 
I could forever be a kid,
Who had the right to be pampered.
Who would never feel bad about it.

I wish, 
I could never be an adult,
Who had her pride to not seek others' help,
Unless she really needed it.

I wish, 
I wouldn't grow older,
As being it makes me feel,
Troubling my parents isn't a right thing to do.

I wish,
I had not gone abroad.
Spending years in a foreign land, 
Thousand miles away from the family had me kept all my struggles inside. 
Because the sight of them being worry while not being able to be by my side, 
Would only double my pain.

I wish,
My face could show how scared I am.
But the macho side of me just won't allow.
Barely understood the things that have been messing with my body,
I hate Biology even more.

I wish, 
My parents would ask me twice when I said no to their first.
It might take a few more before a yes comes out from my mouth. 
But just keep asking.

I wish,
I could be more mature.
Being a childish me, I am now,
My heart never matches with my mind.
What more my body. Frustrating.

And with that, 
I ended up being alone in the ward, on the day before Ramadhan. 
Writing my heart out, 
on a nobody-read blog.

May Allah ease my feeling. 

Few more hours before going in the operation theatre. Allah is with those who remember Him. Hopefully the fasting doctors are more than good to go.

Hospital Sungai Buloh.
17/6/2015, 3.00pm

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Drama

Dalam banyak-banyak waktu hati ni merindukan kakyu,
Malam ni paling membuak-buak rasa itu.

Entahlah...
Mungkin sebab tiba-tiba merasa masa berlari terlalu laju.
Tengok kalendar rupa-rupanya 12 hari lagi genap 6 bulan pemergian kakyu.
Macam tak percaya dah hampir setengah tahun berlalu.

Mungkin juga sebab kebelakangan ni drama yang berlaku terlalu banyak.
Macam slot Akasia, Zehra dan yang seangkatannya punya babak.
Tapi bila fikir-fikir balik, memang boleh buat orang tergelak.

Bila abang ipar bakal sekali lagi menjadi abang ipar.
Dan tangis kakak yang paling aku rapat...hanya aku yang dengar.

Bila aku bertanya 'Betul ke ni tak apa?'
Dia kata, rilekslah. Asalkan yang lain boleh ketawa.

Selalu juga syaitan jahat mencucuk-cucuk hati.
Suruh bertanya pada Dia, kenapa cerita kami macam ni.
Alhamdulillah, lidah mampu beristighfar lagi.

Tapi betul, bukan senang nak tetapkan hati untuk terus redha.
Hari ni menerima, esok lusa mempersoal semula.

Yang susahnya bila kadang-kadang Haziq buat perangai,
Title 'anak yatim' selalu jadi perisai.
Antara nak mendidik atau kesian, tak tahu macam mana nak nilai.

Yang pasti, bukan aku seorang je rindu.
Bila Haziq tiba-tiba panggil 'mama' tanpa sebab, siapa yang tak sayu?
Cuma masing-masing buat-buat tak tahu.

Moga Allah kurniakan hidayah dan kekuatan.
Untuk terus berdepan dengan dugaan,
Kerana tak lain tak bukan,
Tu semua untuk menguji tahapan iman.

Al-Fatihah

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