Confession of a Reluctant Father

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Nazzim will be taking his UPSR this year and I think he has a chance to do well. His schedule is full of additional classes and tuitions and once in a while I do wonder if we are overdoing it. Of course Lina and I pushes him to study hard, very hard since if we don’t do that, he’d just happily watch TV and read comics.

I still remember my Standard 5 Assessment examinations. For some of you young ‘uns, yes, the exam used to be for Standard 5 pupils and it was only recently that it was changed. We had two breaks on the two or three days that it was held but I had no idea that it was a “major” exam. Even when the results came out, I only knew it when my classmate Shamsuddin said that we had to go to school to get the results. Even after getting the results, it never dawned on me what it was for until Mr. Ngoh came looking for me during the third term school holidays after my Standard 6 with an offer to go to a boarding school.

As for Nazzim, we’d let him go to boarding school if the school is good (our criteria), he wants to (his criteria and he said he does), if the school is nearby (Lina’s criteria) but we might (the key word is might….) make an exception to a far away school if that he gets an offer to that school (you know what school I am talking about) in Kuala Kangsar but we are not banking on it. But I think that will not happen since I think in this particular instance, Lina would have 51% voting rights. She does not even need to use her veto power.

My former school fits the bill perfectly – it’s a good school, nearby and as an alumni he’d have a better chance than others but frankly, I’d like him to go to a day school nearby. I’d prefer to send him to boarding school when he is in Form Four. Lina doesn’t know about this, she thinks that I’d be the first to want to ship him off to a hostel. I think for his secondary education as long as he has a conducive atmosphere at home, his own room, his own space and a lot of supervision from us, he’d do as well. Lina’s brother-in-law left for UK when he was thirteen or fourteen and he did mentioned once that he’d probably opt for the same for his son, their only child.

“Along, I don’t think Suri (Lina’s sister) would let you do that. Tell you what, if you managed to convince Suri to even ship him off to that school in Mantin, I’d buy you lots and lots of lunch, dinner and everything in between…”

Ah well, let’s see then. Yes, a confession, I don’t want my son to leave for boarding school so soon.

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Uncalled For

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After dinner Saturday night, the twenty or so of us gathered for a photo session. Red and his camera, you couldn't get any better than that. Of course Red wanted to be in the photo too and since one of the ladies brought two of her daughters, he asked one of them to take the photo. While posing, one of the other ladies commented :

"Lepas ni siapa nak ambil gambar dengan anak Sharifah, lawa tu anak dia..."

And I said, "Ya, siapa nak buat menantu."

But then she came back, "I wasn't thinking about your children I was thinking about you guys!!!"

That comment stumped me. Come on, give us some credit. I might not be a saint or an angel but there is still some civilised and good thoughts left in my body. Many of us are not that bad that we want to sapu anything and everything that moves or on two legs. For heaven's sake, when I commented that one of us might want her daughter as a daughter-in-law, that was the only thing in my mind. I know many of my buddies' children personally and both Lina and I think they are lovely, good-looking and everything in between and they will remain as that - children of good friends.

Come on, give us a break, we didn't deserve that.

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Fowl Play

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The last month or so has been a trying one for Nazzim. He had been complaining of ear-ache, his sniffling has not gotten any better and so has his eczema (which is usually associated with asthma, of which he has a mild version). So Lina took him to see the ENT specialist and in addition to some medicine, asked us to get rid of carpets from our house, he also instructed that Nazzim abstains from eating, among others, dairy products, nuts, eggs and lo and behold, his most favourite food in the whole wide world, chicken.

So, for about a month we did as best as we could in following the doctor's orders and his condition improved quite a bit and he even lost 2 kgs on a chicken-less diet.

On Wednesday I took him for a follow-up visit to the good doctor. The doctor pretty much confirmed that his condition has improved but wants him to stay off the forbidden food, but most importantly, chicken for another six months. I could see the sadness in his face when he reconfirmed the news with me, yes, that the doctor did actually said that. Maybe that is why he was very upbeat about going for the follow-up visit, that the doctor would rescind the chicken ban.

But it was not to be. So now we have a youngster at home who would complain, even if Lina were to cook everything and anything good in the world, that "there's nothing to eat".

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Buddies, Fruit Season and A Tiger Tale

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Been a while since I updated this blog and the usual excuses will be tendered. Work, family matters etc. etc. Not that it matters.

Nazzim’s birthday came and gone and he’s got his presents long before that, i.e. during Sofia’s birthday, about three weeks before his.

I have got a ton of work around the house to do and I aim to do it soon. I have been watching too much TV lately but not AF or Malaysian Idol. It’s the talk of town but not my cup of tea. My apologies to all fans of those two shows. But this is a free country, so while I don’t watch those shows, others have a right to do so. But I won’t defend that right, hahaha. That is a mutation of that famous saying said by one of them dead guys. I’m not sure if it was Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold or John Hancock. Come to think of it, it’s not Benedict Arnold, he’s famous for being a traitor and neither was it John Hancock, he’s famous for his John Hancock, I mean his long and elaborate signature

Over the weekend I met my buddies Wak, Red, ex-Joe Sewel and we discussed about the coming school alumni annual dinner. Both Red and ex-Joe had to go on overdrive asking yours truly to simply be patient about many of our classmates who are playing hard to get about going to the dinner. I think after the dinner I’ll just say goodbye to all. Two decades or so is a long time to carry on about something. Maybe there is nothing to it, maybe it is just hanging on to worthless images, ideas and visions.

On a juicier note, the fruit season is in full swing. There are more mangosteens and rambutans we could ever eat at my mother’s house and we resorted to sitting in front of the house and call out to whichever kid(s) lucky enough to pass by to go ahead and take the fruits. But they have to climb the trees or use the galah themselves. Some of them have that you-are-asking-us-to-take-the-fruits-for-free-you-must-be-kidding look on their faces. But awas the ants. It runs in the family. Long ago my grandfather said to someone to go ahead and take the fruits at the orchard and that bozo actually brought a lorry to try and clean out the place. Luckily there were some of the kin who were not that kind and that offer was retracted soon after. Aiyo, the gall of some people.

Aaah, the orchard. Some place it was. It was the same place where my brother and uncle slept in a hut during one durian season and one night when he turned over in his sleep, instead of my uncle, he felt something big and hairy instead. Oh, my uncle was not hairy, neither was he big. Yup, it was one of the resident harimau penunggu. Ha ha, needless to say, they ran back home and it was a long time before anyone except my grandfather and father dared to sleep at the orchard. I think that was just before Dr. Ariffin nearly ran into that cow running like mad out of the orchard and started overtaking all vehicles on the road. People figured that the poor thing must have had the luck of running into the harimaus. Dr. Ariffin was not a real doctor but a part-time bomoh instead. But he does cure sick people and we bestowed upon him a degree in medicine and the title Dr. He was a fine doctor until he lost most of his eyesight but he still insisted on riding his bicycle around the village and started using white shoe kiwi instead of some oil when he gave his massages and when that white shoe kiwi dried up, you could get a nasty blister or two from his rock-hard fingers. Back to the animal story, they let the harimau penunggu stay at the orchard since they had nowhere else to banish them to, as it was, they were sent to the orchard from my grandfather’s house in the first place by my grandfather himself when my Kak Munirah, Abang Yusof and Abang Najib were growing up as it would be rather improper to have a few tigers running around the house then, with children and all. They could still remember when at dusk, sometimes they’d see the tigers come home from their daily walkabout, how sometimes at night they’d feel the house shake as them tigers rubbed themselves against the pillars of the house and almost every morning they had to sweep away fur from the veranda.

Anyway, that was how the story went. Like Mr. Ripley says, believe it or not.

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