Jeritan Batin Ku
.
This would be my ninth year of working away from home. When I mean away from home, I mean it would be somewhere where I cannot simply hop into a car and drive back to wherever I’d call home. It does not matter if it is a four-hour or twelve-hour car ride but I can’t, I’d need to board a plane to get home, wherever home is. Which does not necessarily means out of the country, out of Malaya too is possible yes?
Being away from home means I missed on a lot of things over those nine years. Weddings, funerals, kenduris, a few Hari Raya Puasas, many Hari Raya Kurbans and parties, both wild and tame. So far I have been able to take Lina with me and later Lina and Nazzim and later still, Lina, Nazzim and Sofia.
But not this current location. Lina would like to stay back home since she :
i. is tired of following me.
ii. wants to be close to her increasingly elderly parents.
iii. is worried about the children’s education, especially Nazzim’s.
iv. does not cherish the fact that we have to mothball, sell or give away our belongings.
v. does not cherish a few more years of shuttling between our parents’ houses while on holiday.
She swore that when she married me, it would be an easier life than her mother. Lina’s dad was an army officer. But that was not to be the case. In the first seven years of our marriage, we stayed in three countries, four locations and six houses. When I was about to leave for this assignment, one of her friends asked her if she was worried about being left behind.
“I have been left behind since the day I married him.”
Yeah, repeatedly. As sure as there is the sun and the moon. From the shortest one night to the current six weeks or two months or so.
Sofia has marked up her pound of flesh early this time.
“Pa, the next time you are home we go to KLCC ya? Adik nak iPod Nano, a new phone and………”
I stopped her before she could finish.
“Can I ask you why should I buy you an iPod Nano and a new phone, among other things? You have a perfectly good phone and we bought you that MP4 or MP3 or whatever player?”
She just shrugged and said, “I’ll tell you later.”
Tell me later what? Forty years or so living in this world and I have no smart retort to a teenager? Teenagers!
Nazzim was a bit more sensible. I was away during his birthday last week, 21 June, and he said that he’ll wait till I am home to collect.
I think my next trip home will cost me dearly. The children are wise enough to know their father does have that guilty feeling of having to work away from home and they are wise enough to milk it periodically.
Things are crazy at times. Just today I got a call that we have to commit to buying 3 tankers by end of this month or we will lose those tankers, which we will need in about 20 months’ time. Hey, I can commit anytime but whether my word is good enough is another thing. There is such a thing as an approval process. We can’t just commit seventy million greenbacks just like that. Seventy bucks, anytime…. Then me and the sports committee had to go to our supply base and project site as thay are having their final sports day and we at the capital here ought to go and participate. So, because of the good job they did over here earlier this month, the committee were rewarded with the trip. Yeah, right...... reward someone by sending them to a place they do not want to go to.
"H____, we must show our support, so you also go with the committee lah."
Of course boss, I yang jaga kedai ni kena pergi lah....
I am away from my family, I work fourteen hour days, I eat strange food or worse still, eat what I cook myself, and back home people are hitting us front, left and center. Even if the reasons are right, which they are not, it is not fair. We do not live like kings. We risk our lives flying offshore, to our sites and we miss our families. Whatever money we make, we spend it at home, on our families, on true red-blooded Malaysians. I wish I could elaborate...
.
This would be my ninth year of working away from home. When I mean away from home, I mean it would be somewhere where I cannot simply hop into a car and drive back to wherever I’d call home. It does not matter if it is a four-hour or twelve-hour car ride but I can’t, I’d need to board a plane to get home, wherever home is. Which does not necessarily means out of the country, out of Malaya too is possible yes?
Being away from home means I missed on a lot of things over those nine years. Weddings, funerals, kenduris, a few Hari Raya Puasas, many Hari Raya Kurbans and parties, both wild and tame. So far I have been able to take Lina with me and later Lina and Nazzim and later still, Lina, Nazzim and Sofia.
But not this current location. Lina would like to stay back home since she :
i. is tired of following me.
ii. wants to be close to her increasingly elderly parents.
iii. is worried about the children’s education, especially Nazzim’s.
iv. does not cherish the fact that we have to mothball, sell or give away our belongings.
v. does not cherish a few more years of shuttling between our parents’ houses while on holiday.
She swore that when she married me, it would be an easier life than her mother. Lina’s dad was an army officer. But that was not to be the case. In the first seven years of our marriage, we stayed in three countries, four locations and six houses. When I was about to leave for this assignment, one of her friends asked her if she was worried about being left behind.
“I have been left behind since the day I married him.”
Yeah, repeatedly. As sure as there is the sun and the moon. From the shortest one night to the current six weeks or two months or so.
Sofia has marked up her pound of flesh early this time.
“Pa, the next time you are home we go to KLCC ya? Adik nak iPod Nano, a new phone and………”
I stopped her before she could finish.
“Can I ask you why should I buy you an iPod Nano and a new phone, among other things? You have a perfectly good phone and we bought you that MP4 or MP3 or whatever player?”
She just shrugged and said, “I’ll tell you later.”
Tell me later what? Forty years or so living in this world and I have no smart retort to a teenager? Teenagers!
Nazzim was a bit more sensible. I was away during his birthday last week, 21 June, and he said that he’ll wait till I am home to collect.
I think my next trip home will cost me dearly. The children are wise enough to know their father does have that guilty feeling of having to work away from home and they are wise enough to milk it periodically.
Things are crazy at times. Just today I got a call that we have to commit to buying 3 tankers by end of this month or we will lose those tankers, which we will need in about 20 months’ time. Hey, I can commit anytime but whether my word is good enough is another thing. There is such a thing as an approval process. We can’t just commit seventy million greenbacks just like that. Seventy bucks, anytime…. Then me and the sports committee had to go to our supply base and project site as thay are having their final sports day and we at the capital here ought to go and participate. So, because of the good job they did over here earlier this month, the committee were rewarded with the trip. Yeah, right...... reward someone by sending them to a place they do not want to go to.
"H____, we must show our support, so you also go with the committee lah."
Of course boss, I yang jaga kedai ni kena pergi lah....
I am away from my family, I work fourteen hour days, I eat strange food or worse still, eat what I cook myself, and back home people are hitting us front, left and center. Even if the reasons are right, which they are not, it is not fair. We do not live like kings. We risk our lives flying offshore, to our sites and we miss our families. Whatever money we make, we spend it at home, on our families, on true red-blooded Malaysians. I wish I could elaborate...
.
posted by dudae_simboyo at 13:53
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